TH

HERE is an especial charm in the tales that are told by our "realists," in that they seem to take on some of the qualities of autobiography, whether they are so or not. An author whose literary creed involves the presentation of life as it is must perforce present life as he has seen it; and it is given to few to sit in a proscenium-box and look thence intimately upon others who are living without an attendant obligation of mixing in with them and becoming part of their lives. Yet the novel of the realist is not necessarily a confession, nor is it an indictment of others who are introduced into the story. Even an author must adapt his means to his ends. The bulk of his characterization must be somewhat imaginative, must consist of what men and women might be expected to do and to say under given circumstances, but underlying the whole is something which has been a part of real experience. In the novels of Mr. Howells in the past there has always lain this pleasing quality. Whether or not the episodes with which he deals are "really and truly true," as the children say, they at least seem to be so. As he has observed certain essential facts of life, so has he faithfully presented and enlarged upon them, and in that spirit of tolerance which is indicative of a kindly heart behind the pen. His satire is effective, but never envenomed. He pays off no grudges. He presents his acquaintances as they are, and if the world laughs at them the responsibility is on the world; if they laugh at themselveswhich, if they have any sense of humor at all, many of them must-the responsibility rests with them.

In his latest novel, The Story of a Play,' in which Brice Maxwell, a young journalist who has taken to play-writing-having sickened of present-day journalism-endeavors to write a drama, aided by his wife and abetted by his possible star, Godolphin, Mr. Howells has given us much from his happiest vein. It is quite evident that he has studied at close range the allied fraternities of playwrights and actors, to say nothing of his very comprehensive acquaintance with the trials of a newly married author with a clever and by no means unassertive wife. The complex simplicity of actors of a certain class is wonderfully well depicted in the character of Godolphin, who in real life walks the boards in many professions other than the stage. Of fine and sensitive nature, clever, jealous, of no settled principles, a gentleman always, susceptible, yet not easily moulded, because plas

The Story of a Play. A Novel. By W. D. HOWELLS. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 50. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

tic to all present influences, particularly the latest, it would not be surprising should Godolphin rank ultimately as one of Mr. Howells's most keenly analytical studies.

As for Brice Maxwell, he is well drawn, and, one must admit, bears up wonderfully under the strain of adverse circumstances, by no means least of which is his recently acquired wife. This young woman has all of the qualities which have made the women of Mr. Howells's domains notable. She is by no means content with a position of secondary importance, although it is manifest that the author did not intend her to occupy the centre of the stage. From first to last she clamors for the calcium-light, and she frequently gets it, but, on the whole, when the book is closed, the reader is apt to sigh twice - once sadly at losing further knowledge of Godolphin and Maxwell, and one of relief that Mrs. Maxwell is shut within and cannot issue forth unless the reader himself chooses to open the book again and let her out--which, after all, he is very apt to do.

THE fourth volume in the Biographical Edition of Thackeray, with an introduction by Mrs. Ritchie, is published, and Barry Lyndon' is the burden of its song. Reference has been made in a preceding paragraph to the autobiographical quality of the works of a realist, and to the extent that these reflections are of value the interest in Barry Lyndon must be increased. In this tale of gaming is the culmination of Thackeray's observations on the ways of the soldier of fortune, which one cannot but feel have been the result of personal coutact. While of course it would not be profitable to express an opinion of a critical nature on the literary quality of a book published originally more than fifty years ago, one may properly hark back to find out what some of the author's contemporaries have thought of it.

And here is what Anthony Trollope has had to say in his sympathetic study of Thackeray and his work: "As one reads, one is sometimes struck by a conviction that this or the other writer has thoroughly liked the work upon which he is engaged. There is a gusto about his passages, a liveliness in the language, a spring in the motion of the words, an eagerness of description, a lilt, if I may so call it, in the progress of the narrative, which makes the reader feel that the author has himself

2 The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq., written by Himself: The Fitz-Boodle Papers; Catharine, A Story; Men's Wires, etc. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. Biographical Edition. Edited, with an Introduction, by Mrs. ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE. Illustrated, Crown 8vo, Cloth, $1 50. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

greatly enjoyed what he has written. He has evidently gone ou with his work without any sense of weariness or doubt, and the words have come readily to him. So it has been with Barry Lyndon."

That Thackeray enjoyed the writing of Barry Lyndon even one who is not a critic may discover for himself, and that he happened to say to one of his friends, some years after the publication of the book in that fortunate yet unfortunate publication Fraser's Magazine, "My mind was filled full with those blackguards" (the gamblers) is not at all surprising to one who reads Barry Lyndon with any sort of appreciation of what runs between the lines.

As in her other chapters of introduction, Mrs. Ritchie here does her work with tactful regard for her father's well-known wishes respecting biographies of himself. What it is right and pleasant for the public to know she tells, and the admirers of Thackeray's genius are the happier for it. The present chapter, like the others, is illustrated with some profusion with a selection of original and hitherto unpublished drawings from the author's pen. Even without the appreciative comment of the daughter, these would, in the eyes of the bibliophile, give to the edition under discussion a distinctive quality that cannot well be gainsaid. The sketch of the "Battle of Jena,” reprinted in connection with this note, is among these, and, as will be seen from a glance, is full of that quaint and characteristic humor which has aroused for Thackeray not only the admiration but the affectionate regard of his readers.

