The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-04 00:00:00

AINSWORTH'S NEW WORK.

Ovingdean Grange ; a Tale of the South Downs.
By W. Harrison Ainsworth. Illustrated by
Hablot K. Browne. One vol. pp. 357. Rout-
ledge and Co.
The completion of another romance by Harrison
is always a welcome announcement—welcome at
least to all those lovers of romance whose eagerness

has not impelled them to devour the new narrative,
bit by bit, in its original piecemeal publication. To
them this same announcement is anything but ac-
ceptable—for it is the intimation that they have
again done, for the time being, with the mist en-
thralling and accomplished romancist of our gene•.
ration. As such, Harrison Ainsworth has long
been regarded, not by a mere clique, but rather,
one might say, universally, cordially, and by accla-
mation. Beginning, as he did, when yet very
young indeed—with somewhat of the precocity of
Shakspere's Henry the Fifth. (though, it will be
observed, with one slight italicised difference)—
" To 'witch the world with noble penmanship 1"

Harrison Ainsworth has already enjoyed more
than a quarter of a century of popularity, though
but yet himself in the vigour of his manhood—
having been born in the same notable year (1806)
which witnessed the birth of three among the most
illustrious of his literary contemporaries—the late
Douglas Jerrold and the Right Hons. Benjamin
Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton. While Disraeli the
Younger was winning his spurs in the lists of
literature anonymously (his vizor closed—no crest
on his helmet—no device upon his shield) as the
Author of Vivian Grey—while 3'erroid was fleshing
the maiden sword of his wit behind the scenes as
the playwright of Black-eyed Susan—while Bulwer
was couching his lance at all the social follies within
his ken as the exquisitely humorous and vivacious
selebrant of Mr. Pelham—the author of Rookwood
was riding over every difficulty at a bound, was
taking his place among the foremost rank as prin-
ceps in the new era of romancists, as firm in the
saddle, as light yet as sure in his grasp upon the
reins, as blithe of temper, as dauntless in courage, as
the earliest, and still to our mind the most re-
nowned and popular of his heroes of questionable
character, Dick Turpin, the famous Highway-
man. Since this last-mentioned and most memo-
rable literary feat was accomplished—how largely
have not the lovers of romance been indebted to this
heir and successor and surpassar of Anne Radcliffe !
It is now very nearly 30 long years since Rook-
wood was first conceived—the notion of writing
that pink and pattern and paragon of all
" romances" having first caught the imagination of
Harrison Ainsworth in the autumn of 1831, during
a visit to Chesterfield. A year or two after that
happy thought the germ of it was so far developed
that towards the close of 1838 a considerable part of
the work was written—where ? Why close upon
the very scene of this last of Ainsworth's romances,
but now (in 1860) just completed—namely
in the pretty little Sussex village of Rot-
tingdean ! Afterwards, that glorious " Ride
to York"—the finest thing Mr. Ainsworth
ever yet wrote, or to our fancy ever will write,
as it is one of the most inimitable fragments in the
whole range of imaginative literature—was penned
(as he himself has told us in a delightful preface)
in one day and one night, in less than twenty-
four hours, in " The Elms," a house then occupied
by the author at Kilburn. " Well do I remember
the fever into which I was thrown during the elm-
position"—wrote the Author of "Rookwood," fifteen
years afterwards, in the preface alluded to—" My
pen literally scoured over the pages. So thoroughly
did I identify myself with the flying highwayman,
that, once started, I found it impossible to halt.
Animated by kindred enthusiasm, I cleared every
obstacle in my path with as much facility as
Turpin disposed of the impediments that beset his
flight. In his company I mounted the hill side,
dashed through the bustling village, swept over the
desulate heath, threaded the silent street, plunged
into the eddying stream, and kept an onward
course, without pause, without hindrance, without
fatigue. With him I shouted, sang, laughed, exulted,
wept." And so on. No wonder his readers were
carried away with him in this rush of imaginative
ardour ! No wonder he took his place at once, as we
have said, at a single bound in the front rank among
the most gifted writers of prose fiction ! No wonder
that since that celebrated achievement, for an
achievement it undoubtedly was, and a remarkable
one—no wonder that thenceforth Harrison Ains-
worth's name has been right welcome to all the thou-
sand-thousand lovers of purely romantic literature !
