The Honour of Savelli. By S. Levett Yeats. (Sampson Low
and Co.)—This book reveals to the reading public an addition to the flourishing school of New Romancists, and one whom even Mr. Stanley Weyman and Mr. Conan Doyle will find a formidable rival. Mr. Yeats i3 sufficiently ambitious. He has aspired to write a story in which there should appear together on the stage, Bayard, Maccidavelli, and the three Borgias,—Alexander, Ctesar, and Lucrezia,—and he has achieved a really wonderful success. Bayard, although the ideal of the hero and of the wife whom the hero secures after a volume of adventures, is perhaps the least successful of all ; it is not very easy, no doubt, to represent a knight who is sans pear et sans reproche as other than splendidly commonplace. But Mr. Yeats gives a delightful sketch of the great Florentine master of statecraft. Macchiavelli, as he figures in his pages, is endowed with a great deal of dry humour, and is, of course, a master of intrigue. But he has good qualities of heart as well as of head, and, in short, is not too Iagoesque, or even Macchiavellian—in the popular sense. As for the Borgias, we can truly say that we have not read in any historical fiction for a long time anything more powerful or ghastlier than the death of Alexander. Then the story itself is interesting personally as well as historically. It opens most dramatically. Ugo Savelli, an Italian knight and soldier of the proudest kind, is accused of theft when in camp by a brother soldier, Crepin D'Entra.ngues, who hates him. The theft seems to be brought home to him, he is disgraced, and he is, in a manner, compelled to become a soldier of fortune. It is in this capacity that he is brought into contact with the various historical personages who figured in Italy during his day. It is quite unnecessary to say that he meets with many adventures—including the rescue of the lady who subsequently becomes his wife. Matters are complicated for him by the fact that the wife of the man who has (temporarily) ruined him accompanies him in one of his expeditions in the disguise of a knight, and even saves him from death at the cost of her own life. But being a disciple of Bayard, he acquits himself well even in this delicate—though rather familiar—situation, as a man of honour should. Altogether, The Honour of Savelli is a story of great power and greater promise.
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