As for A Marked Man, That Winter Night, and Driven Home, the first shows
some power of description and treatment, but is sadly incomplete; the
second is quite unworthy of any man of letters, and the third is
absolutely silly. We sincerely hope that a few more novels like these
will be published, as the public will then find out that a bad book is
very dear at a shilling.

(1) Injury and Insult. By Fedor Dostoieffski. Translated from the
Russian by Frederick Whishaw. (Vizetelly and Co.)

(2) The Willow Garth. By W. M. Hardinge. (Bentley and Son.)

(3) Marcella Grace. By Rosa Mulholland. (Macmillan and Co.)

(4) Soap. By Constance MacEwen. (Arrowsmith.)

(5) A Marked Man. By Faucet Streets. (Hamilton and Adams.)

(6) That Winter Night. By Robert Buchanan. (Arrowsmith.)

(7) Driven Home. By Evelyn Owen. (Arrowsmith.)

SOME NOVELS

(Saturday Review, May 7, 1887.)

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of
place is history. In novels they are detestable, and Miss Bayle's
Romance is entirely spoiled as a realistic presentation of life by the
author's attempt to introduce into her story a whole mob of modern
celebrities and notorieties, including the Heir Apparent and Mr. Edmund
Yates. The identity of the latter personage is delicately veiled under
the pseudonym of 'Mr. Atlas, editor of the World,' but the former appears
as 'The Prince of Wales' pur et simple, and is represented as spending
his time yachting in the Channel and junketing at Homburg with a second-
rate American family who, by the way, always address him as 'Prince,' and
show in other respects an ignorance that even their ignorance cannot
excuse. Indeed, His Royal Highness is no mere spectator of the story; he
is one of the chief actors in it, and it is through his influence that
the noisy Chicago belle, whose lack of romance gives the book its title,
achieves her chief social success. As for the conversation with which
the Prince is credited, it is of the most amazing kind. We find him on
one page gravely discussing the depression of trade with Mr. Ezra P.
Bayle, a shoddy American millionaire, who promptly replies, 'Depression
of fiddle-sticks, Prince'; in another passage he naively inquires of the
same shrewd speculator whether the thunderstorms and prairie fires of the
West are still 'on so grand a scale' as when he visited Illinois; and we
are told in the second volume that, after contemplating the magnificent
view from St. Ives he exclaimed with enthusiasm, 'Surely Mr. Brett must
have had a scene like this in his eye when he painted Britannia's Realm?
I never saw anything more beautiful.' Even Her Majesty figures in this
extraordinary story in spite of the excellent aphorism ne touchez pas a
la reine; and when Miss Alma J. Bayle is married to the Duke of Windsor's
second son she receives from the hands of royalty not merely the
customary Cashmere shawl of Court tradition, but also a copy of Diaries
in the Highlands inscribed 'To _the_ Lady Plowden Eton, with the kindest
wishes of Victoria R.I.', a mistake that the Queen, of all persons in the
world, is the least likely to have committed. Perhaps, however, we are
treating Miss Bayle's Romance too seriously. The book has really no
claim to be regarded as a novel at all.