The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-07 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Cheap Edition of « The Doctor's Wife."
The Sixth Edition of Miss Braddon's last-novel

but-one, " The Doctor's Wife," has recently been
issued by the Messrs. Maxwell and Company as a
companion volume to the already well-known six
shilling issue of her earlier and, some among them,
more famous works—" Lady Audley's Secret,"
" Aurora Floyd," " Henry Dunbar," and " Eleanor's
Victory." To many bookshelves this re-issue, in a
complete form, of a very charming story will be
especially welcome—most of all, because we cannot
Omit still recognise in " The Doctor's Wife" the
opening up of a new, a higher, and a purer phase in
the general development, and advancement, and ele-
vation, and expansion of Miss Braddon's genius as a
novelist. In some respects the exposition here
given of the character of the Doctor's wife, is Miss
Braddon's most remarkable performance. Isabel

—first of all known as Miss Sleaford, afterwards
as Mrs. Gilbert—lsabel of the black hair and the
yellow eyes, the poetry-loving, novel-reading
Isabel, who is enamoured (as far as the preservation
of the chastity of her honour will permit) of the
author of " The Alien's Dream," meaning thereby
Roland Lansdell, of Mordred Priory, Midlandshire

—this all but lackadaisical, mooning, meditative
builder of Chateaux en Espagne, is here
described by the novelist in all the fluctua-
tions of her sensitive temperament, as only a
skilled student in the mysteries of human
nature could describe anything so subtly variable
as Isabel Gilbert's, née Sleaford's, character. In
regard to Isabel alone, the book is a study. But
other characters there are in " The Doctor's Wife"
almost equally well discriminated. Sigismund Smith,
for example, the sensation author, contributor of
raw-head and bloody-bone, romances to the penny
serials—nothing in its way could very well be more
thoroughly humourous than that delineation ! From
first to last, Sigismund Smith is excellent. So, too, for
that matter is the little rough outline here given at the
opening of the book of that chuckle-headed youth,
Horace Sleaford, the arch-representative or exem-
plar of that horrible genus, abhorred alike by men
and boys, the genus hobbledehoy ! George Gilbert
again—lsabel's unsympathetic husband—the pro-
vincial medical practitioner of Graybridge, cranching
his onions and radishes in so thoroughly heartless a
manner during his bread and cheese suppers—every
touch in regard to George Gilbert is artistically good,
because perfectly in keeping ! Mr. Jeffson, too,
the country surgeon's odd-man (in every sense)
with his high opinion, from schooldays upwards, of
the merits of " Master Jarge"—Mr. Jeffson is an-
other genuine original in his way ! Highly as we
admired the story altogether upon its first appear-
ance, it improves, we find, upon a reperusal of it.
A sure token, as we take it, of any book's intrinsic
excellence. The second of Phiz's illustrations to the
present edition of " The Doctor's Wife " tends
rather, we fear, to give an erroneous notion of the
book at starting ; for, while the tale does comprise,
towards the close of it, a murder amen gits incidents, it
is altogether, what might be designated as—among
all Miss Braddon's works—the least sensational,
according to the popular and ordinary acceptance of
that Americanism.

How to Spend a Month in Ireland. By Sir Cusack
Roney. Pp. 168. W. 11. Smith and Son.
Among all the pocket-companion guide-books to
Ireland, this one of Sir Cusack Roney's is incom-
parably the best, the compactest, the most com-
pletely up-to-time in the accuracy and minuteness
of its information. It is gossipping and practical
—amusing and instructive—pleasantly anecdotal
and yet thoroughly business-like throughout. It is,
in an abbreviated way, for Ireland at one and the
same time a Murray and a Bradshaw.

Dr. Webster's Complete Dictionary of the English
Language—(Bell and Daldy)—is, in this its eighth
half-crown instalment, brought down to the word
" Scantling" upon page 1176, so that three-fourths
of the projected work are now actually and very
subsantially indeed, before the public. Already wo
have seen enough of the book to recognise in it a
very marvel among compilations of this character—
at once the completest and the cheapest dictionary
of the English language ever published.

VICTOR HUGO'S LATEST LITERARY PERFORM-
ANCES,the coast life of
is the
lraecceeCdi
vhiiannngtnheel
the
hlslandsfinishing
is " Les Travailleurs de la Mer," in which
is
bri
oe
uu
sgllytt. ft oo r sty
ea ri
nd ,gpurrceihm inets:e.pnrtelAy-
f iteop
writer m the hulependance Beige says that M. Hugo is
about to do an unprecedented thing, and one which it '
Would be difficult for any other writer to imitate. He in-
tends to publish, one immediately after the other, three
works which will show the three aspects of his genius. At
the end of October will appear a volume of lyrics—" Songs
of the Streets and the Woods ;" at the end of January, a
novel in three volumes—" The Workmen of the Sea ;"
and towards the close of the May following, a volume of
Plays, containing a drama in five acts (" Torquemada"),
7.7
and a comedy in one—" The Grandinethei.