New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-07-24
DEAD MEMS BONES
Uses TO Which THEY are Put by
the Modern N0Uelist.

THE CAsTAWAY. Three Great Men Ruined in
One Year-A Sing, Cad and a CaStaw iy,- by
ttt,1,,1.'- t1t-;s,, rs,,r 80, a. la, nannIis.
The Bobbs- Merrill Company.
THE BARROW ENIGMA. BY Melvin l. severy.
Illustrated By c. D. Williams. l2mo. PIP. vii
"a. Dodd. Mead & Co.
MEMS SONS ,Ry Al.dis Dunbar. With eight
ILLUSTRATIONS by Myra Lgxmoore Emo. pp Il.
In the case OF The Castaway." the bones
are chiefly those Of Lord Byron Miss Rives
has made an heroic effort TO clothe them with
substantial flesh. to make them move as once
they moved in 4 life Of wonderful romance.
TO make them in short the bones Of a living
hero. But alas for her temerity! The George
Gordon Of her novel Is about much alive
as those self-sare bones aforesaid We see
in these pages not man, but q nlannikin, an
artificial fabric tricked out N what Miss Rves
has inferred from her reading to be the airs
and graces OF the famous poet She does not
for a moment persuade that she has, IN
imagination. after the fashion OF the true ere
alive writer seen her hero face 10 face, or
learned really 10 sympathlze with him In
deed, II IS incredible that any one who has
deeply felt the sombre fascination OF By
rons character. has realized the essential dig
$4,000
the central figure IN a melodramatc bit OF
fiction The Castaway'' displeases. not sim
ply because 1t fails TO give a convincing por
trait OF Byron. but because il makes capital
out Of the personality and career OF a great
poet puts TO trivial uses the history OF man
whose fame can never lose something OF the
note OF tragedy.
There Is a death in the first chapter Of THE
.to+l
the readers attention is Immediately assured
This, in spite OF the fact that the daughter OF
the murdered man is capable OF speaking to
one who would be Of service In the crisis in
the following style 1T should evince but poor
appreciation OF the ability you have already
shown should l fail TO follow your slightest
suggestion II is all can offer you by way
OF thanks for the kind interest you have
taken" It is hard to follow an author who
put such neatly turned sentences In the
mouth of a woman who has just suffered a
tremendous shock But Mr.. Severy is in
genIous From the corpse of John Henry Oar
he leads his hero trail after an
other and so well does he manage the plot
that not until Just the right moment Is the
reader vouchsafed the dimmest hint as to the
way in which the enigma in question is to be
solved very clever detective story is this.
one OF the cleverest in the minor ranks of
books OF the sort which we have encountered
in a long time
The author OF THE Sons O. Cormac' writes
OF Irish heroes long since gone to their rest !
the legendary figures Of whom we have been
hearing so much In the writings of the new
Celtic school. Happily Mr. Dunbar is free
from the disposition of most of the members
Of that school to be grand. gloomy and pc
cuiar. He represents his stories being told
by an old gardener to some children. and
while he reproduces the brogue Of this sup
posititious narrator he does not make it a
bore On the contrary his romantic tales are
SO smoothly told that notice the dialect |
in them only to enjoy them the more. Mr.. !
Dunbar Is as spontaneous actual gar
dener with a we'll stored memory and q love |
for talking to children could be- and we de- |
Light In every page of his unaffected book