night, and as jolly as the jolly beggars. Perhaps his "Night with Villon" is the most perfect of modern short studies in romance. One cannot be too thankful for a writer with such various endowments. There is no sense in comparing them with Mr. Haggard's gifts; he only resembles Mr. Stevenson in natural daring and inventiveness, and in having written admirable tales of adventure. He is as far as possible from being a born student, or a born master of style. He does not see the world through books, and he writes like a sportsman of genius. Thus one cannot pretend to criticise the style of the romantic school, as (to a certain extent and with limitations) we may criticise the style of the realistic school. There is, there can be, no romantic school. Any clever man or woman may elaborate a realistic novel according to the rules, and may adopt the laborious use of inverted adjectives. But romance bloweth where she listeth, and now she utters her message to a student and a master of words, who have not the literary taste. They prefer the adventures of Sir Harry and the other Allan in Kukuana-land or in ZuVendis. We may not agree with their taste, but that is their taste. Probably no critic would venture to maintain that the discoverer of Kôr has the same literary qualities as the historian of John Silver. It seems a pity, when we chance to have two good things, to be always setting one off against the other, and fighting about their relative merits. Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Rider Haggard have both written novels, have both written boys' books. Personally, I prefer their boys' books to their novels. They seem happier in their dealings with men than with women, and with war than with love. Of the two, Jess appears to me real, and the wife of Mr. Stevenson's Prince Otto shadowy. But Mr. Haggard's savage ladies are better than his civilized fair ones, while there is not a petticoat in "Kidnapped" or "Treasure Island." As for "She" herself, nobody can argue with a personal affection, which I entertain for that long-like Mr. Stevenson, through whom the lived lady. The holy priests Bless her when she is riggish, Shakespeare says of Cleopatra, and, like the holy priests, I can pardon certain inconsequences in Ayesha. But other moralists must find her trying; poor Ayesha, who "was a true lover," though she did not therefore, like Guinevere, "make a good end." Apparently female characters are not the strong point either of Mr. Haggard or of Mr. Stevenson, as far as they have gone. Consequently it is difficult to compare those agreeable writers with, let us say, M. E. de Goncourt or Mr. Howells. Nor is there much reason in comparing them with each other. Mr. Stevenson is a born man of letters, a born student of style. Since Thackeray no English author has been gifted with or has acquired a manner so perfect, so subtle, so original. And yet he has plenty to say, though he can say it so well, "which is strange." Unlike Sir Walter Scott, he can write English as well as he can write Scotch, and, since Scott, no one has written Scotch like him. If any short story comes second to the tale of "Wandering Willie," it is "Thrawn Janet." In addition to all these accomplishments, Mr. Stevenson possesses an imagination which touches that of Edgar Poe on one side, and of M. Anatole France on the other. He can be as witty as Mr. George Meredith, as humorous as Burns, as sad as Let us tale reaches us "breathed softly as Whatever the merits and demerits of modern English romance, one thing is certain. It is now undeniable that the love of adventure and of mystery, and of character, and life, and adventure are so a good fight lingers in the minds of men Do not let us try to write as if we were writing for Homo Calvus, the baldheaded student of the future. Do not let us despise the day of small things, and of small people; the microscopic examination of the hearts of young girls and beery provincial journalists. These, too, are human, and not alien from us, nor unworthy of our interest. The dubita tions of a Bostonian spinster may be made as interesting, by one genius, as a fight between a crocodile and a catawampus, by another genius. One may be as much excited in trying to discover whom a married American lady is really in love with, as by the search for the fire of immortality in the heart of Africa. But if there is to be no modus vivendi, if the battle between the crocodile of realism and the catawampus of romance is to be fought out to the bitter end why, in that Rag. narôk, I am on the side of the catawampus. ANDREW LANG. From Temple Bar. LOOKING BACKWARDS. "I HAVE no intention of writing an autobiography," says Mr. Adolphus Trollope. He may have remembered George Eliot's opinion, that "biographies are a disease of English literature." That gift ed writer held some strange opinions, but there is good ground for this one, if we do not as no doubt George Eliot did not include in the remark autobiographies, which are frequently delightful, and in which this season will be particularly rich. We are also promised a work from which we expect much, the "Reminiscences of Sir Frederick Pollock." Then the eagerly-looked-for "Life of Darwin," the biography of Sir Stratford de Redcliffe, lives of Emerson, Douglas, Forsyth, with others we do not now recall, will help to cheer our long November nights, but just now we will speak of Mr. Trollope's "Autobiography.' There are three Trollopes known to fame, a mother and two of her sons; Mrs. Trollope, whose "Widow Barnaby was long in standing demand in the old-fashioned libraries before the days of Mr. Mudie; Anthony, the author of " Barchester Towers;" and Adolphus, who wrote "La Beata a little gem, saturated with local color. It is not often that three persons in one family attain to success in one particular branch of literature. Two out of the three Brontës did, but the third did not discover the genius of the other two. It is Thomas Adolphus Trollope, the elder of the two brothers, whose autobiography, under the title of "What I Remember," comes before the public this