THE LATE GEORGE LAWRENCE AND HIS WORE* Iv is now

nearly twenty years since the author of Guy Livingstone first came before the public, and during that time he has pro- duced with unfailing regularity a novel every second year ; and in addition to these, two slight volumes of travel, and one of ballads. It is no exaggeration to say that during these twenty years the character of works of fiction has undergone an almost total change, and that one portion of this change is mainly due to our

• Guy Livingstone, Sword and GOWN, Barren Honour, Border and &Odle, Hayarom 40, sea

author. It may be readily granted that no man, author or other- wise, remains a favourite with even a limited section of the public for twenty years without possessing some decided merit ; and to estimate as far as may be that merit, and the influence of the author upon contemporary literature, is our present object.

When the London world was taken by surprise by the appear- ance of Guy Livingstone, with its deification of strength and almost total disregard of morality, there was no room for a calm review of its merits ; storms of applause, ridicule, and censure arose on all sides, and the book was violently condemned on the one hand, and as violently praised on the other. The hostile critics depicted the hero as a mixture of the prize- fighter and the libertine, while the admirers of the book praised equally vehemently the disregard of conventionalities and personal daring of both the hero and the author. A rumour that these two were one and the same person lent an additional piquancy to the interest, and the book sold like wild-fire. Young men discarded their turn-down collars and loose neck-ties, and dressed a la Guy, and even the chubbiest of the Adonises of the time affected " to set his face like a flint," and adopted to his sweet- heart the tones of calm command, in place of the old ones of be- seeching adoration. All this, of course, speedily passed off ; " the cool Captain " became a recognised type of humanity, and novel. after novel in the same strain as the first flowed year by year from Mr. Lawrence's pen. There is little if any difference in feeling or treatment between the first novel and the last that this author wrote ; twenty years neither altered his style nor modified his views, and so much alike are his works, that almost any one of them might be taken for an example, and serve as well as any, or all, the rest.

Well, then, let us take Guy Livingstone as the type of Mr. Lawrence's novels, and endeavour to see what were the qualities that had power to render interesting and attractive such an ex- cessively improbable and exaggerated story; for it must be noticed, to begin with, that there was hardly an attempt through- out the book to render the story in any way credible. It was not by its truth to nature that the book was such a success, for truth of character or probability of incident there was none throughout the story ; but the same qualities which made the Three Musketeers of Alexandre Dumas such an enormous success were also the key to the popularity of Guy Livingstone,—considerable narrative power, an unflagging succession of stirring incidents, and a complete realisa- tion of his chief characters ; all these peculiarities of the French writer were reproduced in his young English contemporary, and above all, it may be safely said that the marvellous swing and " go" of the French story were reproduced to the fullest extent in the English one. The book had life,—that was the real secret of its success. It was written honestly from one of the lowest points of view capable of being taken by a perfectly honourable man, but

nevertheless, it was written in all good-faith, and on it there was the impress of the writer's belief. Nothing was excused or glossed over,—there was no feeling that there was need for any excuse.

For instance, the hero narrates, in the most natural manner in the world, to a circle of friends, ladies amongst them, " the history of Fernande, an ange ddchue of the Quartier Breda," and even the most straight-laced old lady amongst them does not make any objection to such a singular topic for conversation.

Again, no one who has read the story can doubt that the true heroine is Flora Bellasys, who is thus described by one of the minor characters in the book :—

"Sir Henry's face grew more grave and pensive as he said, It is very hard on the women certainly, that our race should have degenerated so, for I believe in my conscience they are as clever and as wicked and appreciate temptation as much as ever.' (The gusto with which he said this is indescribable.) There is the Bellasys, for instance, with a calculating sensuality, an astuteness of stratagem, an utter contempt for truth, and a capacity for making fools of men, that poor Philip the Regent would have worshipped. When she had no one better to corrupt, I have seen her take in hand an older, sadder, wiser, uglier man than my- self, and in three days bring him to the verge of insanity, so that ho would ecowl at his wife, his companion for forty years, the blameless mother of six grown-up children, with a hideous expression indicative of carving-knives and strychnine."

