The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE

New Editions of Popular Works.

St. Olave's. By the Author of " Janita's Cross."

Hurst and Blackett.

As the new volume of that very charming and
popular series of reprinted works by authors- of
more or less celebrity, the series known to the lovers
of light literature far and wide by its title, as the
Messrs. Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library,
we have here collected together in a cheap, compact,
and elegant form, the contents of the whole of the
three volumes of the very entertaining story of
" St. Olave's" by the author of " Janita's Cross."
The reputation already won to herself by the pub-
lication of those two graceful and occasionally
brilliant fictions, cannot, we feel satisfied, but be
very appreciably extended, and strengthened by this
re-issue of one of them—perhaps, everything con-
sidered, the better of the two—in a shape so acces-
sible to the general multitude. The story of " St.
Olave's" is of itself, as a story, so interesting in its
way, that the perusal of it having been once com-
menced the reader becomes loth to lay the book
aside until all the chapters are fairly run
out, until the last of them has been eagerly
and yet reluctantly finished. As affording a
' sufficiently striking contrast in this respect to the
immediately preceding volume of the Messrs. Hurst
and Blackett's Standard Library—meaning Mrs.
Oliphant's enthusiastic and even reverential bio-
graphy, or rather eulogium, of the Rev. Edward
Irving—we cannot but regard the selection of " St.
Olave's" for the honours of this reprint as in every
;way judicious.

The Dead Secret. By Wilkie Collins. Smith,
Elder, & Co.

Added to many other popular half-crown volumes
in glazed boards of a yellowish colour, going
generically, as a series, by the name of
the Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Company's
Cheap Editions of Standard Works "The Dead
Secret" will be thrice welcome to the great majority
of its subscribers, that is, to the subscribers to that
particular serial publication. It is remarkable, in
many ways, this earliest of the more elaborated
fictions penned by the since famous author of " The
Woman in White !" It is especially remarkable as
the earliest of those wonderfully ingenious and very
highly-elaborated narratives of plot and counter-
plot, of most intricately interwoven threads of mys-
tery and,.adventure ! As Mr. Wilkie Collins himself
takes occasion to remind us in the Preface to this very
reprint of " The Dead Secret," he had never, until
the writing of that tale, ventured as a story teller,
beyond those brief and rapid relations of incidents
and delineations of character which were collected
together, after awhile, in separate volumes—one
entitled " After Dark," another, " The Queen of
Hearts." In Charles Dickens's world-famous
weekly serial, however, he at length ventured
upon the construction of a more pretentious work, as
a contribution to imaginative literature, than any
he had previously had the courage to entertain the
notion of. In this way he began, and continued,
and eventually brought to a successful comple-
tion, the vivid and eltritch tale of " The
Dead Secret." Oddly enough, when translated,
as the story naturally came to be, info the French
language, no equivalent could be hit upon by the
translator by which to express the idiomatic English
Title of the Book, " The Dead Secret"—insomuch
that the French version bears still upon its title-page
the abbreviated and inadequate designation of Le
Secret. So odiously morbid is the general effect of the
narrative here related, that we never yet could take
to the work very kindly. Clever though it is, of
course, beyond any doubt, it is at the same
time, in its general effect, too grimly and ghostly
to be altogether agreeable. In parts it is about
as pleasant reading, in truth, as Edgar Poe's
" Fall of the House of Ussher," than which we know
nothing more overwhelmingly depressing to the
spirits or more grissly and deadly-haunting to the
imagination. It showed a remarkable advance,
however, on the part of the author as an imagina-
tive writer—an author first known in any way no-
ticeably, it 'hould be said, as the writer of the semi-
classic romance of " Antonina." As Mr. Wilkie
Collins' first apparition as a novelist, really quite
sui generis, " The Dead Secret" is, in spite of the
morbid atmosphere of gloom still militating against
its chances of anything like a wide and cheery
popularity, well worthy, as a literary •perform-
ance, of being afforded this present additional and
valuable opportunity for the extension of its own
popularity and for the widening of its author's re-
putation.

George Geith of Fen Court. By F. G. Trafford.

Tinsley Brothers.

Among all this writer's works—and they are
numbering up now rather remarkably—" George
Geith of Fen Court" is incomparably the best
known, and it is so, we may say at
once, deservedly. The style of writing notice-
able in the stories of F. G. Trafford is rather
flaccid, it is true ; the conversations are spun out
overmuch ; the moralizing only too frequently de-
generates into the merest twaddle—but while these
are peculiarities which are, unfortunately, but too
observable in the author's idiosyncracy• as a novelist,
and although they are here perpetually thrusting
themselves upon orer attention, even in this the
writer's happiest effort, to wit, this same enter-
taining record of the fortunes and adventures of
George Geith of Fen Court—a hero by-the-way
who is an ex-Curate turned Accountant—the
tale, though thus told, has a charm about it,
as a medium for the delineation of cha-
racter, that compensates for everything else,
for every blemish that the shrewdest and the most
cynical critic could drag to light for the purposes of
reprobation. George Geith himself, the hero of the
tale, as indicated by the very title of it—and with
him the fitful, erratic, wild-tongued, gentle-hearted,
loveable heroine, bright Beryl Molozane, are, among
all the characters in the book, the two imparting to
it, by the vividness of their delineation, its chiefest
attraction, an attraction amounting at moments in
Beryl's instance, to something little short of a kind
of witchery or fascination. Because of all which,
but because of Beryl especially, the announcement
of the reissue of " George Geith" in this popular
and accessible form by the Messrs. Tinsley Brothers,
will be welcome news, indeed, to the:writer's already
numerous and fast-multiplying admirers.

