| | | Mr. Mortimer Collins’s special qualification for writing a | novel seems to be that he knows three or four lines of | Homer in the original, that he can quote occasional bits out | of Catullus and one or two more modern versifiers, that he | has minute acquaintance with most of the country hotels, | and that he has little tiny views about politics, journalism, | and the like. It is true that he is apparently in the darkest | ignorance about human nature and character, and is utterly | innocent of any knack either of constructing a plot or even | of executing decent detached sketches. To the smart | young writer with bits of views this counts for nothing. A | novel, to him, is only a means of informing the public that a | Mr. Mortimer Collins has heard of Homer and Catullus, and | knows at least the name of the most famous claret, and | has one or two things to say about politicians. A book | written on this truly artistic principle cannot fail to be | entertaining, though certainly not in the way designed by its | too brilliant author. There are, we believe, many men like | Mr. Collins. They have read Vivian Grey and | Gryll Grange, and are penetrated with an itching | desire to write a scholarly political novel. It seems a very | easy sort of business. You have only to introduce great | names, and political talk, and some Greek and Latin | quotations, and the thing required is done. But most men of | very slender powers ~~ who upon cool reflection find that, | after all, they know very little about the classics and | absolutely nothing about politics ~~ abandon the | undertaking. Mr. Collins, however, like them up to this point, | is

“differentiated,”

as he would say, by having a | seemingly inexhaustible supply of audacity; so he quotes | his Latin and Greek scraps as if he were a real scholar, | and introduces prominent politicians chatting among | themselves as if he were their bosom friend, and tells us all | about the House of Commons as if he were a real member | of it, and packs it all up in a plot just like a real novelist. On | the whole these silly little imitations of Mr. Disraeli, though | they make me laugh, are a nuisance. Mr. Collins has a | wonderful appreciation, by the way, of Mr. Disraeli, whom | he brings into his novel under a very thinly disguised name. | , we are told, . Mr. Disraeli and Plato ~~ | O delicious parallel! But Mr. Disraeli, besides being the | modern Plato, is also the modern Vandyke. Even | this is not enough. The pregnant significance of | this is inimitable. Mr. Disraeli’s novels are the most brilliant | novels that ever were written. Then ~~ warming to his work | ~~ they are not only more brilliant than all other novels, | including those of Balzac, Thackeray, George Eliot, and | other minor writers ~~ they are more brilliant than | anything. Or no ~~ the most brilliant of all things are | the comedies of Congreve, Vanbrugh, and the rest. Next to | them come Mr. Disraeli’s novels. After these may we | venture to place Moliere, and Swift, and Sterne? One does | not often come across a writer who allows his feelings to | run away with him in this style. The author’s notion of a | brilliant thing may be inferred from a brilliant thin of his own. | At a sponging-house, it seems, the doorkeeper is called |

“the man on the key.”

So Mr. Collins, with a truly | delicate humour, remarks . It may be admitted | that we do not fully appreciate the brilliancy of Mr. | Disraeli’s novels until we have read the effusions of his | worshippers. | Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mr. Collins’s | story is the utter recklessness of the padding. If a lover and | his mistress are introduced, Mr. Collins rushes off playfully | into a disquisition about the differences between men and | women. We are concerned to learn that he This | does not bear particularly on anything, but it gives the | author an admirable opportunity of quoting a familiar bit | from Lycidas, and a still more familiar bit from | Othello, and of showing that he has read his | Lempriere quite as far as

“Hercules,”

and | perhaps even down to

“Omphale.”

On another | occasion the author prefixes to his chapter, as a motto, the | first three words of the Iliad, all in real Greek letters, and | then rattles on gracefully: ; and so on, over three | pages, with another quotation from Homer, and one from | Mr. Gladstone, and another from the

“witty and poetic | Earl of Dorset,”

and a fourth from Horace. All this is | introduced because . Surely it would be much | better if, in any future novel, Mr. Collins would prefix a | certificate from some competent person that he had | passed a satisfactory examination in Lempriere and the | Handbook of Familiar Quotations. The reader | would thus be just as fully convinced of the author’s | profound erudition, and he would have a chance of | enjoying the story ~~ such as it is ~~ without interruption. | One old gentleman is represented to be an accomplished | scholar of the good old pagan type. His son happens to | say to him, . To which the accomplished scholar | replies, . There is not, so far as we can see, the | slightest sense in saying that love defies destiny, but of | course it sounds superb when the accomplished scholar | has translated it. None of our readers will need to be | informed that to lug in Greek and Latin names for things is | a well-known characteristic of the scholarly mind. If | anyone were to say to Professor | Conington or Mr. Merivale,

