the current season, the circulating library has been the chief hot bed for forcing a crop of writers without talent and readers without discrimination. It is to literature what a magasin de modes is to dress, giving us the latest fashion, and little more. Its staple commodities are books of the present season,' many of them destined to run their round for the season only, ephemeral demand, aspiring only to an ephemeral existence, it is natural that they should have recourse to rapid and ephemeral methods of awakening the interest of their readers, striving to act as the dram or the dose, rather than as the solid food, because the effect is more immediately perceptible. And as the perpetual cravings of the dram-drinker or the valetudinarian for spirits or physic are hardly intelligible to the 'Sons of a day, just buoyant on the flood, man of sound health and regular appetites, Then numbered with the puppies in the mud.' so, to one called from more wholesome stuSubscription, as compared with purchase, dies to survey the wide field of sensational produces no doubt a great increase in the literature, it is difficult to realise the idea quantity of books procurable, but with a which its multifarious contents necessarily corresponding deterioration in the quality. suggest, that these books must form the staThe buyer of books is generally careful to ple mental food of a very large class of select what for his own purposes is worth readers. On first turning over a few pages buying; the subscriber is often content to of the average productions of this school, take the good the gods provide him, glanc- he is tempted to exclaim 'Quis legit hæc?' ing lazily down the library catalogue, and but the doubt is checked as it rises by the picking out some title which promises evidently commercial character of the whole amusement or excitement. The catalogue aflair. These books would certainly not be of a circulating library is the legitimate written if they did not sell; and they would modern successor to that portion of Curll's not sell if they were not read; ergo, they stock in trade which consisted of several must have readers, and numerous readers taking title pages, that only wanted treatises to be wrote to them.' The railway stall, like the circulating library, consists partly of books written expressly for its use, partly of reprints in a new phase of their existence a phase internally that of the grub, with small print and cheap paper, externally that of the butterfly, with a tawdry cover, ornamented with a highly coloured picture, hung out like a signboard, to give promise of the entertainment to be had within. The picture, like the book, is generally of the sensation kind, announcing some exciting scene to follow. A pale young lady in a white dress, with a dagger in her hand, evidently prepared for some desperate deed; or a couple of ruffians engaged in a deadly struggle; or a Red Indian in his war-paint; or, if the plot turns on smooth instead of violent villany, a priest persuading a dying man to sign a paper; or a disappointed heir burning a will; or a treacherous lover telling his flattering tale to some deluded maid or wife. The exigencies of railway travelling do not allow much time for examining the merits of a book before purchasing it; and keepers of bookstalls, as well as of refreshment-rooms, find an advantage in offering their customers something hot and strong, something that may catch the eye of the hurried passenger, and promise temporary excitement to relieve the dulness of a journey. These circumstances of production naturally have their effect on the quality of the articles produced. Written to meet an too. The long list of works standing at the head of this article is, with a few exceptions, but a scanty gleaning from the abundant harvests of the last two seasons. Great is the power of fiction in attracting readers by its name alone. We have heard of a lady who was persuaded into reading Plutarch's Lives' by being told that the book was a delightful novel, and who was indignant at the trick, when she discovered that history had won her approbation under the guise of fiction. If the name of a novel can carry down, with readers of this class, the bitter pill of solid merit, it may easily have its influence in seasoning the less unpalatable morsel of trash. It would be well, indeed, if this were all. Unhappily there is too much evidence that the public appetite can occasionally descend from trash to garbage. We have ourselves seen an English translation of one of the worst of those French novels devoted to the worship of Baal-Peor and the recommendation of adultery, lying for sale at a London railway-stall and offered as a respectable book to unsuspecting ladies; and the list now before us furnishes sufficient proof that poison of the same kind is sometimes concealed under the taking title of the circulating library. A sensation novel, as a matter of course, abounds in incident. Indeed, as a general rule, it consists of nothing else. Deep knowledge of human