The Sun. — 1865-08-07 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  Cheap Edition of << The Doctor's Wife."  The Sixth Edition of Miss Braddon's last-novelbut-one, " The Doctor's Wife," has recently been issued by the Messrs. Maxwell and Company as a companion volume to the already well-known six shilling issue of her earlier and, some among them, more famous works—" Lady Audley's Secret," " Aurora Floyd," " Henry Dunbar," and " Eleanor's Victory." To many bookshelves this re-issue, in a complete form, of a very charming story will be especially welcome—most of all, because we cannot but still recognise in " The Doctor's Wife" the opening up of a new, a higher, and a purer phase in the general development, and advancement, and elevation, and expansion of Miss Braddon's genius as a novelist. In some respects the exposition here given of the character of the Doctor's wife, is Miss Braddon's most remarkable performance. Isabel —first of all known as Miss Sleaford, afterwards as Mrs. Gilbert—lsabel of the black hair and the' yellow eyes, the poetry-loving, novel-reading Isabel, who is enamoured (as far as the preservation of the chastity of her honour will permit) of the author of " The Alien's Dream," meaning thereby Roland Lansdell, of Mordred Priory, Midlandshire —this all but lackadaisical, mooning, meditative builder of Chateaux en Espagne, is here described by the novelist in all the fluctuations of her sensitive temperament, as only a skilled student in the mysteries of human nature could describe anything so subtly variable as Isabel Gilbert's, nee Sleaford's, character. In regard to Isabel alone, the book is a study. But other characters there arc in " The Doctor's Wife" almost equally well discriminated. Sigismund Smith, for example, the sensation author, contributor of raw-head and bloody-bone romances to the penny serials—nothing in its way could very well be more thoroughly humourous than that delineation ! From first to last, Sigismund Smith is excellent. So, too, for that matter is the little rough outline here given at the opening of the book of that chuckle-headed youth, Horace Sleaford, the arch-representative or exemplar of that horrible genus, abhorred alike by men and boys, the genus hobbledehoy ! George Gilbert again—lsabel's unsympathetic husband—the provincial medical practitioner of Graybridge, cranching his onions and radishes in so thoroughly heartless a manner during his bread and cheese suppers—every touch in regard to George Gilbert is artistically good, because perfectly in keeping ! Mr. Jeffson, too, the country surgeon's odd-man (in every sense) with his high opinion, from schooldays upwards, of the merits of " Master Jarge"—Mr. Jeffson is another genuine original in his way ! Highly as we admired the story altogether upon its first appearance, it improves, we find, upon a reperusal of it. A sure token, as we take it, of any book's intrinsic excellence. The second of Phiz's illustrations to the present edition of " The Doctor's Wife " tends rather, we fear, to give an erroneous notion of the book at starting ; for, while the tale does comprise, towards the close of it, a murder among its incidents, it is altogether, what might be designated as—among all Miss Braddon's works—the least sensational, according to the popular and ordinary acceptance of that Americanism.  How to Spend a Month in Ireland. By Sir Cusack Roney. Pp. 168. W. 11. Smith and Son.  Among all the pocket-companion guide-books to Ireland, this one of Sir Cusack Roney's is incomparably the best, the compactest, the most completely up-to-time in the accuracy and minuteness of its information. It is gossipping and practical —amusing and instructive—pleasantly anecdotal and yet thoroughly business-like throughout. It is, in an abbreviated way, for Ireland at one and the same time a Murray and a Bradshaw.  Dr. Webster's Complete Dictionary of the English Language—(Bell and Daldy)—is, in this its eighth half-crown instalment, brought down to the word " Scantling" upon page 1176, so that three-fourths of the projected work are now actually and very subsantially indeed, before the public. Already we have seen enough of the book to recognise in it a very marvel among compilations of this character— at once the completest and the cheapest dictionary of the English language ever published.