The worst our strongest enemy can do
Is take from us our life, and this indeed
Is in the power of the weakest also.

This is not good prose; it is merely blank verse of an inferior quality,
and we hope that Mr. Coleridge in his next novel will not ask us to
accept second-rate poetry as musical prose. For, that Mr. Coleridge is a
young writer of great ability and culture cannot be doubted and, indeed,
in spite of the error we have pointed out, Demetrius remains one of the
most fascinating and delightful novels that has appeared this season.

Demetrius. By the Hon. Stephen Coleridge. (Kegan Paul.)

NEW NOVELS

(Saturday Review, August 20, 1887.)

Teutonic fiction, as a rule, is somewhat heavy and very sentimental; but
Werner's Her Son, excellently translated by Miss Tyrrell, is really a
capital story and would make a capital play. Old Count Steinruck has two
grandsons, Raoul and Michael. The latter is brought up like a peasant's
child, cruelly treated by his grandfather and by the peasant to whose
care he is confided, his mother, the Countess Louis Steinruck, having
married an adventurer and a gambler. He is the rough hero of the tale,
the Saint Michael of that war with evil which is life; while Raoul,
spoiled by his grandfather and his French mother, betrays his country and
tarnishes his name. At every step in the narrative these two young men
come into collision. There is a war of character, a clash of
personalities. Michael is proud, stern and noble. Raoul is weak,
charming and evil. Michael has the world against him and conquers. Raoul
has the world on his side and loses. The whole story is full of movement
and life, and the psychology of the characters is displayed by action not
by analysis, by deeds not by description. Though there are three long
volumes, we do not tire of the tale. It has truth, passion and power,
and there are no better things than these in fiction.

The interest of Mr. Sale Lloyd's Scamp depends on one of those
misunderstandings which is the stock-in-trade of second-rate novelists.
Captain Egerton falls in love with Miss Adela Thorndyke, who is a sort of
feeble echo of some of Miss Broughton's heroines, but will not marry her
because he has seen her talking with a young man who lives in the
neighbourhood and is one of his oldest friends. We are sorry to say that
Miss Thorndyke remains quite faithful to Captain Egerton, and goes so far
as to refuse for his sake the rector of the parish, a local baronet, and
a real live lord. There are endless pages of five o'clock tea-prattle
and a good many tedious characters. Such novels as Scamp are possibly
more easy to write than they are to read.

James Hepburn belongs to a very different class of book. It is not a
mere chaos of conversation, but a strong story of real life, and it
cannot fail to give Miss Veitch a prominent position among modern
novelists. James Hepburn is the Free Church minister of Mossgiel, and
presides over a congregation of pleasant sinners and serious hypocrites.
Two people interest him, Lady Ellinor Farquharson and a handsome young
vagabond called Robert Blackwood.