nature, graphic delineations of individual character, vivid representations of the aspects of Nature or the workings of the soul-all the higher features of the creative art-would be a hindrance with such a voluminous list as we have berather than a help to a work of this kind. fore us: they may, however, all be classified The unchanging principles of philosophy, under two general heads those that are thething of beauty' that' is a joy for ever,' written merely for amusement, and those would be out of place in a work whose aim that are written with a didactic purpose. is to produce temporary excitement. Ac- Of the two, we confess that we very much tion, action, action!' though in a different prefer the former. As a fly, though a more sense from that intended by the great ora- idle, is a less offensive insect than a bug; as tor, is the first thing needful, and the second, it is more pleasant that the exhilaration of a and the third. The human actors in the noisy evening should be forgotten in the piece are, for the most part, but so many morning than that it should leave its relay-figures on which to exhibit a drapery of membrance in the form of a headache; so incident. Allowing for the necessary divi- it is better that the excitement of a sensasion of all characters of a tale into male and tion novel should evaporate in froth and female, old and young, virtuous and vicious, foam, than that it should leave a residuum there is hardly anything said or done by any behind of shallow dogmatism and flippant one specimen of a class which might not conceit. For what other results can be exwith equal fitness be said or done by any pected from the popular novelist's method other specimen of the same class. Each of prejudice teaching by caricature? There game is played with the same pieces, differ- is nothing under the sun, divine or human, ing only in the moves. We watch them to which this method cannot be applied; advancing through the intricacies of the plot, reversing the power of Goldsmith in Johnas we trace the course of an x or a y through son's epitaph, it leaves nothing untouched, the combinations of an algebraic equation, and touches nothing which it does not dewith a similar curiosity to know what becomes of them at the end, and with about as much consciousness of individuality in the ciphers. face. As universal as the oracles of the About the war, about the pilchard-fishery, Yet even the dullest uniformity admits of a certain kind of variety. As a shepherd can trace individual distinctions in the general air of sheepishness which marks the countenance of his fleecy charge; as the five sons of Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone exhibited an agreeable variety in the mix- Let a writer have a prejudice against the ture of the ingredients of sot, gamekeeper, religion of his neighbour, against the governbully, horse-jockey, and fool; so in the gen- ment of his country, against the administraeral type of character which marks a novel tion of the law, against the peerage, against as belonging to the sensational genus, there the prohibition that hinders a man from may be traced certain minor differences marrying his grandmother, against plucking constituting a distinction of species. A in examinations, against fermented liquors, great philosopher has enumerated in a list against the social position of women who of sensations 'the feelings from heat, elec- have lapsed from virtue, against capital tricity, galvanism, &c.,' together with titil- punishments, against the prevailing fashion lation, sneezing, horripilation, shuddering, in dress, against any institution, custom, or the feeling of setting the teeth on edge, fact of the day-forthwith comes out a tale &c.;' and our novels might be classified in to exhibit in glowing colours the evil which like manner, according to the kind of sensa- might be produced by the obnoxious object tion they are calculated to produce. There in an imaginary case, tragic or comic, as are novels of the warming-pan, and others suits the nature of the theme or the genius of the galvanic-battery type some which of the writer, and heightened by every kind. gently stimulate a particular feeling, and of exaggeration. The offensive doctrines others which carry the whole nervous are fathered on some clerical Tartuffe; the system by steam. There are some which governmental department is exhibited as a tickle the vanity of the reader, and some Circumlocution Office;' the law ruins the which aspire to set his hair on end or his fortunes of some blameless client, or corteeth on edge; while others, with or without rupts the conscience of some generous the intention of the writer, are strongly young practitioner; the nobleman of the provocative of that sensation in the palate tale is a monster in depravity, or an idiot in and throat which is a premonitory symptom folly; the table of prohibited degrees of nausea. To go through the details of breaks two loving hearts who cannot live any minute division would be impossible without each