LITERARY NOTES.
There is much to be said for Mr. W. L. Courtney's suggestion, in the Universal Review^ that our contemporary novehsts should betake themselves to delineating, ' not theologians, but men and women, warm with the actual blood of life,' and for his contention that * those who would fain be artists must worship at the old altars and learn the old lessons.' The truth or falsehood of Ag- nosticism is a question altogether distinct from that of its value as a theme for artistic treatment. After all it is the common — we had almost said the vulgar — emotions of humanity that must form the staple of art material in fiction, and so far these are entwined almost inextricably with the mental habits which go to make up belief in the ancient creeds. No doubt the conflict of faiths is a fascinating subject, but in the contemplation of it one's sym- pathies inevitably go not with the Agnostic, but with those whom he offends, for a man's household, or, at least, the women of it, are almost invariably devout. The hero of an Agnostic novel is in reality not a person, but a cause, and a cause is almost the worst possible subject for a work of the imagination. Of course there is always the saving clause for genius, which can do what- ever it pleases, secure of that success without which it would not be itself. But for ordinary aspirants there can be no safer example than that of George Eliot, the secret of whose unbelief is undis- coverable save for the large tolerance of her altogether objective treatment of the religious life. One of the most interesting of recent publications is Letters to and from Charles Kirkpatrick S/mrfie. The Horace Walpole of Scotland, as he has often been called, was a character of that type which is dear above all others to the literary gossip, possibly because he was almost an ideal gossip himself. Half Oldbuck and half Sir Benjamin Backbite, his life was spent in collecting the trivialities of antiquity, and retailing the scandal of his own day. No one had a keener eye for old ballads or a sharper tongue for comment on the last faux fas. Of course it was not to be expected that such a man should do any serious or memorable work. A few dusty texts reprinted, a few clever caricatures dashed off, that is all that one can look for from an aristocrat who deigns to turn dilettante ; and at this day Sharpe is remembered, if remembered at all, only as the author of a most audacious forgery, which imposed upon Sir Walter Scott, and is still to be found in the notes to Marmion. Yet, as a bit of social decora- tion he was indispensable, and the memory of him is what he himself would most have valued, an antique for the delectation of the elect. In asserting for The Pilgrim's Pmgress the claim to be called the first English novel. Canon Venables has indicated what is likely to be the final place of Bunyan in our literature. It is not as a master of allegory, and still less as a devotional writer, that Bunyan will be remembered, but rather as the author of a fascinating story-book, and the creator of a v^hole host of types of the popular religious character. There is indeed no book which reproduces for us more vividly than The Pilgrim's Progress the everyday life and thought of the lower-class Puritans in seventeenth century England. In Christian and Talkative, Muchafraid and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, there live again the very men and women who tore down the village maypoles and built the Bethels and Ebenezers. Viewed in this light, the book itself, like every good novel, acquires a certain historic value as an imconscious representation of con- temporary life. It is very questionable, however, if it can be called the first of English fiction in the sense of having had much effect as a model upon the writers who came after. The romance, which comes down to us proximately from the tales of chivalry, was first modernised by Defoe, while it is to Richardson that we must trace back the novel which is known familiarly as realistic. Mr. Walter Scott of Newcastle is decidedly one of the most enterprising of present-day publishers. Allowing for the short- comings inevitable to all cheap reprints, his Camelot Classics and Canterbury Poets are among the very best things of their kind, while the series o^ Great Writers is invaluable, if for nothing else, for the excellent biographies with which its volumes are enriched. In the September volume of the Camelot Classics Mr. Scott has broken new and welcome ground to the reading public of England. The plays of Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian dramatist, are in some sense, perhaps, the most notable productions of the century. Nowhere else is there a more vivid literary presentment of the Revolution ; nowhere else is the modern spirit of criticism, the return of society upon itself, more adequately rendered. It is characteristic of Ibsen that he is always critical, and nowhere assumes the rSle of a prophet. He professes not to write the drama of the future — he has no vision of the good time coming — it is the present with all its manifold anomalies and impossibilities that he sees and describes. Superficially, of course, he is pessi- mistic, but there is an eminently Norse sobriety and a quiet strain of humour that speak more of hope than all the homilies of Dr. Pangloss. In the good old Philistine sense of the term, his works are probably the most dangerous books of the day. 'I FEEL the flowers growing over me,' said poor Keats, as he lay at Rome a-dying, and now the news comes, ' on apparently good authority,' that his grave is about to be dug up for the forma- tion of a new road. It is melancholy tidings, and yet not without a spice of consolation in it to the much-abused utilitarianism of Great Britain. There are others evidently as bad as we, and even in the Eternal City and under the pyramid of Caius Cestius the demon of desecration is abroad. To be sure the Italians probably know next to nothing about Keats — he is one of the lowly ground- flowers of literature, the beauty of whose blossom is undiscemible from afar. But all the more it becomes those who have drunk of his rare fragrance to see to it that the grass of his bed shall be perennially green. All art lovers should bestir themselves to defend from sacrilege the grave of one who is, as indubitably as Spencer, the poets' poet. Messrs. Blackwood are just about to publish the second and concluding volume o{ Maitlaiul of Lethington, a7id the Scotland of Mary Stuart, by John Skelton, C.B., LL.D. Commencing with Mary's return to Scotland, it will present an estimate of the astute statesmanship of Maitland, and the antagonistic attitude of John Knox towards the Queen, together with an examination of the famous Casket Letters, which Mr. Skelton altogether rejects as evidence. The volume should be a most interesting one, for there are no two characters in our history more striking than Queen Mary and her dubiously famous Secretary. In many respects they are the two least Scottish figures of their time— we seem to find in them all the litheness and laxity of the Italian Renaissance, with, in the Queen, a touch of the cruel Catholic reaction superadded.
The second volume of Mr. Samuel Rawson Gardiner's History of the Great Civil War is in the press. It will bring the narrative down to the point where the Scottish army, on its retreat from England in 1647, delivered up the King to the English Parliament.
A NEW edition is promised of the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, the brilliant collection of political satires and parodies written by Canning, Hookham Frere, and others. The reprint will be illustrated with the caricatures of Gillray.
Eiiinbur^ T. and A. Constable, Prittters to Her Majesty.
