and all that we see or hear in her company
is of Mrs. Liuton,— Liutony. Other novelists attempt to give their readers a genuine m ( costs its professor 80010 time and trouble ; it is only just, there- fore, that the professor should use it as a means to promote his After proceeding to Damascus, where Mr. Oliphant obtained dislikes, and also—so far as she can be held to possess any—her Mrs. in well deserves a hearing. rs. Linton herself be not in see degree misled by it, for cleverness like hers is by no means incompatible with a con- But putting aside the serious purpose of the book, the kind- siderable share of stupidity. It seems probable, for instance, that
liest criticism cannot fail to hit upon seine defects in it. It is she considers herself to be a person of strong convictions ; that certainly overladen with rather crude and rather tedious tope- she fancies she potently believes some things, and more potently graphical disquisitions, which, being the result of so hurried a disbelieves a great many other things. Nothing, however, trip, are hardly calculated to inspire confidence ; and we must
' could be further from the truth. Mrs. Linton is, so far as her the Palestine Exploration Fund. Again, there is a frequent but she is no less incapable of not believing anything. We use
con- want of accuracy the word " belief," of course, in the sense of intellectual con- which is the more to be depl • d in giving the modern Arabic names of places, viction. Mrs. Liuton sides this way or that, in obedience to deplored, , as a good deal of the attempted move- identification of ancient sites rests the behest of her likes and dislikes ; but the intellectual move- es res al upon the long-discredited
m ni
ground In one passage, too, eat with her always comes after the emotional one, and is round of a seeming similarity of name. , strictly subjected to it ; it may render it plausible, but it has the sun is made to perform the unusual feat of setting over the nothing to do with its formation. As for her cleverness, it eastern desert. Such instances of hasty work, however, iu what consists principally in her faculty of putting a thing pointedly is, after all, not the main staple of the volume, should weigh and smartly ; her epigrams are never the blossoming-out of a little against the many graphic descriptions of scenery and consistent stein of thought, but spring forth promiscuously; amusing touches of humour which make the Land of Gilead a and not unfrequeutly, if collated, stultify one another. Mrs, ...._ * wits a Silken Thread, and Other Storks. By IL Lynn Linton. 3 vole. London
Chat() and Windus.
Linton cares more to say a pungent thing than to say what is logical, pertinent, or true ; indeed, truth is irksome
to her, as not being one-sided enough, and she commonly lets it alone. Doubtless, Mrs. Linton is far from wishing to write anything that is in bad-taste ; but she occasion- ally produces something which has about it a taint of vul- garity. We should be glad to regard it as the vulgarity of petulance ; but, although many of Mrs. Linton's diatribes are petulant enough, her failures to be refined are independent of her failures to be good-humoured. It is difficult to read much of her writing without asking oneself whether she is not actually averse from admitting the existence of anything worthy of respect and reverence in human nature. At all events, she seems to prefer dwelling upon what is discreditable in men and women, to discovering and pointing out what is clean and noble.
A writer is prone to fall into this course, if he permits himself to hate or to favour a thing not as it departs from or conforms with the universal laws of right and wrong, but only as it is personally flattering or obnoxious to himself. To do this is to run the risk of being charged with vulgarity ; for it is tantamount to setting up one's own prejudices, in the place of Divine Providence and the Decalogue.
The collection of short stories which now lies before us pro- bably represents the occasional work of several years ; but among them are pieces which may be taken as illustrative of the author's latest method and mood. As regards her mental attitude in general, there are few if any differences noticeable; but there are modifications in the manner in which this attitude declares itself. Mrs. Linton should be careful to remember 'that her literary reputation was established not by her opinions, but by the sparkling malice with which that which passed for her opinions was uttered. Readers, like monarchs, delight to be amused ; and so long as the jester is 'really amusing, will forgive a great deal of impertinence and whimsicality. But woe to that jester who, grown old and weary in the service, omits to flavour his impertinence with humour, or to adorn his whimsicality with wit ! His closing days shall 'be short and evil, for monarchs and readers have no gratitude for the laughter of yesterday, unless it be renewed to-day. To apply our parable,---Mrs. Linton, if she would retain her popu- larity, must not mingle her ill-nature with dullness. In litera- ture, it is allowable to be cantankerous only under penalty of remaining witty. Yet there are signs in this later work of hers that the piquant satirist of ten years ago is becoming ponder- ous and torpid. It is excessively difficult to get through many of the Silken, Thread stories ; the will to be satirical is still there, but not the ability. Such a deficiency renders the abiding faults of conception and treatment fatally conspicuous. There is no reading in the world so dreary and juiceless as feminine cynicism unrelieved by vivacity.
There are upwards of twenty stories in the three volumes ; of these, the first, which gives its name to the book, seems to us as ,good as any. It describes the intrigue whereby a lady of social position prevents her son from making a misalliance with a girl his inferior in rank. Mrs. Haynes's plan is to have the girl up to visit her at her country-house, and by thus contrasting Lois's defects of breeding with the flawless tact and refinement of Mrs. Haynes and her daughters, to make her son ashamed of his choice. The device succeeds, it is difficult to under- stand why, since the lack of good manners in Mrs. Haynes and her daughters is much more noticeable than in Lois. However, the narrative is smooth and flowing, and the reader may overlook, if he chooses, the fact that the personages of the story change their characteristics from page to page, in obedience to the changing exigencies of the plot ; and Mrs. Linton, having no respect for her own consistency, may perhaps be pardoned for showing none for that of her creations. The most memorable fact about this, and most of the other stories, is the instantaneousness with which the persons and events that they portray vanish from the memory. It seems as if some vestige of truth and conscientiousness were indispensable to any work intended to outlast the time required to read it. Perhaps the two tales in the collection least easy to forget are those entitled respectively," The Last Tenants of Hangman's House " and " My Day of Danger." The latter is an episode in the career of a professional beauty ; it is somewhat prurient in tone, but the treatment is more than usually sympathetic. But upon the whole, we should counsel Mrs. Linton's admirers not to open these volumes too confidently. The author has worked diligently for a good many years, and will perhaps write better after she has bad a little rest.
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