The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-04 00:00:00

NEW W ORK BY MR. COCIIINE.

ERNEST VANE. 2 Voss. Alexawicr Bc illie
Cochrane, M.P.
Encouraged by the succe s cf "Lucille Belmont,''
his first adventure in literature, Mr. Baillie Cochrane
has already produced a second fiction, which in wee:,
rest cots may be called a sequel to its predecessor.
Several of the characters introduced into the former
narrative will he recognized in the novel just pub
lished : developed, however, as remarkably as the
butterfly from the chrysalis. Whatever merits there
may be in " Ernest Vane," we cannot but feel satis-
fied that it evidences rather too much precipitation to
last beyond its season, or to acqiore anything like
enduring popularity. Beyond which the author
appears to have followed somewhat too obsequiously
in the footsteps of Mr. Disreali the Younger, in re-
gard to the pencilling under assumed names of
several of the most conspicuous members of the
world of fashion. In itself the practice of pourtraying
the individualities of contemporary society is calcu-
lated not only to degenerate into mere caricature,
but also to render the composition, no matter whether
it be play, poem, or novel, singularly ephemeral. Mr.
Disraeli redeems his political romances in a great
measure from this excessive evanescence by his bril-
liant wit, his pungent sarcasms, and his gorgeous and
ornate rhetoric. Mr. Cochrane, on the contrary, is
possessed neither of a faculty for witticisms, nor of
power as a satirist, nor of any very splendid or
copious vocabulary. In the absence of these gifts,
however, he has the art of sketching scenes
and incidesits with the pencil of a keen
observer; and of throwing. moreover, an air
of fascirfation over his fictitious annals which will
not fail to secure him a large meed of approval.
What we regret in his delineations of living men and
women, well known in the more aristocratic circles,
is, that he renders these delineations by far too pro-
minent a feature in his production, instead of making
them altogether subordinate to the plot and the cir-
cumstances of its development. How this extraneous
adornment may be introduced without marring the
general effect of an effusion of the fancy has been
shown very skilfully of late by Sir Bulwer Lytton,
both in the " Caxtons," evere Trevanion represents
a statesman of considerable renown, and Beaudesert,
a nobleman of no inconsiderable reputation, and in his
epic romance of " King Arthur," where the Bishop
of Exeter, Peel, Russell, Stanley, and Palmerston are
most felicitously calotyped among the subordinate
figures surrounding the darling hero of chivalry.
Generally speaking, nevertheless, we are averse to the
custom now becoming more and more prevalent with
the literati of our generation, that of dressing up a
public personage in some fantastic costume and dig-
nifying it with the title of a creation. Even George
Coleman the Younger, one of the most fruitful origi-
nators of character in the drama, and altogether one
of the best playwrights that has appeared since the
Elizabethan epoch, became infected by this endemic
of caricature, introducing his late Majesty King
George the Third as Sir David Dunder, in his comedy
of Ways and Means. Aware of the infection of
such examples as those already enumerated, we must,
we presume, at any rate allow some license in the
same particular to Mr. Baillie Cochrane. And, cer-
tainly, as far as the skill of the performances mty go
in extenuation of the attempt, he must be acknow-
ledged to have proved himself, in more than one in-
stance, strangely successful. In the profligate cha-
racter of the handsome Luttrell—in the haughty
diplomatist, Lord Elversfoot—in the ambitious com-
moner, Mr. Leslie—in the " manceuvering mamma,"
Lady Mary Maxwell—in the brilliant fribble, George
Percy—and in several other of the dramatis personce
will be recognised at once individuals familiar to the
bow-windows of St. James's-street, or to the drawing-
rooms of Belgravia. Mr. Cochrane has this unde-
niable advantage, that he himself has watched the
prototypes with no unobservant eye in the midst of
the frivolities of May-fair, or in the random conversa-
tions of the loungers at I3rookes' or Whites'. Nor
are the nobles and gentles of Old England the only
persons who are made to pass across the disc of his
camera obscures. Michel, the Hebrew money-lender,
is a transcript " from the life," and might be identi-
fied. What to us, however, is the most excellent
portion of " Ernest Vane," in regard to the por-
traiture of character, is that in which are sketched the
vraisemblance of the hero of the tale (a high-souled
dreamer, sensitive and brave), and the three principal
females introduced into the narrative—Marie, the child
of Switzerland, Ida Leslie (the heroine) the daughter of
the millionnaire, and Algitha Vane, the sister of
Ernest. How far the fortunes of the sensual but
fascinating Luttrell, afterwards Lord Linton, are
mingled with the interest of the narrative, may be
tolerably well imagined when we observe that love
passages pass between him and the three beautiful
women just mentioned, Marie, Ida, and Algitha.
