The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-15 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE'S NEW STORY.
Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite. By Anthony
Trollope One volume, Hurst and Blackett.
Originally published as a serial tale from month to montk
in the pages of Macmillan, Sir Harry Hotspur is here
reissued in a goodly volume immediately upon its comple-
tion. It is not only a brilliant example of Anthony
Trollope's powers as a novelist, but is in a very strikins
manner a radiant specimen of English imaginative litera
ture. It illustrates in a striking way the contrast pre-
sented to view by the fictitious narratives of France and
England. Here is the record of the entanglement of
the affections of a young girl as pure in nature
as she is beautiful in person, of the entanglement
of her maiden affections with the worldly self interest
of one of the meanest and basest specimens of the huraab:
race ever described by the pen of a novelist. Yet, from=
first to last, from the opening page to the conclusion, note
only does the heroine pass scatheless through the frightfur
ordeal of this same disastrous entanglement, but the'
purest-minded young lady reader, who may linger• en-
thralled over the record of the misdirected lots, of EmilY
Hotspur, runs no risk of having a smirch thereby, even in-
cidentally, cast upon her imagination. Cousin George,
of whom we are reluctant to speak as the hero of the story
—old Sir Harry Hotspur, Emily's father, holding, in
a nobler sense, that position in our remembrance
—Captain George Hotspur, with whom Emily, the
Heiress of Humblethwaite unhappily falls in love, is cer-
tainly in the whole range of fiction (there are really no
other terms in which to express his exceeding baseness
adequately) the lowest cad, the vilest duffer, well imagin-
able. He is a swindler, a liar, a cheat, a card-sharper, a
creature who preys upon his companions, who lives upon
the earnings of the mistress he has seduced, who borrows
money from her, who perjures himself again and again by
word of mouth and in writing. It is a scoundrel as
despicable as this whose infamies are here recounted,
whose rascally associates are here described, whose
villainous antecedents are heve minutely detailed. And yet,
throughout the book, neither the heroine of the tale nor
the most unsophisticated reader, of it, is for one
moment contaminated while keenly observant of
the thread of the narrative, first 0.7 all through its devious
windings, and doublings, and toiglings, and then
afterwards its cleverly contrived and aulroitly manipulated
unravelling. Even the redoubtable M?. Podsnap, him-
self, would fail, on scrutinising this volume, to discover in
it anything calculated to bring a blush to th,e cheek of a
young person. The consummate delicacy, visate through-
out, in the avoidance of any evil influence in the way
of mere suggestiveness, while deali' with the
wretched mathiel of this miserable George Hot-
spur's life, is only comparable to that displa)'ed
by an accomplished sword-dancer. The keen-edged clay
mores are crossed in a most delicate balance, but never for
an instant are they touched or stirred even by a hairs,-
breadth. Mrs. Morten, Mr. Hart, Captain Stubbers,
Messrs. Walker and Bullem, one might have imagined,
could no more be regarded as materiel that could be
handled without peril by a novelist, than that pitch could
be fingered without leaving a stain upon the hand so
fingering it. Yet the effect is precisely as we have stated
it to be—

" A simple maiden in her flower "
might read unharmed from cover to cover, this bril-
liantly sketched narrative of "Sir Harry Hotspur of
Humblethwaite." That it is so, that it could possibly so be
remembering what we have here indicated in regard to such
an unmitigated blackguard as Cousin George, otherwise-
Captain Hotspur, is a very signal attestation not only of
the skill of Anthony Trollope, but of the pervading and-
prevailing wholesomeness of English imaginative litera-
ture. Altogether the book, though lightly and rapidly
penned, is a new and brilliant evidence that Anthony
Trollope still holds his own conspicuously among the
masters of his craft.