If the heroine is depicted as an unlovable character, there is little to be said of Guy's that is at all attractive ; through the whole book he consistently snubs or terrifies every one he meets ; he breaks his fiancée's heart, and indeed keeps every one who has to do with him in general fear and trembling, till he mercifully breaks his spine, and dies to slow music, crushing a silver goblet in his hand. However, these are incidental exaggerations which affect the book, as a whole, no more than the number of leagues D'Artagnan rode in a day, or the quantity of wine Athos drank in a cellar affects the Three Musketeers. The author had knowledge

of one style of life, the only one probably that he considered worth living, and this (put in the exaggerated form necessitated by the gigantic strength of the hero) is the life he has described, one of strong flirtations, guinea whist, and general club philo- sophy,—not so much directly sneering at religion and morality, as tacitly ignoring the claims of either to any part in the actual life of man, and putting them, where indeed it seems to be the present fashion to put them, in the hands of women and children.

Never has there been a more practically heathen philosophy preached than is inculcated in nearly every sentence of Mr. law- -

rence's books. It is true that there are incidental references, generally within two or three pages of the end, to God, or to a future state ; but these are introduced so artificially, and are so totally at variance with what has gone before, that they can de-

ceive no one, and, indeed, stand like the death's-head at the Egyptian feasts, but to heighten the contrast of the surrounding mirth. To give some instances of this, take Sword and Gown. The

whole of this story is devoted to the account of a love-affair be- tween a married man and the heroine, a famous London beauty. Royston Keene, the hero, is a bad edition of Guy Livingstone, indeed, as repulsive a character as can well be imagined. Never-

theless, Mr. Lawrence devotes all his art to making him appear the victim of circumstances, till, when towards the end of the book, he does not pursue the heroine, who has fled away from him, instead of with him, for this heroic act of self-sacrifice we are almost invited to regard him as a martyr ; and the book ends by Mr. Lawrence saying that there are no limits to be set to the mercy of Omnipotence, and perhaps " Heaven may yet have more mercy than man on such a bold rider's soul." This book of Sword and Gown is in one way the beat of all Mr. Law- rence's works, for it has a coherence of story and an air of pro- bability which are hardly to be found elsewhere in his writings.

The characters are very few in number, scarcely more than half- a-dozen, and are drawn with bold, vigorous strokes. The strong, cruel, sensual dragoon ; the equally sensual but pusillani- mous clergyman ; the old French captain of chasseurs, crippled by rheumatic fever, and finding his only excitement in " high play ;" the elderly companion, somewhat a dram-drinker in theo- logy as well as other matters ; and lastly, the heroine, a proud Cornish beauty, are all life-like, and save the last, may be all met with at any Continental watering-place. The heroine, Cecil Tresilyan, is the most lovable of all this author's characters, and one of the most successful women-portraits ever drawn in any but the best works of fiction. This portrait and that of Kate Seyton in Sans Merci show that, when Mr. Lawrence chose, few people could surpass him in describing an English lady. Sword and Gown, however, which is, in a literary point of view, quite one of the best of our author's works, is in a moral point of view decidedly the worst, and a thoroughly bad book. The character of the hero and the whole tone of the story are detestable, and the unfairness of making one cowardly, selfish clergyman the occasion of an unfavourable comparison between Sword and Gown need not be commented on. The very lack of exaggeration of incident, and quiet, matter-of-fact tone in which the story is told, renders the book doubly dangerous in its influ- ence, and the straggles of Cecil Tresilyan against her passion, and her surrender to its influence, are told with a minuteness and graphic power more akin to Balzac than any English writer. Take, for instance, the following scene, where Cecil, having dis- covered that her lover is married, listens to the story of his wife's infidelity, and consents to his remaining at Dorade, the foreign watering-place where she is living. Royston Keene is supposed to be speaking :—