Particularly remembering how industriously during
this interval of more than a quarter of a century
the author of Rookwood has been making
good again and again by romance after
romance the distinction won for himself at
the outset of his literary career by the book that
gave him as it were instanter a reputation. Has
he not associated that reputation of his with some
of the noblest historic piles adorning this fair land
of ours, but chiefly its imperial capital ?—with
"Windsor Castle "—with "St. James s " Palace—
with " The Tower of London "—with " Old St.
Paul's" Cathedral ! Even " Auriol," that " Frag-
ment of a Romance" which was originally designed
to have given us a record of " The mysteries of
London" more wholesome than Eugene Sue's power-
ful but pernicious prototype—failed not in its time
to evidence, in a new way, the varied force of our
author's vivid and vigorous imagination. The selec-
tion of themes has, in another way—of itself—upon
the very title pages of Ainsworth's fictions—de-
monstrated in a conspicuous manner the daring of
that same almost audacious imagination. Has not
his " Guy Fawkes" served, in its turn, to emphasise
that whimsical remark of Charles Lamb's, when
that dry humourist regretted the non-success
of the Gunpowder Plot, because, said he, it would
have been such a magnificent thunderclap in his-
tory ! Again, when going in quest of a hero for
a new story, who else should he light upon at an-
other while than " Crichton" the admirable !
Writing in a monetary age, his heroine at another
time is not inaptly or unattractively designated
" The Miser's Daughter ;" but about the fair Hilda
Scarve what a glamour of romance is there not
thrown from the moment of her introduction in that
crazy old house in the corner of the Little Sanc-
tuary of Westminster, to the hour of her happy
marriage at last with Randuiph Crew ! As for
" Jack Shephard," who has forgotten the aptness
of that most apt of all quotations upon a title page,
that emblazoned upon the " head and front of
its offending," in those expostulatory and
explanatory words from The Life and Ac-
tions of Guzman D'Alfarache ? " Upon my
word," said I, " you have almost made me long to
try what a robber I should make." "There's great
art in it if you did," quoth he. " .21h! but," said
I, " THERE'S A GREAT DEAL IN BEING HANGED."
A quotation that ought certainly by rights to have
been emblazoned also in very legible characters over
the proscenium every time the dramatised version
of this far-famed story was represented by her Ma-
jesty's servants before her Majesty's lieges. For
" Jack Sheppard" has exercised from first to last—
even its antagonists have insisted upon this
(perhaps of all, indeed, the most loudly)—a won-
drous fascination. Not to tarry longer, however,
over the past productions of Mr. Ainsworth's fancy
as a romance writer and novelist, let us content
ourselves here with enumerating some of his
later effusions—the " Lancashire Witches," for
example, and the " Flitch of Bacon," and " The
Spendthrift," and " Mervyn Clitheroe' " and now
last, but not by any means least, this latest of his
numerous works of imagination ! Works so nu-
merous that we believe they have numbered
up already from sixteen to eighteen separate fic-
tions, most of them of very elaborate construction.
