to insist upon their supposititious admission to the society of the hour. If at a loss to sustain himself in some whimsical argument, he would invoke Mr. Micawber's coöperation; and if desirous to escape from a disputatious antagonist, he would leave him to settle affairs with Mr. Bumble or Old Willett. I have seen him pledge Dick Swiveller in a cup of "the rosy," with an air of sincerity which would have imposed upon any listener not acquainted with the identity of that amiable scapegrace; and, the next moment, heard him chaff Sam Weller to the point of downright altercation. The personality of all his people was definitely established in his mind, and he vehemently resented the liberties often taken with them upon the stage. "I have been to Sadler's Wells, to see a piece with my name attached to it," he said, referring to The Golden Dustman, a dramatic version of Our Mutual Friend, "but I recognized nothing as my own except a part of the language." For the impersonation of his characters, he desired to have it understood, something more was needed than the recital of the dialogue he had put into their mouths. He wondered why the players did not come to his readings, and get a distinct idea of how their parts should be represented. On one occasion he changed the programme of an entertainment in order that an actor, who had vexed his temper by a fantastic interpretation of Mr. Toots, might have the opportunity of seeing how that simple gentleman ought really to carry himself and deliver the speeches set down for him.

It is not every writer who has Dickens's host of familiar spirits to respond to his summons, but all who put their soul into their labor have a retinue of visionary companions whom they love and cherish. Even the elder Dumas, whose stories were made up of adventure and intrigue, with only here and there an attempt at portraiture, would

shed tears over the memory of his genial giant, Porthos. Thackeray held many of the men and women he had created, including some who were not up to the highest mark of respectability, in the warmest corner of his heart. He knew them intimately, and could not conceal his annoyance when an artist, appointed to illustrate a certain book, produced a picture inconsistent with the objects which existed in his fancy. But of all modern authors, probably the most singular in his mental attitude toward the personages of his romances was Charles Reade. In speaking of the characters he had drawn he always appeared unconscious of their artificial origin, and referred to them as if their reality were an established fact. He did not recog nize any particular.connection between them and himself. I have repeatedly heard him discuss the idiosyncrasies of this or that member of his ideal family in precisely the tone he would have employed if they had been independent of him in every sense. When a friend remarked upon what he supposed to be the motives that impelled the heroine of Griffith Gaunt to a certain course of action, Reade exclaimed hastily and somewhat warmly, "I don't believe Kate Gaunt ever thought of such a thing." Then he became abstracted, and a few minutes after added, “It does n't seem credible that Kate Gaunt could be influenced in that way; but after all, who can tell?" Something was said to him about the ingenuity of one of Mrs. Ryder's schemes in the same novel. "Yes," answered Reade, "was n't it clever? You would n't imagine a woman like Ryder up to a dodge of that sort. Ryder had more brains than people gave her credit for." There was no appar ent recollection that her cleverness, whatever it might have been, was his own invention.

In Love Me Little, Love Me Long it is related that Lucy Fountain, when expecting to be drowned by the upsetting

of a pleasure-boat, whispered to David Dodd that if she must die she would have something to say to him just before they went down. Reade was asked what it was she intended to tell him. "I don't know," he replied, dreamily; "how should I know?" And, a little later, "What do you think she meant to say y? Nothing important, perhaps. Ah, well, Dodd may know; she probably told him some time." There was not a particle of affectation in this. Reade was the last man to attempt that kind of pretense, and if he had attempted it he could no more have succeeded than he could have flown to the moon. He was the embodiment of intellectual candor. Throughout his life he could hardly bear the sight of a little book called A Good Fight, the first version of the story afterward entitled The Cloister and the Hearth. The circumstances which led to its publication in the abbreviated shape are not generally known. The tale began to appear in Once a Week, the editor of which periodical excited Reade's displeasure by making sundry alterations in the text. In response to an emphatic protest, this editor insisted upon his right to introduce such changes as he thought proper, stating, however, that it was not his purpose to vary or interpolate without good cause. Whereupon the serial was speedily brought to a close, in a manner totally at variance with the original design. The proper development was impracticable in the space to which the author confined himself. But he could not rest until he had completed the work according to the first conception, and it was published under the new name with the least possible loss of time, the single slender volume being multiplied by four. There was no English issue of A Good Fight in book form, and the American edition is probably now extinct. For many a month the forced denouement weighed heavily on Reade's mind, and he never ceased to regret the diverting Gerard

and Margaret from their true career, and representing them in a light which he felt to be false and unnatural.

In A Terrible Temptation it suited Reade's humor to give a counterfeit presentment of himself. The individual brought forward as Mr. Rolfe was intended to be a minute delineation of the novelist, and in many respects it was thoroughly accurate and true. But he was reminded, as the story progressed, that this character was pursuing a line of conduct not in accordance with the sentiments of its prototype. "It can't be helped," was the response; "Reade might not take such a course, but Rolfe must." The figure which he had proposed to fashion after a distinct model had slipped out of his grasp. Something of the same kind happened with his portrayal of Peg Woffington, although in this instance he purposely allowed himself to take liberties with history and tradition. But the visionary Peggy of his fabrication, not the Peggy of record and fame, was the one he knew and treasured. I was with him the last time he saw her in theatrical guise, at the Haymarket. It was in 1881, when he was aged and feeble, but his delight in the fitting representation of his darling"-as he invariably called her - was as keen as ever. one point of the performance Marian Terry, who played Mabel Vane, was seen to be shedding tears. "I expected this," he said; "the Terrys always cry. Kate did, Ellen does, and now Marian follows suit." As the action advanced, Mrs. Bancroft, the Woffington of the evening, became similarly discomposed.

