The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-27 00:00:00

RATITRE:

Mr. linthony Trollope's New Work.

Macke.nzie. By Anthony Trollope.
N'of§: CI iiipilian; and 4411'.'

Two

Margaret. Mackenzie, in spite of the difference of
their names, must certainly, in a literary sense at
least, be set down as own sister to Rachel Ray. A
Wordsworthian heroine, she is, in the homeliness of
her simplicity :

" A creature not too great or good
For human nature's daily food." -
As a portraiture drawn from Ole very life, itis like
one of those seemingly careless heads dashed off
negligently and almost by pure chance one would
think, yet manifestly in a thrice happy moment, by
the hand of some rare master in the art of portrai-
ture, say a Woolner or a Richmond—a head
touched into life by a bluntly-pointed crayon on a
rough neutral-tinted square of millboard, with just
a suspicion of water-colour flesh-tinge on the cheek,
just a gleam of white upon the eye, just one
liquid hint of cherry on the nether lip. Rachel Ray
was an apparently unstudied chef d'ccurre of this
kind. Miss Mackenzie, for all the world, is just such
another. If her history had been related in glib
and sparkling verse, instead of being told, as it is,
in equable and flowing prose, the verse would have
been set down at once as " unpremeditated." But—
for thatmatter—ease (whether of style or of manner)
is Mr. Anthony Trollope's dominant and (now more,
now less) invariably conspicuous characteristic.
His manner as a narrator is so easy," in effect, as
to be just simply colloquial. His style of writing
when he has sat himself down to pen one of his
stories is, to employ the very self-same word yet
once more, so perfectly " easy" of its kind, that,
while turning the leaves, skimming the chapters,
racing through the volumes, it seems somehow to
have revealed to us at last the secret of rapid and
ready novel-writing. But—encouraged by any such
impression that it really is so—try it! Attempt to
imitate that—so to speak—conversational style or
manner of novel-writing-made-easy ! And, we
warrant you, the secret will turn out to be perdu
there as inscrutably as ever ! It is not by any means
of course—the way Mr. Anthony Trollope leads us-- I
what would be called, and with reason, one among I
the highest walks of literature. But it is delightful
nevertheless. It is one of those pleasant winding
ways, leading us, according to our wizard-cicerone's
pleasure, now among green hedgerows, now along
suburban streets, through hall, and park, and church
aisle, and city causeway—as though he were merrily
beating the bounds with peeled osier rods at shrove-
tide. And—once he sets off thus intent upon
reaching a given destination known only to
himself —we needs must follow not only
to the end of the chapter, but to the end of all the
chapters ! And here are thirty. Helter-skelter, in
and out, and roundabout—we perforce must follow,
diligently, at his heels until he brings us whensoever
he likes to the foredoomed denouement. Light and
careless though the touch of his forefinger—he takes
us as inexorably with it by the button-hole as though
he had been a very Briareus. And while we " needs
must hear" when he talks to us thus in his character
as Novelist—while, we say, we " needs must hear"
when he talks, thus, no less surely than the Marriage
Guest when caught by the glittering eye of the
Ancient Mariner—unlike the Marriage Guest we
never dream of beating our breast the while in
anguish at our detention. We listen, perforce, but
we " listen delighted." We are Mr. Anthony
Trollope's most obedient. We willingly give him
the " parole." We hearken to him as he tells us
any new tale he may have set him to relate, not
only willingly but eagerly. And that, too, with a
general sense of satisfaction—as though he were
a familiar companion endowed with a rare
gift of story-telling, whom we had got once more
comfortably settled in the arm chair confronting
us on the other side of the hearth, with a ruby
blooded white beaded bottle of forty-seven on the
table between us among the saltcellars and the wal-
nuts. " Miss Mackenzie" takes rank at once among
the happier of his least highly elaborated, but, for
that very reason, not by any means least popular
fictions. We put it' in the same category with the
good old " Warden," and with homely, bright-eyed
