Most of the characters lack individuality. They are too much like shadows." This scarcely appears apt to English playgoers. The Herald is gravely disappointed: "Had not Mr. Pinero's name been attached to the work, it might have been mistaken for the first effort of a rather smart young man and treated with indulgence, if not kindness. But the author of 'The Times,' 'The Weaker Sex,' and 'Lady Bountiful' must expect to be judged by his own standard, and no one will, I think, deny that 'The Cabinet Minister' falls far short of his other plays." The New York Sun is not enthusiastic: "The satire in this story is doubtless keen, but American audiences are not breathlessly concerned with the financial embarrassments of the English aristocracy. There are too many masks, too many caricatures, and too few men and women in Mr. Pinero's puppets. The dialogue is at times in Pinero's best vein-brightly pointed, brisk, and amusing, even if the clever things are not always original. The construction of the play is almost puerile, and the interpolated characters, which are meant to be types, are not only too numerous, but also uninteresting. In this respect Mr. Pinero has clearly overshot the mark. Brilliant as he undoubtedly is, he has not yet been hailed as the Thackeray of our stage. He should express himself." The Post thinks that "the most obvious comment upon it is that it is too essentially English in its spirit and its allusions to be thoroughly understood or appreciated by the average American audience; but, wholly apart from this consideration, it is radically weak in construction on account of its confused mingling of comedy and farce and the attempt to maintain a serious interest in the face of manifestly extravagant incident. There is ample material in the story for the foundation of an admirable comedy, but the opportunities are frittered away in rather laborious trivialities. The effect would have been far stronger and more satisfactory if a frankly farcical method had been adopted from first to last."

For

I have quoted these criticisms because they interest as serving to show how an author whom we place in our first rank is calmly estimated, as if he were merely the first newcomer to hand, by Transatlantic colleagues. Perhaps it is tonic for us on this side to find that our decisions count for so little in the New World. myself, I certainly do not like "The Cabinet Minister" as much as I like other work of Mr. Pinero's. Its very brilliancy troubles like the intermittent flashing of an electric light. But it is a play that everyone who takes the modern stage seriously will read with care,

JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY,

Μ'

TABLE TALK.

MR. ANDREW LANG ON THE READING PUBLIC.

66

R. LANG'S opinions upon literary subjects command always my interest, and generally my assent. In one of his latest utterances he furnishes me with matter for dubiety. As it stands, the sentence I am about to quote is more than a little startling. Here it is: "But the public, on the whole, will not be tempted to read old books." This is a hard saying. I will supply one more sentence immediately succeeding, which may, though it does not necessarily, be held to modify it. Constable found, and often said, that reprints of excellent forgotten works spelt ruin." Supposing the word "forgotten" in the second sentence to modify the statement contained in the first, the matter may be open to argument. "Forgotten" is a curiously elastic phrase. Who shall say what is or is not forgotten? Is the " Arcadia" of Sydney forgotten, or the "Nymphidia" of Drayton, Wither's "Shepherds Hunting," Barclay's "Argenis," Browne's "Urn-burial," Beaumont's "Psyche," "Ossian," "The Mystery of Udolpho," "Tom Cringle's Log"? I cannot reasonably expect an answer. Yet these books, widely divergent as they are, unread as are many of them, and unreadable as I should be disposed to call one at least, are from time to time reprinted. When, as in the case of "Joseph and his Brethren "—the reprinting of which was due to the loudly expressed admiration of Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, and other leaders of thought-a work of imagination has failed on its first appearance to win recognition, little profit ordinarily attends the attempt to atone for the errors of preceding times. Yet here even I am met by the example of Blake, whose poems, wholly unrecognised in his day, will henceforward be included in all representative collections of poetry. It may be accepted as a rule, however, that when a man cannot obtain a hearing from his contemporaries, his chance of impressing future generations is small.

IT

REPRINTS OF Seventeenth-CENTURY POETS.

T would be apparently easy to confute this view, so far as poetry is concerned, from facts. Apparently, I say, but not really. Across the poetic literature of England, as across that of France,

there stretches a Sahara of false taste and affectation. I am not seeking to dismiss in a phrase the literature of a century and a half, and say that between Milton and Burns all is desolation. The fact remains, however, that when the canons of taste were at their lowest, and when the ebb-tide of poetry reached low-water mark, we began to issue collections of the poets. It is recorded of Byron that when he began to write verse he gave away or destroyed his collection of the poets for fear he should be supposed to have plagiarised from it. Never, surely, was fear more groundless. Spenser, Cowley, and Dryden, it is true, leavened the mass; but the bulk of the collection might have been fused without yielding a drop of golden ore. To obtain, accordingly, editions of our genuine poets of the seventeenth century we had to wait for the nineteenth, and in some cases for the latter half of the nineteenth. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that men such as Drayton, Daniel, Chapman, and Marvell were without influence in their day. Republication of their works, then, is merely resuming a journey at the other side of a desert that has been bridged. I am not aware that the process involves financial loss to those by whom it is undertaken. Herrick is included in no collection of poets, yet the first reprint of the " Hesperides" and the "Noble Numbers" is now a coveted possession, and successive reprints, down to the elegant edition just issued by Mr. Alfred Pollard, with a preface by Mr. Swinburne,' enjoy immediate popularity.

