The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MISS BRADDON'S NEW WORK.

Birds of Prey. By M. E. Braddon, Three Vol,.
Charlotte's inheritance. By M. E. Braddon. Three
Vols. Ward, Lock, and Tyler.

A story and its sequel were never more intensely
One Work than " Birds of Prey" and " Charlotte's
Inheritance." Regarded separately, they are faulty
and, to a certain extent, unsatisfactory. Regarded
together, they are, on the contrary, far more to our
mind than merely satisfactory. So regarded, indeed,
they take their place among Miss Braddon's most
remarkable productions. Not but what there are
still passages that we would gladly see eliminated
from the earlier moiety of this rather lengthy fiction,
as derogating considerably, to our mind at least,
from its general excellence. Had we commented,
as we cannot now but conceive that it would have
been prematurely, upon the three volumes of
" Birds of Prey" at the time of their original pub-
lication, we could not but have expressed, and
that, too, in rather strong terms, our disap-
pointment—we could not but have pronounced
an opinion in the fullest degree condemnatory. Re-
cognising as we nevertheless• did at the time, th e
simple but sufficiently obvious fact that in publish-
ing "Birds of Prey" without its promised sequel of
" Charlotte's Inheritance," the authoress was
thereby doing herself a very grievous injustice, we
shrank from following up her own error of
judgment, we shrank from adding one in-
justice to another—an injustice of our own to
the one she had as we still conceive ss
perversely inflicted upon herself by a mere
act of precipitancy. While hesitating thus
to condemn what, in our estimate of " Birds
of Prey," admitted alone of condemnation, Miss
Braddon was all the while with more than her
wonted rapidity, currente colony), repairing the
damage done to her reputation as a raconteur of
wonderful skill and power, by completing the de-
sign she had herself held in view from the commence-
ment, in regard to this particular novel; namely, by
industriously penning the sequel, here, happily for
herself and for her readers, produced in its ripened
completeness in the form of these three con-
cluding volumes of the one work, as we can-
not but regard the Six Volumes now under our
consideration—an elaborate fiction of which volumes
one, two, three are called " Birds of Prey,"
and of which volumes four, five, six are called
" Charlotte's Inheritance." The justification of
the delay of our notice of those three
earlier volumes, entitled " Birds of Prey"—
if justification for that delay is really required
at our hands—we adduce in the first place
from the concluding sentence of " Birds of Prey"
itself, vide Vol. iii., p. 318, to wit—" The His-
tory of Charlotte Halliday has grown upon the
Writer ; and the completion of that history, with
the fate of John Haygarth's fortune, will be
told under the title of Charlotte's Inheri-
tance." That is our first justification in refrain-
ing from pronouncing judgment adversely upon
" Birds of Prey" until—by delaying oar judgment
—time had enabled Miss Braddon to complete her
merely half-executed design as a work of art by
the composition and publication of the sequel so
promised under the title of " Charlotte's Inheri-
tance." A justification of our duty, however
far beyond that—a justification, indeed, which
appears now to be conclusive and triumphant, is
here adduceable in these three volumes them-
selves of " Charlotte's Inheritance." Having re-
considered this One Work, now, as a whole, we do
certainly conceive that we have done more justice ,
to Miss Braddon by the postponement of our opinion
than she had done to herself by publishing " Birds
of Prey" so long before the production of its sequel
of " Charlotte's Inheritance." Cut in twain thus
—her production remained during all that in-
terval singularly incomplete, curiously and
almost ludicrously inartistic. The effect pro-
duced, indeed, by an examination of " Birds
of Prey" apart from its sequel was as
unsatisfactory and as disappointing as would
have been that of any other work of art when yet
but half accomplished. A piece of tapestry, let us
say, but partially woven —with the raw tags of
silk and gold thread hanging across the skeleton
web-work of the canvass yet remaining to be
covered by the rest of the embroidery. Or a fresco
painting, again let us say, with the raw plaister
on half the wall intended to be adorned by the
artist's design, whenever that design should be
eventually completed. Aristotle's thought as to
sculpture is, as it may be remembered, ingeniously
enough to the effect that iu the block of marble the
statue is latent—the superfluous particles, or husk,
so to speak, alone requiring to be hewn and chipped
away by mallet and chisel. Aad here it was as if
we had been invited, perversely enough, because
so very prematurely by the sculptor, to examine her
half accomplished work of art, while yet one side
of it was the formless block untouched by the
edge of the chisel. At length, hdwever, this work
of art, for such as it is, has been completed. " Birds
of Prey" is companioned by " Charlotte's Inheri-
tance." It is a statue and not a torso that we
are asked to take into our consideration. The pro-
duction we are here called upon to examine is a
whole and not merely a portion—it is a work in its
entirety and not alone a moiety of it. As such
we can at length regard it with something like
equanimity, nay, more than that, with some
thing like complacency. Reconsidering it thus in its
Miss Braddon's new work mey
creognileaprdetde,newsse do not hesitate to assert, as among
her happiest productions—her three principal works
being still considered by us to be " Aurora Floyd,'
"Lady Audley's Secret," and " The Doctor's \Vac.'
Side by side with those we now place these six volumes
of " Birds of Prey" and " Charlotte's Inheritance"
Henry Dunbar" and the rest of her en—
thralling romances following thereupon in long,
and brilliant array. Before commenting, how-
ever, more particularly upon the distinct
merits and peculiarities of this most recent
and most highly-elaborated among all Miss
Braddon's fictions, that is to say, upon " Birds
of Prey" and its sequel of "Charlotte's Inheritance,"
it is only common justice to Miss Braddon, in her
capacity as a popular novelist, that some reference,
however cursory, should bo here made to the extra-
ordinary attacks which have for some considerable
time past been directed against her widely-
extended and certainly well earned reputa-
tion. There iss one thing which her depre-
ciatory have never been able to forgive her,
and that is her popularity. Rail against them as
they may, her books sell. Whatever their estimate of
of her has been all along, she has somehow con-
trived to catch, and, what is more, to retain the ear
of the public. Not a book of hers has been a
failure. One of the most industrious writers of her
time, she has nevertheless not yet written herself
out. Her writings are already very voluminous.
And whatever—as yet—she has written, has been
eagerly read, has passed through elition after
edition, has been assailed with unmannerly abuse
by those whom her very success seems to have
transformed into her enemies, and has, nevertheless,
prospered as a literary venture, all that same un-
mannerly abuse to the contrary notwithstanding.
Allusion would hardly have been made by us to
these unseemly onslaughts upon Miss Braddon's
reputation as a writer of fiction, successful amongst
the most successful in this age of Popular
Novelists, only that in the midst of all
these scurrilous assailants of her popularity
[for that we take to be all the while her most
heinous offence], the most cruelly unjustifiable
among them all was one whose attack was directed
against her through the long-honoured medium
of the best and ablest of all our monthly maga-

zine3—" Maga," as it is called par excellence,
otherwise " Ebony," otherwise Blackwood. The ar-
Licle we are here referring to appeared some mouths
since, namely, during theaututnn of 1867, somewhere
about the very time when " Birds of Prey" having
run its course as a serial story in the pages of Bel-

graria, made its first appearance in three volumes
as a seperate publication. Had we been tempted
to descant upon the demerits as they then appeared
to us of " Birds of Prey," by writiug of it as a work

of art then obviously incomplete, we should have
taken occasion at the time to comment in the
strongest terms of reprobation, upon the