The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-02 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Popular Works Republished.

Henry Dunbar. By M. E. Braddon. One vo:
pp., 480. Maxwell and Co.

A sixth edition of this powerful narrative, Miss
Braddon's " Story of an Outcast," testifies anew to
her and its popularity. Allowing to the writer of
the romance—as the reader ought to allow every
romancist—carte blanche at starting, the plot is
wonderful (now) in its symmetrical completeness.
There is an especial significance, we would remark,
in that parenthetical (now)—the anomalies of the
tale, as it originally stood, having been at length
very dexterously and carefully eliminated. Seldom
has revision, we take it, been more judicious. The
magic lens or crystal, so to speak, in which we here
watch the moving incidents of this career of an
Outcast, if still by no means what might be called
" one entire and perfect chrysolite," is at the least
no longer, as it was once, conspicuously flawed. It
will be sufficient if we here speak of only two.of
these wise corrective touches, by means of which the
hand of our authoress has removed, as it were, in-
stantaneously, flaws until now so manifestly
visible as such at the merest superficial
glance, that they amounted some among them
to absolutely ludicrous disfigurements. Mr.
Balderly, for example, no longer (now) welcomes
the soi disant Henry Dunbar to England, but to the
Bank—where the two meet at last in that old city
banking-house—months after their first meeting at
Southampton ! Again, there is no longer any refer-
ence at all, as this work stands (now) to the dis-
covery, upon the skeleton finger of the murdered
man, on his exhumation, of a ring, that had been
mysteriously overlooked altogether at the time of
his interment! The story yet retains, as its title, a
decided misnomer—Henry Dunbar being not Henry
Dunbar at all, but Joseph Wilma—the hero of the
tale being, in other words, not the banker, but the
returned convict. This, however, we presume, was
a thing inevitable. Unless the secret of the whole
narrative was to be blurted out at once upon the
title-page--the book must, perforce, have received,
as it has received for its title, this flagrant misno-
mer. The title, and the sub-title, in effect being
distinctly at variance—for the outcast, whose story
is here related, is in no way identical with the Henry
Dunbar he affects to be. Among all Miss Brad-
don's fictions, this one about Henry Dunbar, the
true and the false, the murdered and the murderer,
we are still fain to regard, as all things considered,
the most daring in its construction.

Recreations of Christopher North.

Two Vols

Blackwood and Son.

In continuation of the popular reissue of
the masculine writings of Professor Wilson,
the Messrs. Blackwood have supplemented their
People's Edition of the immortal .Noctes with
this companion reprint of the Recreations.
Whereas the former work extended to the
length of four goodly volumes, however, the later
(and, in consequence, lesser) work now under con-
sideration extends to the length of merely half those
dimensions. Prefixed to the first of these two
volumes by way of frontispiece is an engraved
portraiture of Professor John Wilson, or, more
strictly speaking, of Master Christopher North
himself in propria persona, and, more than that,
in dishabille ! Such a noble presence of a man as it
it—this engraving from Thomas Duncan's famous
painting of the Great Athlete (one worthy of the
man both intellectually and physically) the original
of which picture, in the possession of John Black-
wood, Esquire, now head and chief of the great
publishing house of the Messrs. William Blaskwood
and Sons, of London and Edinburgh. Buckled belt
and buckled shoon—unbuttoned shirt, coat and waist-
coat—uncovered tawny shock of hair—a leonine face,
beard mane, we had almost said—heather around him
—the very fowling-piece in his right hand grasp—the
very touch of the left hand carelessly in the pocket
of his velvet shooting-jacket—not one minute detail
of the picture, precisely as it is, could very well be
spared from it—so perfectly does it realise this
born King among his fellows, when he must have
looked at his very, best ! " When his foot was on
his native heath, and his name was"—CHRISTOPHER
NORTH ! The genius of the great Professor, though
delightfully apparent in every chaper of the " Re-
creations," cannot, of course, be recognised there
as in his earlier and wilder manifebtation, in all its
swing and sweep, and full, exhilirating, irresistible
abandonment, as in the renowned Nodes Ambro-
sianx. Nevertheless, how wonderful the very
grace and vigour of the old man eloquent, as those
qualities are manifested here throughout the two
elegant volumes of these delightful Recreations!
But for the Noctes that had gone before them, the
Recreations would for those very qualities of easy
grace and abounding vigour have been held, and
held quite reasonably, as just simply matchless.

Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, 6•c. One vo'

By Professor Wilson. Blaekw- onci and Sons.

Another, and, if possible, still goodlier volume,
bringing this People's Edition of John Wilson's
Works to a glorious conclusion, embraces within it
not only the whole of the " Lights and Shadows of
Scottish Life," but with those singularly varied
sketches of National Character—from the same
master-hand, the story of " The Foresters" and
the record of "'the Trials of Margaret Lindsay."
Apart from their own intrinsic beauty and excel-
lence, as in a manner if not precisely " unconsi-
dered trifles" as, at any rate, mere carelessly pen-
cilled studies from real life around him, jotted down
at odd moments, just as the whim seized him by the
artist's hand. The Lights and Shadows have an espe-
cially charm for us always among the more highly
elaborated writings of Professor Wilson by reason
of their having been selected by him from among
his works as an offering of love and honour, of
affection and esteem for the great Sir Walter. Ap-
propriately selecting " The Lights and Shadows" as
such, it seems to us, as an offering thus to Sir Wal-
ter Scott, if only 'because more than any of our
author's works the most spontaneous, the most tho-
roughly national, and the most strictly unpre-
meditated.

Stocqueler's Familiar History of Brilish India. One

Vol. Pp. 257.

Darton and Hodge.

The simple fact of the present issue of this little
volumebeing the tenth thousand (as announced upon
the titlepage), is an evidence of its success as an in-
genious compilation. Mr. Stocqueler's unpretending
narrative of the use, development, and consolidation
of British Power in India has, in fact, more than
any other work than could be named, popularised a
knowledge of the events leading to the establishment
of that wonderful Asiatic Empire of ours in Hindos-
tan-7-has scattered that knowledge broadcast among
great masses of unlettered, or, at any rate, of only
partially lettered Englishmen. The form in which
the work now appears can hardly fail to ensure its
still wider acceptance. Its careful revision, more-
over, will go far towards confirming and consolidat-
ing whatever reputation the little book has enjoyed
hitherto. Beyond which, it ought to be added, in
justice to the editorial hand to which the labour of
revision has thus been judiciously intrusted, that
the record of Indian History, as sketched
by Mr. Stocqueler has been continued by Mr. Sid-
dons—so that their joint annals now embrace within
them a true, if not a full, account of the Revolt
of the Sepoys, and the re-establishment of our then
fearfully jeopardised power throughout the penin-
sula.

Siddons' Familiar History of the United States. One

Vol.

Pp. 234. Darton and Hodge.

Rumour states J. H. Siddons to be one and the
same, to be synonymous, to be identical with J. H.
Stocqueler. Whether Rumour is in error or not in
setting forth any such 'statement, certain It is that
not only the initials of the two writers but the style
and manner of them are much of a muchness. The
Familiar History of the United States, by J. H.
Siddons is (in the fashionry of it) to the Familiar
History of British India, by J. H. Stocqueler, just
now noticed, as Six to Half-a-Dozen. They make
excellent companion histories of scenes, events, and
powers wide as the poles asunder. They appear, so
to speak, in a leash, and give promise of running a
dead heat of popularity.