Marie's history is the episode of the novel, and is
gracefully and touchingly written. Ernest is, the
lover of Ida, and the champion as well as brother of
Algitha. The scene principally alternates between
Mr. Leslie's estate, called Castle Melwood, and the
metropolis. As to the structure and purpose of the
plot, seeing that we are not solicitous to destroy their
attraction by a premature explanation, we shall con-
tent ourselves with observing that the story, like
Dickens's " Old Curiosity Shop," and Scott's " Bride
of Lammermoor," has a mournful termination. Here
and there, throughout the two volumes, are touches
which cannot fail to strike different classes of readers.
A parent, for example, will be arrested by that men-
tion of a " kind, warm smile breaking into the perfect
beauty of a father's love ;" while the journalist
will be amused sans doute by the acknowledgment
made by Ida Leslie, that with the news-
paper in her hand she had just commenced (and
no more) " one of those long, long articles which
she cannot imagine how people have the patience to
write, and which she has never the patience to read
through." Sometimes Mr. Cochrane, when lie lists,
can be as sententious as Rochefoucauldt, as where he
says (I. 30) " give me the trifles of life in my favour
and you shall have the great events." Occasionally,
too, he can be sardonically sarcastic, as where he terms
the county orator—" a most terrible infliction to
civilized society, a plague beneath which even Pha-
roah's heart must have broken." At times, moreover,
he is very felicitous in his mode of expression, as
where he calls the charity-school children, decked out
for village entertainments—" those perennial frontis-
pieces to all country festivities, the vignettes of
human nature." (I. 46) In his political predilections
he remains of course true to the " antecedents" of
his Parliamentary career—calling Cromwell an usur-
per, and eulogizing Charles I. as the Martyr King.
One of the most delightfully emphasised sentences in
the work is that in which the novelist, referring to
Lady Mary Maxwell's letter to Ernest, describes it
as written in " that stilted, heavy-morality style
which virtuous and very middle-aged ladies affect."
Inadvertently perchance, but to us most glaringly,
Mr. Cochrane is guilty of some egregiously transparent
plagiarisms. In one instance he says that Luttrell
" loved Marie as he would a favourite horse or
bound,"—a very manifest copy from Tennyson's
" Lockeley Hall,"
" Something better than his dog, and something
worthier than his horse."
Another, while Mr. Cochrane describes " the dead
leaves which not winter's frost could entirely shake
off, falling around pushed from the twigs by the new
buds"—a barefaced suggestion taken from Lamartine's
" Raphael," cap. 87, where the poet says, so exqui-
sitely, "there was no other sound than that of the fall
of some dry leaves of the preceding winter, which, as
the sap rose and throbbed, fell at the foot of the tree
to make room for the new and tender foliage." But
the most monstrous plegiarism of all is where Mr.
Cochrane observes, as though the idea were his own
original property, that Marie knelt before the little
wooden cross of her oratory—" remembering that the
cross was made of wood, the cross that saved the
world !" Why, what reader of French history does
not know that that was a portion of the finest sentence
ever uttered in the Hall of the States General ?
when M. de Montlozier, in defending the constitu-
tion of clerical property, exclaimed, in a moment of
sublime eloquence (alluding to the bishops whose
cause he espoused), " By taking away their palaces
you will force them to seek refuge in the cottages of
the poor, built by their beneficence ; by tearing
from their breast the golden cross they wear on it
you will force them to wear new ones made
of wood ; but remember it was a wooden cross that
saved the world 1" Surely, after these quotations,
we shall not be accused of rashness in taxing Mr.
Cochrane with plagiarism. As a specimen of our
novelist's style we will give his flippant but not
wholly erroneous definition of
A WHIG.
" Lord Elversfoot spoke with vehemence, for it was a
theme on which he felt deeply, and upon which he de-
lighted to dwell; now, at least, he believed all that he
said—the old Whig is never tired of talking about the
people, and imagining himself liberal. Ile had long
been a member of that party, who, possessing the
strongest aristocratic tendencies, march in cloth of gold,
with the people' inscribed on their banners. The
thorough aristocratic Whig—the party of hereditary
principles of freedom, both in trade and institutions—
the class that would do everything for the people, and
nothing by the people—at once haughty and conde-
scending—universal and exclusive—who would desire to
see every poor man's table well supplied, but take equal
care that he should never trespass above the salt—who bow
very low, extend forefingers to the middle class, shake
hands with the people, but always with their gloves on—
who will tell you that the middle class, the bourgeoisie,
is essential to the well-being of the country, but draw
themselves up very high if the middle class ever assert
the smallest position iu their presence—a party composed
in general of men of high illustration and unblemished
race, who view their society with the same reverence as
the Jews were wont to regard the inner circle of the
Temple—who have an unckviating attachment to the
tales of family interests and family claims, and the tradi-
tions of their history, as written by their own party,
with whom it is a faith to worship the memory of the
traitors William Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, and
to repudiate Dalrymple's Memoirs—who practice in re-