other; the promising youth is F plucked for his little-go, and plunges into whom the world acknowledges as his wife : reckless dissipation in consequence; the she may have a husband lying dead at the single glass of port or sherry leads by sure bottom of a well, and a fatherless child stages to brandy and delirium tremens, and nobody knows where. All this is no doubt the medical virtues of pure water work very exciting; but even excitement may be cures in defiance of the faculty; &c. &c. purchased too dearly; and we may be perThe method is so far perfectly impartial mitted to doubt whether the pleasure of a that it may be applied with equal facility to nervous shock is worth the cost of so much the best things and the worst; but an argu- morbid anatomy if the picture be true, or ment that proves everything is of precisely so much slanderous misrepresentation if it the same value as an argument that proves be false. nothing. Mr. Dickens, we regret to say, Akin to proximity is personality, and its is a grievous offender in this line; and, by effect is similar in creating a spurious intera just retribution, the passages that are est. Personality, moreover, has an addiwritten in this spirit are generally the worst tional advantage, resembling that which in his works. He never sinks so nearly to Aristotle attributes to the use of metaphors the level of the ordinary sensation-novelist in rhetoric. It gives rise to a kind of sylloas when he is writing with a purpose.' gism, whereby, without too great an exerUnfortunately, decipit exemplar vitiis imita- tion of thought, the mind of the reader is bile; the vice of a great writer has been enabled to conclude that this is that. Of copied by a hundred small ones, who, with- these advantages our novelists are not slow out a tithe of his genius, make up for the deficiency by an extra quantity of extravagance. Charon, nearly making shipwreck of the frail vessel of their fortunes. The end and moral of the narrative, in the one case and in the other, is much the same; namely, to elicit from the gratified reader the important exclamation, 'I know who is meant by So-and-so.' to avail themselves. If a scandal of more than usual piquancy occurs in high life, or a crime of extraordinary horror figures among The sensation novel, be it mere trash or our causes célèbres, the sensationist is imme. something worse, is usually a tale of our diately at hand to weave the incident into a own times. Proximity is, indeed, one great thrilling tale, with names and circumstances element of sensation. It is necessary to be slightly disguised, so as at once to exercise near a mine to be blown up by its explo- the ingenuity of the reader in guessing at sion; and a tale which aims at electrifying the riddle, and to gratify his love of scandal the nerves of the reader is never thoroughly in discovering the answer. Sometimes the effective unless the scene be laid in our own incident of real life is made the main plot days and among the people we are in the of the story, sometimes it figures as an habit of meeting. We read with little episode in the history of two imaginary emotion, though it comes in the form of lovers, with whom the flesh-and-blood crimhistory, Livy's narrative of the secret inal comes in contact, like the substantial poisonings carried on by nearly two hun- Eneas on board the shadowy bark of dred Roman ladies; we feel but a feeble interest in an authentic record of the crimes of a Borgia or a Brinvilliers; but we are thrilled with horror, even in fiction, by the thought that such things may be going on around us and among us. The man who shook our hand with a hearty English grasp half an hour ago-the woman whose beauty Of particular offences, which are almost and grace were the charm of last night, and always contemporary and sometimes perwhose gentle words sent us home better sonal, undoubtedly the first place must be pleased with the world and with ourselves given to Bigamy. Indeed, so popular has -how exciting to think that under these this crime become, as to give rise to an pleasing outsides may be concealed some entire sub-class in this branch of literature, demon in human shape, a Count Fosco or a which may be distinguished as that of Lady Audley! He may have assumed all Bigamy Novels. It is astonishing how that heartiness to conceal some dark plot many of our modern writers have selected against our life and honour, or against the this interesting breach of morality and law life or honour of one yet dearer: she may as the peg on which to hang a mystery and have left that gay scene to muffle herself in a dénouement. Of the tales on our list, no a thick veil and steal to a midnight meeting less than eight are bigamy stories: Lady with some villanous accomplice. He may Audley's Secret,' 'Aurora Floyd,' 'Clinton have a mysterious female immured in a Maynyard,' 'Recommended to Mercy,' solitary tower or a private lunatic asylum, The Law of Divorce,' The Daily Goverdestined to come forth hereafter to menace ness,' 'Only a Woman,' 'The Woman