Paradoxes are always charming, but judgments such as these are not
paradoxical; they are merely provincial.

On the whole, Mr. Robertson's book will not do. It is, we fully admit,
an industrious compilation, but it is not an anthology, it is not a
selection of the best, for it lacks the discrimination and good taste
which is the essence of selection, and for the want of which no amount of
industry can atone. The child-poems of our literature have still to be
edited.

The Children of the Poets: An Anthology from English and American Writers
of Three Generations. Edited, with an Introduction, by Eric S.
Robertson. (Walter Scott.)

NEW NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, October 28, 1886.)

Astray: A Tale of a Country Town, is a very serious volume. It has taken
four people to write it, and even to read it requires assistance. Its
dulness is premeditated and deliberate and comes from a laudable desire
to rescue fiction from flippancy. It is, in fact, tedious from the
noblest motives and wearisome through its good intentions. Yet the story
itself is not an uninteresting one. Quite the contrary. It deals with
the attempt of a young doctor to build up a noble manhood on the ruins of
a wasted youth. Burton King, while little more than a reckless lad,
forges the name of a dying man, is arrested and sent to penal servitude
for seven years. On his discharge he comes to live with his sisters in a
little country town and finds that his real punishment begins when he is
free, for prison has made him a pariah. Still, through the nobility and
self-sacrifice of his life, he gradually wins himself a position, and
ultimately marries the prettiest girl in the book. His character is, on
the whole, well drawn, and the authors have almost succeeded in making
him good without making him priggish. The method, however, by which the
story is told is extremely tiresome. It consists of an interminable
series of long letters by different people and of extracts from various
diaries. The book consequently is piecemeal and unsatisfactory. It
fails in producing any unity of effect. It contains the rough material
for a story, but is not a completed work of art. It is, in fact, more of
a notebook than a novel. We fear that too many collaborators are like
too many cooks and spoil the dinner. Still, in this tale of a country
town there are certain solid qualities, and it is a book that one can
with perfect safety recommend to other people.

Miss Rhoda Broughton belongs to a very different school. No one can ever
say of her that she has tried to separate flippancy from fiction, and
whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her
sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes
the whole world kin. We are sorry, however, to see from a perusal of
Betty's Visions that Miss Broughton has been attending the meetings of
the Psychical Society in search of copy. Mysticism is not her mission,
and telepathy should be left to Messrs. Myers and Gurney. In Philistia
lies Miss Broughton's true sphere, and to Philistia she should return.