“It is wet to-day,”

the | scholar would no doubt instantly reply,

“Ay, Jupiter | Pluvius is angry,”

The same accomplished scholar | writes to his son to say that he is coming home, and | requesting that his rooms may be got ready. The note is | only three lines long, but winds up with a Latin quotation | which runs: ~~ | Perhaps mens would make the second line | rather more grammatical and generally intelligible. But | these little points are immaterial. Provided it looks like Latin, | it is obvious that the main requisite is satisfied. | Having seen what the scholar is like in private life, it is | equally instructive to turn to the private life of great | statesmen. We confess to being rather startled at the | frankness with which prominent members of the Ministry | and the Opposition talk to one another. says the | Foreign Secretary to a leader on the other side, is | the confiding reply; A flippant reader may ask | what fun there is in calling Earl Russell by the name of | Roxham, and Mr. Gladstone by the name of Gatcomb, and | in speaking of the Exchequer as the till. Why, of course, we | are reading a political novel, and Mr. Mortimer Collins | might find himself seriously compromised with the | Government of the day if he were to let out Cabinet secrets | without some decent disguise. Besides, Mr. Disraeli called | Croker

“Rigby.”

It is the regular trick of the trade, | just as a costermonger is bound to speak of a magistrate | as a

“beak,”

and a policeman as a

“slop.” |

Such devices give an air of mystery and knowingness. | So Mr. Collins calls the Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr. | Gatcomb. There is really something charmingly clever | about such an artifice. It makes us feel that the writer has | positively taken us up into the very seventh heaven of | politics. We shall know for the future that, when Lord | Clarendon and Lord Malmesbury talk about the | Chancellorship of the Exchequer, they always use some | such phrase as

“attending to the till.”

The term | has all the true aristocratic and scholarly polish about it. | We confess to being rather disappointed with the private | manners of

“the veteran statesman, gay and buoyant | as if he had come fresh from Harrow.”

He insists | upon speaking to Miss Luttrell, whose name happens to be | Lily, as

“Miss Lily.”

Among Americans, only | daughters are styled

“Miss Jane”

and

“Miss | Emily,”

but it is with sorrow that one discovers the | veteran statesman guilty of such a solecism. And is it not | rather odd for the veteran statesman to go up to a young | lady at Epsom, and incontinently begin to hum aloud on the | course something about

“love’s young dream”?

In | quotations Lord Palmerston would seem to be as bad as | Mr. Collins, for he insists on bringing in by the ears a | couple of lines from Milton, to show that he resembles old | Hobson the carrier. The easy profuseness which marks the | lives of the great comes out very conspicuously in Mr. | Mortimer’s book. The number of bottles of the best Lafitte | that are drunk in the course of the story is prodigious. One | man casually goes to his club for a short time, and smokes |

“a few cigars”

over the evening paper. We have a | picture of another A third In order to | make us appreciate this more fully, Mr. Collins has given, | by way of contrast, two elaborate pictures of debtor’s | prisons ~~ one in Whitecross Street, and the other a | sponging-house near Chancery Lane. Indeed, so far as the | book can be said to have amoral at all, it is to the effect | that the rules of the British debtors’ prison are in urgent | need of reformation. It is rather a humble conclusion to so | much Catullus and Homer, and such familiar intercourse | with leading statesmen. Probably the ingenious author | goes on the principle that if you shoot at the stars you may | hit a tree. If you cram your novel with Cabinet Ministers | and Latin and Greek and Lafitte, you may get the public to | listen to your substantial but prosaic grievance, that an | inmate of Whitecross Street prison may not receive visitors | on a Sunday. On this part of his subject Mr. Collins speaks | with a fervour creditable alike to his head and his heart. We | can only regret that a writer with such strong opinions as to | the respect due to gentlemen, even when in pecuniary | trouble should have thought it becoming or respectful to | introduce half a dozen living authors into his story and then | represent them as making fools of themselves. And when, | under a disguise so thin that nobody can help penetrating it, | he describes a living writer as and then goes on | to draw a caricature of his personal appearance, including | his

“distressingly yellow hair,”

Mr. Collins is guilty | of a very discreditable piece of impertinence. In a brilliant | satirist this would be unpardonable. In the case of a writer | of Mr. Collins’s very feeble calibre it is offensive beyond | expression.