She is a weak, retiring woman, very feeble
and very feminine, and with the simplicity that is characteristic of such
sweet and shallow natures she allows her brother to defraud her of all
her property. The widow is rather a bore and the brother is quite a
bear, but Margaret Rivers who, to save her sister from poverty, marries a
man she does not love, is a cleverly conceived character, and Lady Lyons
is an admirable old dowager. The book can be read without any trouble
and was probably written without any trouble also. The style is
prattling and pleasing.

The plot of Delamere is not very new. On the death of her husband, Mrs.
De Ruthven discovers that the estates belong by right not to her son
Raymond but to her niece Fleurette. As she keeps her knowledge to
herself, a series of complications follows, but the cousins are
ultimately united in marriage and the story ends happily. Mr. Curzon
writes in a clever style, and though its construction is rather clumsy
the novel is a thoroughly interesting one.

A Daughter of Fife tells us of the love of a young artist for a Scotch
fisher-girl. The character sketches are exceptionally good, especially
that of David Promoter, a fisherman who leaves his nets to preach the
gospel, and the heroine is quite charming till she becomes civilised. The
book is a most artistic combination of romantic feeling with realistic
form, and it is pleasant to read descriptions of Scotch scenery that do
not represent the land of mist and mountain as a sort of chromolithograph
from the Brompton Road.

In Mr. Speight's novel, A Barren Title, we have an impoverished earl who
receives an allowance from his relations on condition of his remaining
single, being all the time secretly married and the father of a grown-up
son. The story is improbable and amusing.

On the whole, there is a great deal to be said for our ordinary English
novelists. They have all some story to tell, and most of them tell it in
an interesting manner. Where they fail is in concentration of style.
Their characters are far too eloquent and talk themselves to tatters.
What we want is a little more reality and a little less rhetoric. We are
most grateful to them that they have not as yet accepted any frigid
formula, nor stereotyped themselves into a school, but we wish that they
would talk less and think more. They lead us through a barren desert of
verbiage to a mirage that they call life; we wander aimlessly through a
very wilderness of words in search of one touch of nature. However, one
should not be too severe on English novels: they are the only relaxation
of the intellectually unemployed.

(1) The Wolfe of Badenoch: A Historical Romance of the Fourteenth
Century. By Sir Thomas Lauder. (Hamilton, Adams and Co.)

(2) Keep My Secret. By G. M. Robins. (Bentley and Son.)

(3) Mrs. Dorriman. By the Hon. Mrs. Henry Chetwynd. (Chapman and Hall.)

(4) Delamere. By G. Curzon. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co.)

(5) A Daughter of Fife. By Amelia Barr. (James Clarke and Co.)

(6) A Barren Title. By T. W. Speight. (Chatto and Windus.)

BALZAC IN ENGLISH

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 13, 1886.