THE modesty of Thackeray finds to a certain degree a parallel in that of the author of Collections and Recollections,' by "One Who Has Kept a Diary," who has gathered together a series of chapters of reminiscence and consideration of phases of English national development into a volume which he has chosen to put forth anonymously. It is not given to every one to go through so eventful a life as that of this unknown author must have been, and it is possible that he is content with the pleasures his contact with many of the famous men of the century has given him. But when, added to his opportunities, he is gifted with an eye to see and an ear to hear, and a pen capable of putting down with much grace and wit that which he has seen and heard, it would seem as if his modesty was uncalled for. A connoisseur in wines, when he finds something unusually pleasing to his palate, is not apt to rest content until he knows something of the maker more than appears on the label. And so it is with those who have read Collections and Recollections.

3 Collections and Recollections By One Who Has Kept a Diary. With One Illustration. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

The contents are pleasing, and the label is clearly printed and properly placed, but it is lacking in one essential of the reader's complete satisfaction-the name of the author.

Whoever he may be, he has had exceptional opportunities and privileges. He appears to have known, with some degree of intimacy, a large number of his illustrious contemporaries, and in his opening chapter, which he calls "Links with the Past," he gives many new and characteristic anecdotes of men of other times with whom he has come into 'contact by proxy. It was Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, we believe, who once told the story of the hand-shake of William Shakespeare; how one who had received and remembered it passed it on to one of a generation succeeding his own, by whom and whose descendants the peculiarities of the master's grip have been transmitted to a few fortunate souls of our own time. So in this chapter of links with men of other days we have the author's impressions of certain great personages he never saw, gained from elderly friends of his who had been friends of theirs.

Altogether the book is a pleasing one.

In

a sense it is a word picture of social, religious, and political life in England from the beginning to the end of the nineteenth century, presented in the easy manner of a good conversationist, who has been unusually observaut, talking to appreciative listeners.

THE author of Moriah's Mourning has also an eye with which to see that which to less fortunate eyes is not always visible. But Mrs. Stuart chooses fiction as her medium rather than reminiscence, possibly because the world to which her pen has been devoted has been peopled with the lowly and inconspicuous. She finds her company of actors not in palaces or in halls of state, but in the cabin, on the plantation, by the road-side, and her genius as a teller of tales is such that one finds the submerged classes quite as absorbingly interesting as the emerged when she writes about them. One might prefer to go through life as the admired and petted poet Lord Houghton, of whom the author of Collections and Recollections memorializes so charmingly, but from several points of view one finds Moriah-the story of the period of whose mourning gives the volume under consideration its title-more interesting as a study. Man is by nature openly interested in all that is the result of achievement, but, after all, that which smacks of the soil, that springs naturally out of earth-in other words, the "original"-is the thing that vitally interests him. A boy would rather see a wild beast than a famous statesman, and the average reader in his inmost soul is a good deal of a boy in this respect-even if he is only a girl.

4 Moriah's Mourning, and Other Half-Hour Sketches. By RUTH MCENERY STUART. Illustrated Post 8vo. Cloth, $1 25. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

The stories that Mrs. Stuart tells are the stories of humanity told by one who is in keenest sympathy with the people she writes about. She is never ashamed of them. She presents their foibles with a humor at which they would themselves laugh if they could read what she has written, but there is never a sneer in or between the lines, except possibly in the story of "Two Gentlemen of Leisure," in which Mrs. Stuart is not quite so true to life as usual. There are phases of existence in which racial peculiarities are not especially marked, and the Tramp, as he is called, belongs to

Ir is a very pretty touch that Mr. Maurice Hewlett has in the telling of his romance, The Forest Lovers,' wherein the ups and downs of life that come to that chivalrous knight Prosper Le Gai, and to the lovely nymph of the Morgraunt Forest, Isoult La Desirous, are set forth. There has not been for many a long day a purer bit of romance than this, and Mr. Hewlett tells it like a veritable singer. His style is lofty, with no suggestion of a stilt; his sentences run trippingly along, as if they were themselves a fairy band of dancers in some soft and shaded sylvan re

one of these. He knows no nationality, and it is rather difficult to believe in his sincerity even as an individual, and it may be considered reasonably doubtful if Mrs. Stuart's story of Sir Humphrey and the Colonel is the result rather of observation than of contemplation of the tramp of the humorous press. If there is any regrettable note at all in this collection it will be found in this story. Otherwise the tales presented are wholly worthy of their author, which means that they are human, humane, pathetic, and humorous at the same time, and told with that delightful simplicity which has been a marked feature of all of Mrs. Stuart's work in the past.

