The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-04 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Can You Forgive Her ? By Anthony Trollope.
With Illustrations by H. K. Browne. No. I.
Chapman and Hall.
Hardly !—if this is to be a specimen of her his-
tory, of her sayings and doings. Mr. Anthony
Trollope works too hard—writes too industriously
—drives his pen with, for his reputation, what we fear
may become (it has not become so'yet) a fatal facility. As
the inaugurative instalment of a new serial story we must
confess at once that we don't like this one. Our hope is
that it may be found to improve upon further acquaintance.
It gives evidence here and there of having been very hastily
sent to press Otherwise, how can we possibly account
for a skilled writer like Mr. Trollope stumbling gramma-
tically twice in a single page—•as, for example, in
this very No. 1., p. 27, where he says, " They
were men either of more prudence or of less
audacity than him (sic)," &c. And again, a little lower down
" so they had quarrelled and had never spoken or seen (sic)
each other since." Tsa e a pianist playing a discord,
or a soprano singing flat, like biting flannel, or scraping a
perpendicular pencil across a slate I None of the characters,
again, are to our liking—neither of the heroines, Alice or
Kate—neither of the heroes, John Grey or George Vavasor.
The latter's scar on the face is too much like Miss Dartle's
in " David Copperfield." Then, again, we are almost
sorry to find Hablot Browne (who is not what he was an
illustrator) adopted as Anthony Trollope's illustrator I The
two etchings in number one of " Can You Forgive Her"
might almost do as embellishments to some ephemeral book
of the fashions—walking dresses in one, ball dresses in the
other, with, in the former, a wonderful specimen of the
grotesque spoonbill bonnet. We shall hope for better things,
however, iu future numbers, both from Phiz's pencil and
from the flying pen of Anthony Trollope.

The Brown Book. 1861. Saunders, Utley, and Co.

Another ready reference book. Not a blue book.
Not the Red Book. Not a livre jaune. Not party-
coloured. But—a sensible, matter-of-fact, directly-
to-the-purpose, plain, blunt, honest, sober Brown
Book. A book to be published half-yearly—so *that it will
very latest A book that
answers, among other frequently recurring qu.ottons,
" Whim is the Nearest Post Office ?" " How shall I find
a Cemmissionaire ?" Whereabout is the nearest Tele-
graph Office ?" A book so apropos that it ought to be
placed so very handily for reference when ftquired that the
possessor should come at last to say of it as Charles 11.
said of Rochester,—" Never in the way, and never out of
the way I" We don't know to whom it will prove the most
acceptable—to the old Londoner, or to the young man from
the country—to the true born Cockney, or to the unmis-
takeable Foreigner. To every one who consults it, it will
for a dead certainty prove most welcome, and all the more
welcome because, we believe, perfectly reliable.

The Gallery of Geography. Part 111. W. and R

enambers.

Good headway is beginning to be made in this
beautifully got up and carefully compiled Gallery
of Geography—good headway, both pictorially and
descriptively. " Naples, from Monte Martino," is
the subject of the engraved frontispiece. Among
the subjects treated of in the letterpress, by the
rev, author, Mr. Milner, we find reference made here in
this very number, most opportUnely made, as it happens,
to the recent discoveries both in Central Africa and in
Central Australia. The elaborate introauction to the
work, it' should be said, moreover, has in this number been
brought to a conclusion. And Part I. of the work itself
thereupon energetically opens up with a General View of
Europe. Afterwards, as portions of the first section of this
third part of "The Gallery of Geography," we have abun-
dant particulars of " The British Isles and European Depen-
dencies." Throughout the text, are still scattered, in great
abundance, wood engravings, admirably well done and ex-
cellently well selected.