to explain in a footnote, as being the resultant of Port wine, mulled with roasted lemons—just as Claret similarly embellished is yclept Cardinal; and Burgundy, Pope);—a fox-hunting raid to Newnham Harcourt, viâ roads all alive with
—Buggy, gig, and dog-cart,
Curricle and tandem—
and the gallop, at Parson Hooker's "hark, hark!" to the music of hound and horn,—pell-mell, priest and layman, squire, curate, bachelor, and freshman—away over bush and furze, bog and briar, hedge and stile, ditch and double-ditch—"tramp, tramp across the stubble; splashy splash across the dubble;"—boating engagements at Mother Davies's;—dunning blockades against the "sported oak;"—scuffles with proctors and bull-dogs;—a duel in the meadows, and a lodgement in the Castle;—such are some of the topics ungrudgingly set forth in Reginald's Oxford career. Little enough there is to glorify the ideal Oxford of scholarship, and earnest study, and gracious refinement—to echo Warton's apostrophe,
Hail, Oxford, hail! of all that's good and great,
Of all that's fair, the guardian and the seat; &c.[1]
The hero's university course is only an episode; but to it the leading interest of the work attaches, and upon it the novelist has expended the best of his power and pains. Reginald's subsequent experiences in London and elsewhere are dull, and loosely put together. The table-talk—wine-table, breakfast-table, supper-table, or what not—so profusely detailed, is too frequently of the veriest weak tea-table sort: weak enough, mawkish and vapid enough, to make one almost incredulous of its coming from the trenchant pen[2] of the editor of the Quarterly, and the manly,
- ↑ Triumph of Isis.
- ↑ We have all seen, it may be presumed, in Punch or some cognate repertory of satirical censorship, specimens of the way in which the flimsiest manufacturers of novels manage to fill up, at least expense of brain-work and penmanship, the necessary number of pages decreed by the circulating libraries—whose decree, implastic and inexorable as that of Medes and Persians, altereth not. But who would willingly accredit the editor of the Quarterly, in his most finished novel, with, dialogues of such calibre as the following (between a match-making couple at cross-purposes)—taken from a large stock of which it is but a current sample:
[Macdonald, the "pawky" writer, is trying to bring to terms the lady-mother of the damsel he desiderates for his son.]
"When is't to be, Leddy Catline? Since other folk intend to speak, what can I do?"
"To be? what to be, Mr. Macdonald?" said the lady wish an air of surprise, rather too grave to be affected.
"What's to be, Leddy Catline?"
"Yea, what's to be, Mr. Macdonald?"
"What's to be, mem?"
"What's to be, sir?"
"The thing, mem—the business—the whole affair"
"The whole affair, sir?—the business, sir?"
"Yes, mem, the business—the business—God bless my heart!"
"The business, Mr. Macdonald?"
"Come, come, Leddy Catline, we've had enough of this work. Time's no chuckey-stanes—Has your leddyship not been holding any serious conversation?"
