Litchfield enquirer., 1873-05-08
f. ontributed.l LITE RARY.

NEVER AGAIN, by w. s. MAYO, NJ. D.
 o. P Putnay's Sons " r. The career
 of this book-notwithstanding its success
 and we believe it has already reached it's
 eleventh thousand-is a fair example of
 the evils of over-praise. Some of the
 critics were 30 delighted to find, at last,
 an American society novel worthy of the name, that they incontinently proclaimed -the work of Dr. Mayo, not only to be a
 good novel, but great novel; at least one
 one prominent journal devoting four col
 umns to enraptured, unmingled praises.
 The natural result followed. Because Dr.
 Mayo's book did not eclipse the works of
 Dickens. Thackery, Trollope, and George
 Eliot, in each of the lines in which each
 author is most famous, therefore it had
 no merits. Not only was it not great novel :; it was no novel, it was a caricature, it was bungling, it was improbable, it was too realistic, it was impossible, the author had confined him. self too much to facts and personalities, etc., etc. In truth we may not call 1t, with it's first critics, the great American novel of society, destined to take a per- manent place in one literature: but we can honestly commend it as a work of real originality, remarkable talent, and unfagging interest. sProbably Dr. Mayo is better fitted to write a society novel, both by nature, and habits of constant association in fashionable circles, than al- most any writer in America. As a general thlng, our authors, either by preference, or from necessity, mingle little in the purely fashionable world. They will not enter it to be shown of as lions, and they rarely have the wealth which would oth- erwise enable them to hold their own in it's precincts. Hence it is. probably, that to Dr. Mayo has fallen the task of writing the first novel of American society which has really betrayed the secrets of its charmed circles. We here find society as prstentious, as shansny, as ludicrous, as we have often been told it is; and at the same time we find it to be better, purer, more intelligent, and sweeter. than also we have been told.
 But interesting as this book is, and true as far as it goes, it does not go deep enough. Dr. Mayo is too materialistic always to find, or even to seek, the hidden springs of action. The possession of heart is sometimes as valuable to an au- thor as are the intellectual faculties, and it would certainly not have injured Never Again had there been 8 little more heart in it. Not that there is not love-making and very tender and real love; making too, but we do not like to have our model young man go to New York to make his fortune, and there in the space of a few weeks, forget that he ever had a devoted. self-sacrifcing mother, and younger brothers and sisters, whom he was bound by the ties of nature, as we'll as for that mothers sake, to make, in some degree, the sharers in his success. But this is, of course, only an oversight of Dr. Mayo's, and must be pardoned, as it is the sole defect he has made visible in the character of his hero. All the other characters. particularly MT. Ledgeral, Helen, MT. Shipper, Madame Steignity, MT. Whoppers. and MT. Baggs, are sd mirablv portrayed. We have all met them, and loved, tolerated, or disliked them, in their every day life. The plot is full of incident, without degenerating in to the sensational. though sometimes closely approaching it. As whole, the book will be found very entertaining, and if the author has not excelled the prac- ticed society novelists of the old world, it is rather from the excess of brains, than the deficiency. He fairly riots in ideas, grave, gay, sensible and witty.