The Portland daily press., 1881-01-18
Beaconsfield's Last Novel.

oOooSO4oI1OlI 4tSU NOVEL.
Editors Easy Chair in Harper's Magazine for Feb
ruary.l
1t is thoroughly and amusingly characters.
tic of his whole career. He has been Prime
Minister of England, and for time ona of the
most conspicuous figures in the world He has
suddenly encountered an unexpected and tre-
mendous political defeat, and, we'll past three
score and ten, retires to private life. An old
and renowned statesman in retirement is one
of the gravest and most respectable Of cha-ac-
ters to the imagination, If he be not chafing
and angry, and plotting impotently to regain
power. But the gartered hero of the Berlin
Treaty, and its queer "peace with honor"
without moping or vanishing into silent and
dignihed privacy, turns off later Vivian Grey,
Young Duke, Coninssby, Tancred and Lo-
THAR, all truff1es and Tokay, and coronets and
prime ministers, and cloth Of gold and ban
quets and beakers. Instead of commencing us
TO Sir William Temple in contemplative re-
tirement amid his cabbages at Sheen, or mus
ing upon the ruins of empires and the vanity
of human wishes, the old necromancer, with
The air OF Brummel rediUiUus or Major Penden-
mis-, with fresh padding, introduces the amused
reader into the modern world of SardanaDalus
and Hop-o' '-my-Thumb, and the whole fairy
realm, where the trees bear pearls, and the
rivers run emeralds, and every bantam is q
peacock.
The most comical part of the performance is
that there are readers who take Endymion
ana It's author du grand Serieur. They speak
OF him and his books gravely. They read the
Young Duke and Sihyl as if they were pictures
OF life and character, when they are only sto-
ries OF the Fair One with Golden Locks and
the little tailor of Cashgar They are novels
as Phantasmion is a novel. They are ei ter
tanning and brilliant, indeed; they are the rec
reations of golden youth grown old, who has
seen hne society in his day, and eaten soup
with golden spoon, and who has a naturs 1
passion for fligree buttons and gorgeous up
holstery. But novels are pictures of life and
portrayals OF human character and emotion
Amelia is novel, and the Heart of Mid-Lo-
THAN, and the Newcomes, and Adam Bede.
Endymion is as much like novel as St. Barbe
is like Thackeray, AS novel, one cabinet
picture by Miss Austen is worth all the Disrae-
Il collection. Yet his works are very illustra-
tive of himself. They must always have the
attraction which his personality gives them
Ii Sir Robert Walpole or Lord Chatham had
written stories they would be read because of
their authors. George Eliots tales have an
enormous sale because of their excellence
Lord Beaconsfeld's because he wrote them.
Endymion as the work of an unknown writer
would ha 70 been thought dnll imitation of
the old politico-fashionabl novel; as LORD
% eho OoPyilSut 10 SOlu lOr Sixty
thousand dollars. The London Times paws
five thousand for copy two or three days in
advance, and fifty thousand copies are sold in
the United States within two or three days af-
ter publication.
The ordinary novel-reader must read it, of
course, but he or she cannot be really pleased
with it, The student Of human nature can
find to study in it only the Earl of Beacons-
field, X. G. Prince Flo'estan, Lord and Lady
Roehampton, Lord and Lady Montfort, Mr..
NeuchateI, Zenoba, Agrippna, and the rest
are not men and women. They are names
used by an ex-Prime Minister of England in
the composition of treatise to show how
sweet thing it is to have piles of precious
stones and political place, the precious
stones being acquired by other peoples labor
and the place not by ability, but by intrigue.
Endymion is the kind of book that clever
Bubb Doddington with taste for politics
mig ht have written, and might greatly delight
to read. But to the general novel reader,
without familiar knowledge of English poll
tics, the only interest of the book must be its
descriptions of fine society. There is properly
no plot and no development of character.