autumn. I have lived a long time [says Mr. Trollope]. I remember an aged porter at the monastery of the "Sagro Eremo," above Camaldoli, who had taken brevet rank as a saint solely on the score of his ninety years. His brethren called him and considered him as Saint Simon, simply because he had been porter at that gate for more than sixty years. Now my credentials as a babbler of reminiscences are of a similar nature to those of the old porter. I have been here so many, many years. interest of "Tom Brown's Schooldays," and old Wykehamists will delight to see their past days so pleasantly brought back to them. To older people, it is pleasant to hear again of the days of the two tallow candles, and the snuffer-tray between them, and the dinner-hour settled so that we might go and hear Edmund Kean afterwards. But Mr. Trollope has been a traveller, has seen cities and men, has been a writer of novels, of books of travel, has been a special correspondent, and been behind the scenes of the political world. He is one who has been converted by Mr. Gladstone to the temperate Toryism of to-day, and who has come back to his own country to spend his last days in sight of "the silver streak." "Never, Tom," said my grandfather, "put in motion forces which you are unable to control." This sound advice, which is blown to the winds by the sort of national-convention politicians we are now breeding, oddly enough came from a man who sank his money in "patents about as remunerative and useful as that which Charles the Second is said to have granted to a sailor who stood on his head on the top of Salisbury steeple, securing to him the monopoly of that practice.' was humor in that Charles. There Very early in these reminiscences we get a glimpse of the stage in its palmy days, and of the eagerness of people to see and hear the great actors of that time. I remember to have heard my mother speak of an incident which somewhat curiously illustrates the ways and habits of a time already so far left behind us by a whole world of social changes. It was nothing more than a simple visit to the theatre to hear Mrs. Siddons in circumstances that rendered it memorable for Lady Macbeth." But this exploit involved other reasons besides the intense gratification derived from the performance. In the first place "the pit was the destination to which my father and mother were bound; not altogether, I take it, so much for the sake of the lower price of admission (though my father ful man to render this a consideration), as was a sufficiently poor and a sufficiently carefrom the idea that the pit offered the best vantage ground for a thoroughly appreciative and critical judgment of the performance. This visit to the pit involved the necessity of being at the theatre at two in the afternoon, and then standing in the crowd till, if I rightly remember, six in the evening! food had to be carried. Of course each man there did his best to support and assist the lady under his charge. But the ordeal must have been something tremendous, and the amount of enthusiasm needed to induce a lady to face it something scarcely to be understood Of course at the present day. My mother used to relate | dogs, the clergy have their privileges; and that sundry women were carried out from the crowd at the theatre door fainting. Mrs. Trollope even allowed that their first kiss might be hedged round with a sort of sacred sanction, but she drew the line so as to bar all claim to a second—at least on the same grounds. Among the neighbors at Harrow was a Mr. (well, I won't print the name, though all the parties in question must long since, I suppose, have joined the majority), who had a family of daughters, the second of whom was exceedingly pretty. One day this girl, of who was always a special friend of all the some eighteen years or so, came to my mother, young girls, with a eulogistic defence of the The old coaching memories are by no means the least delightful in these volumes, telling as they do of the "Quicksilver" and the Exeter Telegraph, of the four miles between Ilchester and Ilminster done in twenty minutes, of the guard alone on the hinder boot with his blunderbuss before him, of the hearty breakfasts with twenty minutes allowed, when cream and butter and hot toast, eggs, beef, etc., disappeared with marvellous facility under the sprightly air of an autumn morn-vicar. She was describing at much length ing. the delight of the assurances of grace which Time works its changes, and won't even he had given her, when my mother suddenly, leave language alone. In those days looking her straight in the eyes, said, "Did Berkeley was pronounced Barkley, and he kiss you, Carrie?" "Yes, Mrs. Trollope. Mr. Trollope says that when he was a lad He did give me the kiss of peace. there was no harm in that!" old-fashioned people called Rome Room; Carrie! For I am sure you meant none! gold, gould; James, Jeames; beefsteak, "Honi soit qui mal y beefsteek; and danger and stranger had returned my mother. the letter "a" in them pronounced as in of peace is apt to change its quality if repense! But remember, Carrie, that the kiss "man." The late Lord John Russell al-peated!" ways to the last said "obleege." Nevertheless Mr. Trollope thinks that written English then was more correct than it is now, and he sees constantly in these days words wrongly used in print. Take the word trouble, he says, which is an active verb: Now scarcely a day passes without my meeting in print with such phrases as "He did not trouble," meaning, trouble himself; "I hope you won't trouble," instead of trouble yourself. To old-fashioned ears it seems a detestable vulgarism. with awe. And again: Of course it is an abuse of language to say that the beauty of a pretty girl strikes you But he who first said of some girl that she was "awfully" pretty, was abundantly justified by the half humorous, half serious consideration of all the effects such loveliness may produce. But then, because this was felt to be the case, and the mot was accepted, all the tens of thousands of idiotic cretins who have been rubbed down into