of the name and position of the excellent lady Spirit,' all hang their narrative, wholly or in part, on bigamy in act, or bigamy in intention, on the existence or supposed existence of two wives to the same husband, or two husbands to the same wife. Much of this popularity is, no doubt, due to the peculiar aptitude of bigamy, at least in monogamous countries, to serve as a vehicle of mysterious interest or poetic justice. If some vulgar ruffian is to be depicted as having a strange influence over a lady of rank and fashion, it is a ready expedient to make him conscious of the existence of another husband, or the child of another husband, supposed to be long dead. If lowly virtue is to be exalted, or high-born pride humiliated, the means are instantly at hand, in the discovery of a secret marriage, unsuspected till the third volume, which makes the child of poverty the heir to rank and wealth, or degrades the proud patrician by stripping him of his illegal honours. It is really painful to think how many an interesting mystery and moral lesson will be lost, if Sir Cresswell Cresswell's Court continues in active work for another generation. Bigamy will become as clumsy and obsolete an expedient for the relief of discontented partners as the axe was in Juvenal's day, compared with the superior facilities of poison. With such an easy legal provision for being 'off wi' the auld love,' it will be worse than a crime, it will be a blunder, to have recourse to illegitimate means of being on wi' the new.' degrees of ingenuity and villany. She advertises her own death in the newspapers, having previously procured a young woman who resembles her in person to die and be buried in her stead; she throws her first husband down a well, whence he finally emerges, we are not told how, with a broken arm; she breaks into a lawyer's chambers during his absence, and destroys his papers; she burns down a house to get rid of a dangerous witness, having locked the door of his room to prevent his escape. Yet, notwithstanding all the horrors of the story-and there are enough of them to furnish a full supper for a Macbeth-notwithstanding the glaring improbability of the incidents, the superhuman wickedness of the principal character and the incongruities of others; notwithstanding the transparent nature of the 'secret' from the very beginning; the author has succeeded in constructing a narrative the interest of which is sustained to the end. The skill of the builder deserves to be employed on better materials. It is difficult to do justice by extracts to a work whose chief merit consists in the cleverness with which an interesting whole is made out of faulty parts. The following description is not, perhaps, the best specimen of the author's powers; but it is worth quoting, not only in itself, but as exhibiting in strong contrast the personal fascinations of the lady whose character and actions have been described above. Here is a portrait of the heroine under her supposed maiden name of Lucy Graham : Of our list of Bigamy Novels, some will be noticed under other characters, and some are not worth noticing at all. The two firstnamed claim a notice as bigamy novels par 'Wherever she went she seemed to take joy and excellence, the whole interest of the story brightness with her. In the cottages of the poor turning on this circumstance. Though both her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would exaggerated specimens of the sensational sit for a quarter of an hour talking to some old type, they are the works of an author of woman, and apparently as pleased with the admireal power, who is capable of better things ration of a toothless crone as if she had been than drawing highly-coloured portraits of listening to the compliments of a marquis; and beautiful fiends and fast young ladies bur-her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her when she tripped away, leaving nothing behind dened with superfluous husbands. Lady benevolence), the old woman would burst out Audley, alias Mrs. George Talboys, is a into senile raptures with her grace, her beauty, Vittoria Corombona transferred to the nine- and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed teenth century and to an English drawing- upon the vicar's wife, who half fed and clothed room. But the romantic wickedness of the her. For you see Miss Lucy Graham was blessed 'White Devil of Italy' suffers by being with that magic power of fascination by which a transplanted to home scenes and modern woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Every one loved, admired, and praised associations. The English White Devil, her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate however, if not quite so romantic and inter- that stood in her pathway ran home to his esting, is more than the rival of her proto- mother to tell of her pretty looks and the sweet type in boldness and guilt. She does with voice in which she thanked him for the little serher own hand what Vittoria does by means vice. The verger at the church