As we have before intimated—where the first of
Ainsworth's many popular romances, " Rookwood,"
was for the most part written, there lies the scene
of the last of his romances—this " Tale of the South
Downs," called OVINGDEAN GRANGE. Published re-
cently, month by month, in instalments as the feature
and chief attraction in Bentley's Miscellany,
" Ovingdean Grange" has now upon its completion
been reissued in a separate form (in one goodly
volume, but indifferently illustrated) by the pub-
lishers of Mr. Ainsworth's collected writings, the
enterprising firm of the Messrs. Routledge. The
illustrations (to have done with these at once)
we cannot but regard as altogether unworthy of
the pencil of Hablot Browne—probably the ori-
ginal designs having been marred by the careless-
ness or the lack of skill of the engraver. However
this may be, they are wretchedly.
not only of the hand of Phiz, but f
picturesque and entralling letterpress of of which
unworthy
of the
bellishments. These illustrations,
we presume they arc designed tmoreeovtehr—e
feomr:
ether—are all the more noticeable f
tunately to the number of no more thoarntheiegirhtalto-
g
insig-
nificance from our remembrance of themanyorm
ex-
quisite plates adorning previous worksforms
of master romancist, plates touched
ynoat. p
artists like George
intofrom the
i
Cruickshankg race and lines
and
Tony of
b e a
juothya bn
would do
well not to trifle too frequently, as he has done of
oii
13;ceoadriso
ago
an dat tle
point of his
keen
late, with a reptteeenfaily v
etchingrs
sus-
tained with admirable effect also years ago
with a lead pencil upon boxwood, as in the wood-
cuts contributed by him, in companionship with
George Cattermole, to " Master Humphrey's Clock."
Enough, however, about the mere "plates." And
now, if we cannot say revenons a nous moutons, at
any rate let us return again to the tale of the
South Downs. It is a narrative that has been fami-
liarizing itself for some months past to the readers
of Bentley's Miscellany; and one that will now
secure to itself yet more numerous " troops of
friends" in its present form, as a complete and sepa-

rate publication. Divided into Nine Books—these
again being subdivided into (altogether) forty-eight
chapters—the story begins by awakening profound
interest in the fortunes of the family at the old

Grange at Ovingdean—the family, that is, of the
old Cavalier Colonel Wolston Maunsel—and, page
by page (numbering them up to the full comple-
ment of 357), it carries this interest uninterruptedly,
unceasingly down to the very close of the fic-
titious history. The history, however, it should
be said at once, is not altogether fictitious—it is in
considerable parts of it strictly historical. And
throughout these portions, as it appears to us, the
narrative is wholly and most veraciously historical,
with one solitary exception—a single exception in
regard to a purely incidental particular that may,
indeed, for aught we know, be anything rather than
an inadvertence; it may even, in fact, be intentional
(for the purposes of fiction) on the part of our
skilled romancist. We allude here simply to the
circumstance that " my Lord Wilmot," captured by
Stelfax and his Ironsides in the courtyard of the
Old Grange at Ovingdean is described (p. 160) as
disguised in a sad-coloured attire, of Puritan plain-
nese, and having his locks cropped close to his head
like the veriest Praise-God-Barebones or Zeal-of-
the-land-Busy. Whereas it is beyond a doubt that
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, never once, from the
fatal day of Worcester to the hour of the landing
of the royal fugitives near Havre-de-Grace, never
once assumed any disguise whatsoever. It is
thus that in Mistress Anne Wyndham's Claus-
tram Regale Revaratum we find it recorded that,
upon the date of his arrival at Trent, " his lordship
was not in the least altered—except a hawk on his
fist, and a lure by his side might pass for a
disguise ! " Nay, in King Charles the
Second's own account of " His Majesty's Es-
cape from Worcester"—the account dictated to
Mr. Pepys by the King himself--we read in a
quaint foot-note, penned by the Merry Monarch's
own hand, or dictated by his own voice to his Bos•
wellian amanuensis 1—" I could never get my Lord
Wilmot to put on any disguise, he saying that he
should look frightful in it, and therefore did never
put on any.—KING." It must, however, be con-
ceded at once to Mr. Ainsworth, in this compara-
tively trivial particular—the enlarging upon which
for one moment longer would savour unmistakeably
of hypercriticism—that in cropping the locks of