" Rachel Ray." Besides Margaret Mackenzie her-
self, there is more than one admirably-well deli-
neated character here introduced to us. The whole
society of Littlebath is very cleverly hit off. The
Rev. Mr. Stumfold—with his intense evangeli-
calism, jarred as it is with ' a nothing less than
profane jocularity—adds yet another notable cleri-
cal Portrait to the already ample Gallery, painted
by the cunning hand of Anthony Trollope—facile
princeps among the delineators of Church of Eng-
land Clergymen ! Just as the Chronicler of Car-
lingford is unrivalled as the delineator of the Dis-
senting ripe—ex. gr., a preacher like Mr. Vincent,
or a wonderful Butter-man-Deacon like the incom-
parable Tozer ! Not only is there the Rev. Stum-
fold (as the French would have it) added here very
notably to Anthony Trollope's black-coated Portrait
Gallery, but there is here also yet another of them,
quite as remarkable in his way, in the person of
the Rev. Jeremiah Maguire, a fortune-hunting
curate, with a handsome profile, but a diabolical
squint. One of Miss Mackenzie's Foml.Suiters, is
this same cock-eyed Rev. Mr. Maguire. Harry
Handcock, a stout, selfish old bachelor (once the
heroine's early love) is another of them. The third
being a certain good-looking vulgarian'who deals in
oil cloth, Mr. Samuel Rubb, junior, of the firm of
Rubb and Mackenzie. The fourth, the only endur-
able one of the lot, being John Ball, of the Cedars,
Twickenham—the intermediate John Ball—heir to
a baronetcy—eventually a baronet himself ! John—
the bald-headed father of Jack—the middle-aged son
of Sir John ! Coming into a fortune of about a
thousand a year when she herself is fully five-and-
thirty years of age and still a spinster—Margaret
Mackenzie finds the possession of her hand (and
fortune !) contended for more or less strenuously by
those four swains—the Squinting Curate, Mr.
Maguire ; the stout, selfish old bachelor, Harry
Handcock ; the vulgar trader in oil-cloth, ,Mr.
Samuel Rubb, Junior ; and John Ball, the
bald-headed heir to the baronetcy, who is also, it
should be observed, a middle-aged widower with
nine children. The home-interest, the heart-inte-
rest, sometimes--the quiet fun and covert sarcasm—
running through the two volumes into which
the history of Miss Mackenzie is halved by our
Novelist—make the thirty chapters into which the
tale is sub-divided, very pleasantly readable through-
out. Beyond the central characters already particu-
larised, there are others no less cleverly depicted in
their way. Snarling old Sir John Ball, for example,
and his crossgrained hoity-toity lady-wife ! Com-
mon-place Tom Mackenzie and his intolerable wife
Mrs. Tom of Gower Street. Several of the
Littlebathian ladies—such as Miss Todd, the rattling,
good-natured woman of the world ; or, on the other
hand, in their odd way, the pick of the Stumfoldians,
the toadying coachmaker's widow, Mrs. Perch, or her
very opposite, meaning quiet, ladylike Miss Baker.
As for Mrs. Stumfold, there is rather a touch of Mrs.
Proudie, we cannot but think, in her character.
Up in London, again, there is Mrs. Buggins
of Arundel-street, not forgetting Mr. Buggins
—there is Miss Colza, the very pink of curio-
sity and loquacity combined besides Mr.
Slow, the attorney, and, with him, his equally deli-
berate partner, Mr. Bideawhile : all of whom,
though very lightly touched upon, are at the same
time very well sketched in. The Balls and the
Mackenzies, are the Capulets and Montagues in re-
gard to the contentions of the plot. The greatest
fun of all in the tale, by-the-way, is that
arising our of Mr. Maguire's scurrilllous
apologue of The Lion and the Lamb. Bald-
headed John Ball, afterwards Sir John
Ball, being the Lion, and Miss Mackenzie herself,
of course, the Lamb, otherwise Griselda. In the
midst of the Fashionable Bazaar (described towards
the end of the second volume) we come upon seve-
ral old friends, such as Mrs. Conway Sparkes,
the Duchess of St. Bungay, and Lady Glencora
Palliser. And, it is in the midst of this Bazaar
that we pause for a moment to laugh at the ridiculous
plight of the chief working promoter of
Man
that Benevolent Entertainment—one Mr. an-
fred Smith, of whom we read that—" seating
himself on the stool of the money-taker by the ne-
trance, he wiped off the perspiration from his brow