who ushered her of others. She has married a second hus-into the surgeon's pew; the vicar who saw the band, knowing or suspecting her first one to be still living; and the desperate means to which she has recourse to avoid discovery furnish an abundance of incidents of various his simple sermon; the porter from the railwaysoft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he preached station who brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants; everybody, high and low, united in de-ed the following description of Aurora claring that Lucy Graham was the sweetest girl Floyd in a storm. The 'stable-man' of the that ever lived.' piece is not the one whom she has acquired a conjugal right to chastise, but another of the same profession, by no means so goodlooking, but as great a scoundrel : Aurora Floyd, as a character, is tame after Lady Audley. The 'beautiful fiend,' intensely wicked, but romantic from the very intensity of her wickedness, has degenerated into a fast young lady, full of stable talk, deep in the mysteries of the turf, and familiar with Bell's Life,' young lady with large beautiful eyes, and with very little else to command any feeling either of love or the reverse. She runs away from school to contract a secret mar riage with a consummate blackguard of a groom In direct opposition to the bigamy-novels are those which, instead of multiplying the holy ceremony, betray an inclination to dispense with it altogether. There is a school to be to reduce marriage to a temporary of fiction the practical lesson of which seems connexion durante bene placito, and to exalt the character of the mistress at the expense of that of the wife. This is a favourite theme with French novelists of a certain tigress, and catching the collar of his fustian 'Aurora sprang upon him like a beautiful jacket in her slight hands, rooted him to the spot - a upon which he stood. The grasp of those slender hands, convulsed by passion, was not to be easily shaken off; and Steeve Hargraves, taken completely off his guard, stared aghast at his assailant. Taller than the stable man by a foot white with rage, her eyes flashing fury, her hat and a half, she towered above him, her cheeks fallen off, and her black hair tumbling about A bridegroom, say you? 'tis a groom indeed.' her shoulders, sublime in her passion. She disengaged her right hand from his collar, She separates herself from him after a short and rained a shower of blows upon his clumsy and bitter experience of his character, comes shoulders with her slender whip; a mere toy, with home, and deceives her father by assuring emeralds set in its golden head, but stinging like him that that person' is dead when she a rod of flexible steel in that little hand. knows him to be alive; afterwards, on the report of his death, deceives two worthy men by accepting one and marrying the other without breathing a word of her previous escapade (we are informed that her natural disposition is all truth and candour '); and finally deceives her husband again, when she discovers that the man she had supposed dead is alive, by making arrangements for sending the obnoxious individual to Australia and retaining the second and illegal spouse as the more agree able personage of the two. She is inferior to Lady Audley, as a pickpocket is inferior to a thug; but there is this important difference, that Lady Audley is meant to be detested, while Aurora Floyd is meant to be admired. The one ends her days in a madhouse; the other becomes the wife of an honest man, and the curtain falls upon her bending over the cradle of her firstborn. By a fortunate arrangement of nature, which is always at the command of novelists, the birth of the infant is delayed beyond the usual time, till the groom is really dead and a re-marriage has repaired the irregularity of the bigamy. Fortunately also, there is no little pledge of affection born to the Damasippus of her first vows. Though the moral teaching of the story is more questionable than that of its prede- 'I consider the ceremony of marriage as one of cessor, and the interest, on the whole, less the most absurd inventions ever inflicted on sustained, the individual characters are human beings by mortal men. . . . . In the drawn with greater skill. Aurora, with all her faults, is a woman and not a fiend; and John Mellish, the honest, genial, tenderhearted, somewhat henpecked husband, is a portrait superior to any in the more romantic volume. As a companion to the picture of Lucy Graham in a calm may be exhibit class; and the tale entitled 'Recommended Helen Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove ; reappears from the mouth of this strong- first place, do we not swear to love always and to the end, when to do so is too often clearly and simply out of our power? Is human love the growth of human will? Certainly not; and as certainly is it only as words of course, that we vow to “honour and to obey" the man who may turn out a dishonourable wretch, or a monster of tyranny and oppression.' |