Lord Wilmot and exchanging his laced velvet
raiment for the sombre garb of a Puritan, he exer-
cises the power of the romancist as allowably and
justifiably as in subjecting Rochester to the incon-
venience of a temporary incarceration. And who
that has read, or that shall yet read Ovingdean
Grange, will quarrel with the literary wizard who
thus skilfully in this latter particular, and to such
good effect, wields the pen of the romancer as
though it was the wand of a necromancer ? Who,
in other words, would venture to suggest the
elimination from this absorbing narrative of one of
its most exciting and breathless adventures ? The
whole story, however, is one ingenious chain of
adventures adventures connected inextricably
link by link with each other. It is this artistic
peculiarity of Ovingdean Grange that precludes
us effectually, as it seems to us imperatively, from
indulging ourselves and our readers with any
illustrative quotation. In our attempt to select
which we have only realised the more vividly,
what we had already conjectured, the infinite
skill with which the story has been con-
structed. Whenever we have momentarily
decided upon some Particular incident in
the tale as one admirably' suited for an
extract, we have, upon searching for the close of
this extract, found page after page turning glibly
under our fingers, until it has been apparent that a
column or two would barely do justice to the quota-
tion, and that even the excerpted passage could am-
pear then but fragmentarily. The sequence of the
incidents, the uninterrupted rush of the interest,
whether through dialogue or through description,
proving as notable here as in the best portions of
" Rookwood" or of " Jack Shepherd." And how,
for example, could any reviewer begin an extract
of the Ride to York (Rookwood, Book iv., ch. i.),
with the accidental death of Tom King by Turpin's
chance bullet at Kilburn Wells, and have the heart
to close that extract until (B. iv., ch. vi.—the whole
book, in fact !) Dick, as the red-haired countryman,
sits eating his breakfast in the bowling-green at
York ? Or, again, who could foreshorten the nar-
rative of Jack's escape from Newgate by the omis-
sion of one corridor, of a single chimney, a solitary
door, or bolt, or screw of the huge iron-and-granite
cage of the housebreaker turned prisonbreaker
Mere " shreds and patches" of quotations would do
_but scant justice in like manner to the singularly
alluring interest of Harrison Ainsworth's last ro-
mance, even as we have said the same would have
been done to his first romance of " Rookwood."
Sufficient then let it be, if we here remark of Oving•
dean Grange, that it is a romantic history of love,
and valour, of " hair-breadth 'scapes," and peril.
ous adventure, of loyal, and for that reason not the
less patriotic devotion, and of politico-religious
fanaticism, as represented (these two last) respec-
tively in the Royalists and the Roundheads. Charles
the Second himself appears upon the scene, and, as
already intimated, his companion and intimate
Wilmot Earl of Rochester. The period of the tale
is that romantic interval associated inextricably
with the euphonious name of Boscobel, Indeed
there is in the second part of the narrative of
Boscober—so called after the region of the Royal.
Oak, the place of the young fugitive King's conceal-
ment—there is in that narrative (p. ii) towards its
close a mention of one Mr. Francis Mansel, the
merchant of Chichester, who negotiated the hire for
the King of that little barque of Captain Nicholas
Tattersal, that led ultimately to the happy escape of
Charles and Wilmot—a name (Mansel) that we
cannot but conjecture to have fixed the title of the
good cavalier house of the Mau nsels of the Grange of
Ovingdean. Whence the root idea of the book
however—no matter whether born of the Grange
itself and its traditional associations or of Boseobel
and its historical recollections—the narrative adds
another surety to the expansion yet further of
Harrison Ains worth's already wide popularity,
and to the yet further elevation of his already high
and conspicuous reputation. It is precisely for
these reasons, and because at all times predisposed
to expect so much at the hands of the author of
Rookwood, whenever we open a new fiction from
Harrison Ainsworth, as the recognised chief among
our romancists, that we are here enabled upon the
appearance of Ovmgdean Grange to offer him, as
critics, our cordial and earnest congratulations. He
has thrown a new charm through the spells and
witcheries of romance over those beautiful South-
Downs, over Brighton, over the Devil's Dyke, over
Rottingdean and Ovingdean.