" I did not ask you for your decision without meaning to abide by it. But it would be well to pause before you made it final. Remember, we shall not part for days, or months, if you send me away now. At least, you need not fear persecution. Yet it is difficult to reconcile oneself to banishment. Will you not "give me a chance of making amends for the folly you complain of ? I cannot promise that my words shall always be guarded and my manner artificial ; but I think I would rather keep your friendship than win the love of any living woman, and I would try hard never to offend von. Let us finish this at once. You have only to say, "Leave me," and I swear that you shall be obeyed to the letter.' On that last card hung all the issue of the game that he would have sold his soul to win ; yet he spoke not eagerly, though very earnestly, and waited quietly for her reply, with a face calm as death. Cecil ought not to have hesitated for an instant ; we all know that. But steady resolve and stoical self-denial, easy enough in theory, are bitterly hard in practice. It is very well to preach to the wayfarer that his duty is to go forward, and not tarry. Fresh and green grow the grasses round the Diamond of the Desert; pleasantly over its bright waters droop the feathery palms. How drearily the grey, arid sand stretches away to the sky-line! Who knows how far it may be to the next oasis ? Let us rest yet another hour by the fountain. From any deliberate intention to do wrong Cecil was as pure as any canonised saint in the roll of virgins and martyrs, but if she had

been a voluptuary as elaborate as La Pompadour, she could not have felt more keenly that her love had increased tenfold in intensity since it became a crime to indulge it. The passionate energy that had slumbered so long in her temperament was thoroughly roused at last, and would make itself heard clamorously enough to drown the still, small voice, that said, 'Beware and forbear.' Her principles were good, but they were not strong enough to hold their own. 0 pride of the Tresilyans ! that had tempted to sin so many of that haughty house, when you might have saved its fairest descendant, was it the time to falter and fail? She looked up piteously in her great extremity ; there

40 was a prayer for help in her eyes, but between them and Heaven was interposed a stern bronze face, not a line of it softening. At length the faint, broken whisper came,—' God help me, I cannot say it.'"

This is a very typical passage of Mr. Lawrence's, and the spirit of it is the same that runs through all his writings. That women if tempted will succumb may almost be said to form the chief tenet of his philosophy. There is hardly one of his books where the temptation is resisted. In the present case, the heroine is saved by the opportune arrival of one of her rejected admirers. In 1863, appeared Border and Bastille, a record of a journey to the United States, with the intention of joining the Confederate Army as a volunteer. This is, perhaps, the most wonderful example of a book made out of nothing that could be easily mentioned. Hardly any incident befell the author, and before he got near the Confederate lines he was taken prisoner by their opponents, and shut up for some months in a small guard-house composed of planks, whence, after much corre- spondence with Lord Lyons, &c., he was liberated, on the condition of his immediate return to England. To most people, we imagine, this would hardly have recommended itself as a profitable subject ; but Mr. Lawrence, apparently quite innocent of the comic aspect of the whole affair, made a book out of it, and actually succeeds, through the liveliness of his style and the capital he makes out of small incidents, in interesting the reader against MI will. For instance, the following is the description he gives of the appear- ance of two Southern ladies confined in the same house with him, and the gift of a rosebud which he receives from one of them :-