exact similarity to each other by excessive locomotion and the "speed" of education spread, indeed, after the fashion in which a gold-beater spreads his metal-imitate each other in the senseless use of it. They are just like the man in the Joe Miller story, who, because a laugh followed when a host, whose servant let fall a dish with a boiled tongue in it, said it was only a lapsus lingua, ordered his own servant to throw down a leg of mutton, and then made the same remark. Here is a delicious story of a kissing parson, given by Mr. Trollope. Lucky I am sure "None at all, Whatever difference of opinion may exist on matters of religion, we think all will admit that some good came out of the Tractarian movement. The gifted men who set that ball rolling were men who had taken high honors, and were completely distinct in that as in other matters from the Ritualistic school, which has show a distinguished college career. very few men among its leaders who can could hardly be otherwise, for the really able men fight only about essentials, and don't condescend to the battle of the vestments. To have the services of our Church decently read was something to fight for, and such stories as the following told by Mr. Trollope are now impossible. It In reading, or rather intoning the prayers, the habit was to allow no time at all for the choir to chant their "Amen," which had to be interjected in such sort that when the tones of it died away the priest had already got through two or three lines of the following prayer. One of our chaplains, who had the well-deserved character of being the fastest of the three, we called the diver. For it was his practice in reading or intoning to continue with great rapidity as long as his breath would last, and then while recovering it to proceed mentally without any interruption, so that we lost sight (or hearing) of him at one point, and when he came to the surface, ie., became audible again, he was several lines further down the page, and this we called “diving." It was probably believed in college that this was the gentleman of whom the story was first told, that he was ready to give any man to I remember, by-the-by (but this is parenthetical), that one of cur number was unable to pronounce the "r," and we used to scheme that it should fall to his lot to tell us that "Bawabbas was a wobber." Now the boy who read the lessons, sat, not in his usual place, but by the side of the chaplain who was performing the service. And it was the habit of the reverend sportsman I have referred to, to intercalate with the verses of the Psalm he was reading, sotto voce, anecdotes of his most recent sporting achievements, addressed to the youth at his side, using for the purpose the interval during which the choir recited the alternate verse. As thus, on one twenty-eighth evening of the month, well remembered after some sixty And so on. Mr. Trollope tells a very singular story told him by Blanco White, which we must abbreviate for want of space. A priest was condemned at Seville to capital punishment. That the public might be properly impressed, market-day was selected for the purpose. To be degraded from his sacerdotal character he had to pass through the market-place, whilst the powers deemed inherent in the priesthood were still in his possession. Undegraded as yet and unrepentant, he dealt a malicious blow at the people assembled to witness his degradation. Suddenly in the market-place, he stretched out his arms, and pronounced with a loud voice the uncancellable sacramental words, 'HOC EST CORPUS.' All the contents of that vast mass were instantaneously transubstantiated! All the food in Seville was forthwith unavailable for any baser than eucharistic purposes, and Seville had 66 to observe the vindictive priest's last day on earth as a very vigorous fast day." 66 While at Oxford Mr. Trollope had the advantage of the lectures of Whately, a man, if not of genius, of great talent and wit. Mr. Trollope says that he considers 'Whately to have been the wittiest man he ever knew; and contemporary memoirs teem at least with proofs of his wit. A lady once went to Dublin Castle in such very full dress that more bust than barège was visible. "Did you ever see anything so unblushing?" said some one to the archbishop. "Never, since I was weaned," replied the wit. "The difference between a form and a ceremony," said Whately, "is a nice one, and it lies in this, you sit upon a form, and you stand upon ceremony.' He was very happy in some of his apothegms, and when some one quoted the well-known proverb "Honesty is the best policy," - "True," he replied; "yet an honest man." he who is governed by that maxim is not Mr. Trollope says: Whately's wit was not of the kind which ever made any "table roar. "" It was of that higher and deeper kind, which consists in prompt perception, not of the superficial resemblances in dissimilar things, but in the underlying resemblances disclosed only to the eye capable of appreciating at a glance the essential qualities and characteristics of the matter in hand. I have heard Whately deliciously witty at a logic or Euclid lecture. How wise Whately could be on political matters is well known. Let us hear the great Liberal priest on attempts to pacify Ireland by yielding to the criminals who now pretend to represent her : "To seek to pacify Ireland," he writes a little further on, "by compliance and favor shown to its disturbers would be even worse fathers, with their weapon salve, who left the than the superstitious procedure of our forewound to itself, and applied their unguents to the sword which had inflicted it." We present these opinions to the member for Midlothian. The opinions were formerly his also, but a disastrous alliance no longer permits him their enjoyment. One of the greatest charms of Mr. Trollope's two volumes is the immense variety of subjects treated of. He saw so many countries, talked with so many eminent men, and frequently on topics of general interest, that you have never the sense of fatigue, sometimes resulting from good matter too long drawn out. |