Tales from Shakspere. By Charles Lamb. illus-
trated by John Gilbert. George Routledge and

Sons.

Surely the loveliest edition of this charming book
that ever has been published A home-classic 'it
has already long since come to • be—and as •such it
now makes its reappearance under the happiest aus-
pices. Exquisitely printed, brilliantly embellished,
elegantly bound, appropriately emblazoned on the
very cover with an effigy of Prospero's dainty Ariel
on the Bat's back flying after summer merrily !--
the famous "Tales from Shakspere," as they were
told in his day by Charles Lamb, and surely also,
or we are very much 'mistaken (though the title-
page of the present reprint makes no mention what-
ever of her name) by Mary Lamb, also, in literary
partnership with her brother " Elia," come forth, now,
under an aspect that would' have gladdened the
heart of that blithest, and brightest, and wittiest,
and delightfullest among all our blithe, bright,
witty and delightful essayists! The very title-page
itself presents to us an accumulation of attractions—
Tales from Shakspere—written by Charles Lamb—
and illustrated by John Gilbert ! Gilbert in this
evident labour of love having worked as felicitously
with his pencil as ever did " Elia" with his pen
when turning the poetical dialogue of the Dramas
into the limpid current of his prose narratives.
" The Winter's Tale" especially, is adorned by Gil-
bert's loving hand with the daintiest embellishment
that heart could well desire, even though it were
the heart of the most exigent appreciator of Elia's
love for Shakspere !

The Shaving of Shagpat. By George Meredith.
Chapman and Hall.

Since George Meredith first captivated our admi-
ration by the daring originality of his exquisitely
whimsical Arabian Entertainment, entitled—and
there was an audacity in the very title of it—
" The Shaving of Shagpat," he has secured for

himself a position sufficiently conspicuous, he has
won for himself a reputation, apart from the crowd
of authors, it may be, but for that very reason,
all the more noticeable, as one of the raciest,
freshest, and most thoughtful among our younger
novelists. Some of his creations in the books ho
has written since he wrote this wild, fantas-
tic narrative of " The Shaving of Shagpat" are
marked, to our thinking, incontestably, with the
sign-manual of genius. Instance—that sententious
philosopher in " The Ordeal of Richard Feverel l"
Instance, again—that, wonderful Countess in the
story of " Evan Harrington!" "Emilia in England,"
herself is in this way another and in some respects
still more radiant illustration of the fact we are in-
sisting upon. But it is altogether idle, it is almost,
we might add, ungrateful to say more upon this point
with the present thrice welcome reprint of George
Meredith's earliest work of note—" The Shaving
of Shagpat" here immediately at hand ! For,
in , it, in • this Arabian Entertainment, penned
now just upon ten years ago by a young author
then wholly unknown to fame in the world of
literature, we recognise still, as we claim to have
been the first among all the critics, to recognise
then in 1856, at the period of its original publica-
tion (our review of " The Shaving of Shagpat," in
The Sun, being, as we very well remember,
headed by us emphatically THE NEW AUTHOR) we
recognise still deliberately, as we recognised then,
so to speak, upon the instant, the tokens of original
genius which were lavished around him at
every step by the young writer as he advanced
along the devious career of this most eccentric of
narratives. It begins, moreover, this manifestation
of an unquestionable genius, and of a genius, too, of
an essentially rare and exceptional character, with
" The Thwackings," to end only with the very last
of " The Flashes of the Blade." Taken as an alle-
gory, or taken simply as a wild exercise of an
English fancy among the regions hitherto sacred to
purely oriental imaginings, the History of the
" Shaving of Shagpat," the son of Shimpoor, the son
of Shoolpi, the eon of Shullum, of the renownel
and mighty incident of his Shaving (after the
Burning of the Identical !) by Shibli Bagarag,
nephew of the chief barber to the Court of Persia,
the immortal Baba Mustapha—fairly captivates
us and carries us on through all the mazes and
devious winding labyrinths of incident, making
up the intricacies of the plot. Who that has
once read the book—and those who have not, have
now the opportunity for 53 doing (an opportunity
to the availing themselves of which we heartily
commend them !) —those who have already made
themselves acquainted with " The Shaving of
Shagpat" as an Arabian Entertaimfient, will very
well remember, among other marvels therein re-
lated, the story of Bhanavar the Beautiful, the
Punishment of Shahpesh the Persian on Khipil the
Builder, the Case of Rumdrum, the story of Noorna
ben Noorka, the Genie Karaz, and the Princess of
Oolb ! Delightfully familiar to their remembrance
aho will be the mere mention here en passant of the
Well of Paravid, of the Talking Hawk, and of the
Horse Garraveen 1 Our only surprise is that a book
so brightly and radiantly beautiful in its abounding
originality, in its subtle humour and its rhythmical
eloquence, has not long since been reprinted in a
popular form for general circulation, as it is at any
rate so reprinted here at last.