"Truly a fair picture, though framed in such rude setting, but almost as startling at first as the apparition of the fair witch in the forest was to Christabelle. Slightly in the background stood a mature dame, the mother evidently. No need to ask what their crime had been,—aid and abetment of the South suggested itself before you detected the ensign of her faith that the demoiselle still wore undauntedly, a pearl solitaire fashioned as a single star. I may not deny that my gloomy constitu- tional' seemed thenceforward a shade less dreary; but though com- munity of suffering does much abridge ceremony, it was some days before I interchanged with the fair captives any sign beyond the me- chanical lifting of my cap when I entered and left their presence, a sign duly acknowledged from above. . One evening I chanced to be loitering almost under their window; a low, significant cough made me look up ; I saw the flash of a gold bracelet, and the wave of a white hand, and there fell at my feet a fragrant, pearly rosebud, nestling in fresh green leaves. My thanks were, perforce, confined to a gesture and a dozen hurried words ; bat I would the prison-beauty could believe that fair Jane Beanfort's rose was not more prized than hers, though the first was a love-token granted to a King, the last only a graceful gift to an unlucky stranger. I suppose that moat men whose past is not utterly barren of romance are weak enough to keep some withered flowers till they have lived memory down, and I pretend not to be wiser than my fellows. Other fragrant messengers followed in their season, but if over I' win bame to mine ain countree,' I make mine avow to enshrine that first rosebud in my reliquaire with all honour and solemnity, there to abide till one of us be dust."

This use of antiquated words and phrases is another of our author's peculiarities, and occasionally is productive of a most absurd effect. It is hardly possible to imagine anybody at the pre- sent time " making mine avow to enshrine . . . . in my reliquaire" either a rosebud, or anything else ; and the same thing may be noticed in the introduction into the text of Latin, Greek, and French words and phrases. Thus, in Hagarene, .the last book Mr. Lawrence wrote before his death, he talks about "another huge cantle out of a 'minished patrimony being cast ad canes." With this deduction, the style is an excep- tionally easy and graceful one ; and from the worst reproach that can be made against a novelist Mr. Lawrence is quite free,—he is never dull. We read, and disapprove, but still we can always read. From the beginning to the end of his writings, from Guy Livingstone to Hagarene, the philosophy, such as it is, never varies a jot. It is the view of life taken by a man moving in fashionable society, and content to take things very much as be finds them. One of the most curious things throughout this series of novels, is the sneering disparage- ment of city or professional men. A lawyer is considered very little higher apparently than a valet, and is sent for, treated, and dismissed much in the same manner ; and also a doctor or a clergyman. If we sought to epitomise the Gospel according to St. Lawrence, it would be very much as follows The world consists of soldiers and the aristocracy, and others ; the first two of these classes treat the third as they please ; the third submits,

and rather likes it. It is lawful to run off with your friend's wife, if she likes you better than she does him, indeed, it is a duty you owe to society. If you are an excessively strong man, it is lawful to assault and terrify every one smaller than yourself ; if you have very little money, you may spend a great deal, if you can get any one to trust you ; this is being a " detrimental ;" lastly, if you are a man, your objects in life are the chime de inarie'e and the chasse de reynard, with intervals of whist and ecarte. If you do all this, and never break your word to a man or keep it to a woman, you are a gentleman.'

Such, we say, is the gospel we might gather from these works ; but the real question is, whether it be at all worth while to analyse their teaching. They are not written virginibus puerisque, — they are written to amuse men, and more particularly one especial class of men. If young people choose to read them, and to believe the views of life they give to be true and noble ones, they will but have to find out their mis- take by experience, and the lesson will probably be a sharp one. But it does not seem to us that there is so much danger of this at the present time, as there was some years ago, and for this reason : the success of these books has produced a host of imitators, who, without Mr. Lawrence's power and grace of style, rival him in exaggeration, and generally with this additional defect,—that they do not, as he did, thoroughly understand the life of which they are writing. The existence of these books, which may be- generally described as Guy Livingstone-and-water, makes patent the faults which might be overlooked in the charm of

Mr•. Lawrence's stories. And with a school of healthy literature, centring round George Eliot, there does not seem any fear that this one-sided view of society and its- morality is likely to prevail. It is practically the philosophy of the senses, and nothing beyond them, that is taught ; and taught in the most subtle manner, by ignoring any other basis for affection or duty. But there are other bases, and "beer and skittles" is only one side of the question. Tenderness, and compassion, and help for those round us, are really grander qualities than abnormal developments of the biceps, and a life of honest work is a happier, as well as a nobler one, than that passed in the pursuit of women and foxes.