I

FICTION OLD AND NEW.

AM not, however, meeting Mr. Lang quite fairly. He would, I fancy, rather deal with prose fiction, the readers of which are hundreds, than with verse, where they are but tens or units. Here, even, is he sure that the public will not be tempted to read old books? The public, small blame to it, is not going to be seduced into reading the indecencies of Aphra Behn or wasting its time over "What Ann Lang Read," under which quaint title Mr. Gosse in his "Gossip in a Library "2 indicates the novels of Eliza Haywood. I do not believe even that the readers of Fielding, Smollett, and Richardson are very numerous. I should like, however, throughout the years, to have had the copyright of "Robinson Crusoe" or "The Pilgrim's Progress"; and, to come to modern times, the expired or expiring copyrights of Sir Walter Scott or George Eliot, could they be renewed, would bring a considerable price in the market. No finer books of adventure are there than the sea-novels of Mr. 2 Heinemann.

1 Lawrence & Bullen.

Clark Russell, yet Captain Marryat is not wholly forgotten. I should be sorry for the boy who would not guffaw over "Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist" and "Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist," by Cockton; the student of human nature will never cease to delight in the "Comédie Humaine" of Balzac, and the brilliant romances of the elder Dumas will be read as long as the "Arabian Nights.”

IT

RECREATIONS OF A CONVALESCENT.

T so happens that I am in a position to speak concerning modern fiction with a conviction that a few weeks ago I could not have claimed. I ask the reader's sympathy in a personal avowal. During many consecutive weeks I have been under the lethargic conditions, mental and physical, that follow the epidemic of influenza. Work has been prohibited, study impossible, and a few minutes' conversation even productive of collapse. Such reading as in fragmentary wise I have been able to undertake has consisted of the lightest form of fiction, and I became thus representative of the average reader for amusement. In pursuit of novelty I have read the works of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, with which till now I had little familiarity. Then, as I do not care for religious treatises disguised as novels, I put on one side "The History of David Grieve" and fell back upon old favourites. The appearance in the sixpenny series of Messrs. Black of "Quentin Durward" made me take that work in another edition from my shelves and read it through for the tenth or twentieth time. "Tom Cringle's Log" and "The Cruise of the Midge'" of Scott's namesake then arrested my attention, and, these devoured, I have begun the re-perusal of Charles Reade. "Griffith Gaunt" has already been swallowed, and "The Cloister and the Hearth" is before me, waiting for the attack. A bad day will it be for England when books such as these lose their hold, and when for the records of adventure and pictures of honest passion we substitute the morbid analysis which forms the staple of modern fiction.

FR

SCOTT'S "QUENTIN DURWARD."

RESH from the perusal of "Quentin Durward," I take the book as an excuse for praising the fiction of the past. In choosing Scott I am magnanimous, since Mr. Lang, if report is to be trusted, is collecting materials for a new and an authoritative edition of the Waverley Novels. For its historical value "Quentin Durward," which is or has been a text-book in the French Lycées, has won full

recognition. I speak now, however, as the idle reader for mere amusement, prone to skip historical detail. In what other work is the adventure which is the chief attraction of Scott so enchanting ; and in this respect what novel of any author whatever can compare with it? All very well is it for M. Zola to sneer at Scott; but there is more that a man may read with pleasure and profit in this one work than in all that the writer of "La Terre" and the discoverer of "Nana" has given us. At the outset the young Scotch hero makes the acquaintance of Louis XI., and incurs the hostility of Tristan. How naturally all then follows the introduction to the fair countess who becomes the light of his life; his championship of her in a long and eventful journey through Fairyland, in which he unhorses Orleans and crosses swords with Dunois; the scene in Liège where he witnesses the murder of the bishop; each consecutive interview with his mistress until-" so should desert in arms be crowned "-he wins her hand in fair combat, and the penniless soldier of fortune becomes one of the chief nobles of Burgundy: how admirably is all this told! with how little violation of possibility, and with how much by which youth is inspired and fired! Faults enough are there in the novel, as in all Scott's stories, and I could "an it were my cue" write strongly in condemnation of parts. But the glamour of adventure is over all, and on the strength of this alone, and apart from all other merits, the tale is immortal. I trust to say something before long concerning the fiction by which, I am told, it is to be supplanted.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

Mr. Saxelby's communication shall receive attention.