The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-24 00:00:00

894

Unless the fish was too sluggish to take the bait, an answer
of refutation was forwarded to an appointed address in
London, and then in a vigorous reply he would fall upon
the unwary disputant, and break his bones. The strenuous
attack sometimes provoked a rejoinder more carefully pre.
pared, and an animated and protracted debate ensued ; the
party cited, having put in his answer, was fairly in court,
and he might get oat of it as he could.
It cannot be matter for surprise that a person
acting systematically on the plan here de-
scribed should have become an object of an-
tipathy and suspicion, and his expulsion from
the University could have been only a ques-
tion of time. Mr. Hogg gives a detailed ac-
count of the expulsion, but that is not new to
us; and he also gives a minute sketch of
Shelley's father, for whose pained feelings at
the disgrace of his son one cannot help feel-
ing much sympathy, in spite of the ridicule
with which the author endeavours to invest
him. •

Here is the way in which Mr. Hogg intro-
duces Shelley's father to us :
Shelley took me one Sunday to dine with his father, by
invitation, at Miller's hotel, over Westminster-bridge. We
breakfasted early, and sallied forth, taking, as usual, a long
walk. He told me that his father would behave strangely,
and that I must be prepared tor him ; and he described
his ordinary behaviour on such occasions. I thought the
portrait was exaggerated, and I told him so; he assured
me that it was not.

Shelley had, generally, one volume at least in his pocket,
whenever he went out to walk. He produced a little book,
and read various passages from it aloud. It was an un-
favourable and unfair criticism on the Old Testament,
some work of Voltaire's if I mistake not, which he had
lately picked up on a stall. He found it amusing, and
read many pages aloud to me, laughing heartily at the ex-
cessive and extravagant ridicule of the Jewish nation, their
theocracy, laws, and peculiar usages.
We arrived at the appointed hour of five at the hotel, but
dinner had been postponed until six. Mr. Graham, whom
I had seen before, was there. Mr. Timothy Shelley re
ceived me kindly; but he presently began to talk in an odd,
unconnected manner; scolding, crying, swearing, and then
weeping again : no doubt, he went on strangely.
" What do you think of my father ?" Shelley whispered

to me.

J had my head filled with the book which I had beard
read aloud all the morning, and I whispered in answer :
" Oh, he is not your father. It is the God of the Jews; the
Jehovah you have been reading about!"
Shelley was sitting at the moment, u be often used to
sit, quite oa the edge of his chair. Not only did he laugh
aloud, with a wild, demoniacal burst of laughter, hut he
slipped from his seat, and fell on his back at full length
on the floor.
" What is the matter, Bysshe? Are you ill? are you
dead? are you mad ? Why do you laugh?"
It was not easy to return a satisfactory answer to his
father, or to Mr. Graham, who came to raise him from
the ground.

The irreverence and coarseness of the two
young men need not be commented upon.
The work abounds in passages of a similar
kind, and many readers will find much to con-
demn in its style of execution.
There are also some passages of poetry
from Shelley's pen which have not been
printed. We cite the best of them :

TO THE MOONBEAM.
Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale,
To bathe this burning brow.
Moonbeam, why art thou so pale,
As thou walkest o'er the dewy dale,
Where humble wild flowers grow ?
Is it to mimic me?
But that can never be ;
For thine orb is bright,
And the clouds are light,
That at intervals shadow the star studied night.

Now all is deathly still on earth,
Nature's tired frame reposes,
And ere the golden morning's birth
Its radiant hues discloses,
Flies forth its balmy breath.
But mine is the midnight of Death,
And Nature's morn,
To my bosom forlorn,
Brings but a gloomier night, implants a deadlier thorn.

Wretch! Suppress the glare of madness
Struggling in thine haggard eye,
For the keenest throb of sadness,
Pale Despair's most sickening sigh,
Is but to mimic me ;
And this must ever be,
When the twilight of care,
And the night of despair,
Seem in my breast but joys to the pangs, that wake there.
Some other fragments in verse, printed for the
first time here, are in the " prose run mad"
style. We shall return. to this work on
another day.

Violet Bank and its Inmates. London : Hurst and

Blackett.
THE characters in this novel are few and simple. There
are a comely widow, Mrs. Lloyd, her ( of course) beau
tiful daughter Grace. wd her son Frank. Grace is

THE PRESS, APRIL 24, 1

engaged to be married to a physician, Dr. Mansel,
who is handsome and prepossessing, but whose cha-
racter, on his first appearance, betrays tokens of
temper and selfishness, which he is at little pains to
hide. These prognostications are fully realized when
shortly afterwards the family of his fiancee is ruined
by the dishonesty of a trustee, and Dr. Mansel finds
Grace unwilling to force herself upon a purse-proud
neighbour, in order to further his canvass for an
appointment for which he is a candidate. In pur-
suing this object in person, he meets with a dan-
geeous flaxen-haired fairylike young person, who
rushes into a flirtation with him, and soon supplants
his former love, in spite of the opposition of
whose family the marriage takes place, with.
out much inquiry as to the bridegroom's antece-
dents. When it is too late, it appears that he has a
sister in America whose fortune be has embezzled,
and is unable to replace it with his bride's money,
which is settled on herself. After suffering by the dis-
appointment of his expected wealth, and by his
wife's exacting jealousy (in the description of which,
by the way, the writer somewhat exceeds probabilio ),
fate overtakes him in the shape of his sister's hus.
band, who comes to demand her fortune. Having
nothing to pay it with, he obtains a cheque from his
wife and alters it to the required amount; but by
crossing it delays the payment for twenty-four hours,
and the American, who is hurried, quits the country
without cashing it. When Grace's brother has
obtained a situation in a bank, and the proper
amount of poverty has been undergone by the family
in general, the bead of the bank (tall and yellow,
but endowed with every virtue) falls in love with
Grace, and marries her. Retribution overtakes Dr.
Mansel by the forged cheque being sent to Grace
from the dying and repentant trustee, into whose
hands it happens to have passed. As Dr. Mansel
has taken care to forge the counter cheque as well,
his wife is obliged to pay it, but an eternal quarrel
ensues, and the Mansels, in spite of an accession of
wealth, live unhappy ever after. The book is
amusing enough, but there is nothing in the style
or matter to lift it above the crdinary rank of three.
volume novels. There is a very good tiger story,
which, from certain details, would appear to Le
derived from an authentic source. The writer is not
proportionally conversant with the habits of his
(her ?) own species. She describes an officer being
appointed A.D.C. on his marriage—a post for which
a married man, being required to form part of the
commander in-cbiet's family, would be obviously
ineligible. It is also a violation of probability to
describe the sisters of Mr. Millar as breaking up
their circle and going out into various occupations
simply in consequence of his marriage ; and the
character of Sylvia is marked by a good deal of
exaggeration. On the other hand, the characters
of Mr. Hitzig and of Flora Maynard seem studied
from life. The latter is a flirt, amusing and not
vulgar, and comes to a tolerably good end in the
third volume. The faults of "Violet Bank" are
venial, and its merits such as will make it acceptable
in novel reading circles.