A Young Girl's Life. By B. L. Farjeon. 3 vole.
(Ward and Downey.)—Mr. Farjeon's latest story, which he calls "a novel," and which we should describe as a rather wild romance, resembles rather too closely the literary productions of his own Alonzo, an extremely romantic butcher's boy, who deserts the block and cleaver for the pen, and ultimately rises to the high dignity of becoming a successful producer of highly spiced serial tales for the columns of a popular penny-dreadful. From the description given, we should imagine that Alonzo's achievements in fiction were rather more gory than is this story, which does not contain a single murder or suicide; but they could not well be truer to the traditions of transpontine melodrama, or more delightfully free from the restraints which hamper a writer who feels himself bound to hold the mirror up to Nature. Mr. Farjeon's heroine admits, with curious naïveté, that several of the persons in her circle bear a strong resemblance to certain characters who figure in "Nicholas Nickleby ;" and, indeed, the author's imitation of Dickens, always a little too obvious, has never been quite so pro- nounced as in these pages. Unfortunately, but inevitably, the reader is reminded much more strongly of Dickens's exaggerations of portraiture, and absurdities of incident, than of the features which gave to his work its character and vitality.
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