treat; and withal there is a vigor about them that suggests the very antithesis of the dance. There is life and love, hard fighting and cowardly treachery, to the full within these pages. Mr. Hewlett's own description of the story he sets out to tell is the best that could be devised-so good, indeed, that it should have been set apart from the chapter in which it appears, with all the dignity of a page to itself and the title of Overture:

"My story," he sings, "will take you into

5 The Forest Lovers. By MAURICE HEWLETT. Cloth, $150. New York and London: The Macmillan Company.

times and spaces alike rude and uncivil. Blood will be spilt; virgins suffer distress; the horn will sound through woodland glades; dogs, wolves, deer, and men, beauty and the beasts, will tumble each other, seeking life or death with their proper tools. There should be mad work not devoid of entertainment. When you read the word Erplicit, if you have labored so far, you will know something of Morgraunt Forest and the Countess Isabel; the Abbot of Holy Thorn will have postured and schemed (with you behind the arras); you will have wandered with Isoult and will know why she was called La Desirous; with Prosper Le Gai, and will understand how a man may fall in love with his own wife. Finally, of Galors and his affairs, of the great difference there may be between a Christian and the brutes, of love and hate, grudging and open humor, faith and works, cloisters and thoughts uncloistered-all in the green-wood."

So much does Mr. Hewlett promise, and that his promise is kept there is no denying, and so attractively throughout that future romancers should take him for a model and adopt his creed, which he sets forth as follows: "I hope you will not ask me what it all means or what the moral of it is. I rauk myself with the historian in this business of tale-telling, and consider that my sole affair is to hunt the argument dispassionately. Your romancer must be neither a lover of his heroine nor (as the fashion now sets) of his chief rascal. He must affect a genial height, that of a jigger of strings; and his attitude should be that of the Pulpiteer: Heaven help you, gentlemen, but I know what is best for you. Leave everything to me."

Jigger of strings, or Pulpiteer, the genial height Mr. Hewlett affects, to use his own expression, is a source of constant delight to those who have the good fortune to read his pages.

IT might prove a profitable subject for discussion by some philosopher in color if he would tell us whence has come in recent years the rage for the "rubricated title." Book-lovers have known for centuries why a rubricated title-page has pleased them, but whence the love for the red in the titles themselves is rather difficult to surmise. "The Crimson Sign," ," "Round the Red Lamp," "On the Red Staircase,” “The Red Badge of Courage," 'Under the Red Robe," not to mention "The Reds of the Midi"-these seem to represent a sanguinary outbreak on the part of our fictionists which needs explanation. And now there comes another, Meg of the Scarlet Foot, by Mr. W. Edwards Tire buck. There can be no doubt that this rubrication of titles has proved a popular expedient, and that the ap

peal to the public's liking for the most primary of all the primary colors has met with an enthusiastic response, for it is difficult to find anywhere one of these crimson works of fiction which has not proved popular.

It is to be hoped that Meg of the Scarlet Foot will prove equally attractive. Mr. Tirebuck has a buoyant style, and a humor that is overwhelming rather than seductive. It is sometimes boisterous, and rarely subtle, but there is a spirit about his pictures that induces a conviction that even when bordering on the grotesque they are not unallied to life as it exists somewhere. There is a vividness in their presentation that one must think is the result of observation, and not entirely of the writer's powers of description. Meg, upon whose blemish the author has dwelt in his title rather than upon her virtues, which are reasonably transcendent, considering the conditions of her début upon the stage of life, is a pathetic little figure, and is possessed of a heart which is better entitled to the distinction of recognition in the naming of the book than was her foot. One cannot wouder, however, that Mr. Tirebuck has called his book as he has, for the value it gives to the tale as a study in superstition is great, although otherwise the scarlet foot has little bearing upon Mistress Meg's development. She appears to have been a lovable sort of person, and in every way worthy of the man who ultimately gets her, which is saying much; for Ark Millgate, despite his physical limitations, is a man with a vast amount of soul.

The minor characters of Mr. Tirebuck's story are not phantoms, by any means, flitting on and off the stage, but, thanks to his powers of delineation, very substantial, very real persons. The rollicking Rollie Rondle one is apt to like, in spite of his obviously unpleasant qualities; and even with her intense and at times irritating superstition the motherly Margit Millgate is likely to find a place in one's affections.

The story, as a whole, is attractive, if overlong, and shows that the author wields a vigorous pen, one which, indeed, at times suggests that of Thomas Hardy. He has a knack for painting what he sees vividly, even if he manifests occasionally a regrettable tendency to let his imagination fly away with his judg ment. Furthermore, he has certain qualities which writers of depressing fiction might study to advantage. He understands values, and he seems to know that an author who wishes to present a situation containing elements of a painful nature needs occasionally, for the sake of his art, if not out of consideration for his readers' nerves, to let a little of the sunny side of life into his work. It may be that Mr. Tirebuck does this, as has been said, in a somewhat overwhelming fashion; but that he does it at all proves that he has learned what many older hands than he never learned, or, if they have, seem to have forgotten.