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This is more than I bargained for," said Reade, querulous in accent, but by no means ill-pleased. "Wilton [Mrs. Bancroft] is an old stager, and ought to keep herself in hand." Before the curtain fell the contagion had spread to the entire dramatis personæ, and the audience was moved, as audiences usually are, by the tender and pathetic closing

scene.

The venerable author was very happy. "Why, all your eyes are wet!" he exclaimed to those beside him. Be ing informed that he was not superior to the prevailing weakness, he remarked, looking vaguely into the distance before him, with an expression his countenance often assumed, "Well, well; Woffington has made many an old fellow weep,

bless the baggage!" He seemed quite unaware that he had been under a spell of his own weaving. Nor was it the exquisite interpretation that touched him most nearly. His thoughts were not with the skill of the dramatist, nor with the art of the accomplished actress, but, stretching back to another century, with his dear and lovely Peggy.

History. New York, The Planting and the Growth of the Empire State, by Ellis H. Roberts. (Houghton.) The latest issue in the American Commonwealths Series, and in two volumes. Mr. Roberts has made more of a detailed history than have the authors of most of the other volumes of this series, and his survey is a striking one, as it marshals the successive forces in the development of the great State. The work is written with moderation, and in the later portion with an intimate personal knowledge which no mere acquaintance with books could have afforded. The repressed glow flames out at last into a hearty, enthusiastic peroration which will kindle the reader, especially if he be a New Yorker. The Pharaohs of the Bondage and the Exodus, by Charles S. Robinson. (The Century Co.) Dr. Robinson prints lectures which he delivered in the course of his parish duties. He undertook to systematize the recent discoveries in Egypt, and he also desired to point morals. The result is a book which constantly annoys one by assuming that the preacher has the monopoly of moral reflection. Are not the people who are capable of following the facts capable also of seeing their moral force and drift? -A History of Modern Europe, by C. A. Fyffe. (Holt.) This volume, the second in the series, extends from 1814 to 1848. One advantage of Mr. Fyffe's method is that it keeps before the reader the conception of a Europe which acts and is acted upon by various forces, notwithstanding the political divisions. The historical view of states is well supplemented by an historical survey of a continental mass, and the interdependence of European states is probably more sharply marked in the period contained in this volume than it has been since. The Napoleonic movement produced an artificial union which left its im

press on nations for another generation. Mr. Fyffe's bold groupings are very effective. - A Day in Ancient Rome, being a revision of Lohr's Aus dem alten Rom, with numerous [sic] illustrations, by Edgar S. Shumway. (Heath.) Mr. Shumway has built upon the German original by using later information derived from the excavations still going on at Rome. The book is a lively sketch, but fully to enjoy it one needs to be something more than a moderate student of ancient literature and history. Possibly it will stimulate to such knowledge.

The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Cæsar to Diocletian, by Theodor Mommsen, translated by W. P. Dickson (Scribner's), is in effect a sequel to the author's as yet incomplete history of Rome. It is in two volumes, and provided with eight maps by Kiepert. The subject permits an independent treatment, and indeed occupies a more open field than would the volumes yet remaining to complete Mommsen's great work. The survey is a singularly important one, since it implies the beginning of modern national histories, and gives the reader the advantage of a preface, so to speak, to the several distinct treatises which he may follow in pursuing any special line of historical study. We notice that the translator is a little reluctant to accept Mommsen's reading of Jewish history. It is interesting to observe how sensitive Christian scholars, and especially Englishmen, are to any purely secu lar view of Jewish development. - A Short History of Parliament, by B. C. Skottowe. (Harpers.) The well-read student in English history will find this book an agreeable and lively illustration of political changes. Mr. Skottowe is by no means awed by Parliament. He carries himself with a somewhat humorous air, which does not become buffoonery, and in general writes like a spectator, ready to be

amused.

He may be congratulated on having made a dry subject lively without any sacrifice of real dignity. - The Story of the Normans, told chiefly in relation to their conquest of England, by Sarah Orne Jewett. (Putnams.) This book belongs to a series designed in a general way for young people, but there is little in Miss Jewett's treatment which especially calls up such an audience. We like best those portions, both at the beginning and end, and where she touches upon the artistic contribution of the Norman life, which enable her to lay aside for a while the strictly historical manner. Miss Jewett seems hardly to feel the more rugged force of the Norman character, or rather she is perhaps a little out of sympathy with Norman savagery, and more desirous of getting to the finer development. Her quiet style makes the book a somewhat amiable presentation of the subject, and she writes sometimes as if the work were an effort. A little sharper historical analysis might have given strength to her work, but we must nevertheless congratulate the author on the success which she has attained in a difficult task. - Another volume in the same series is the Story of Ancient Egypt, by George Rawlinson, with the collaboration of Arthur Gilman. Mr. Rawlinson brings to his task a scholar's knowledge, and thus relieves the book of much speculation, giving rather the facts which have been established than those which are required to make a symmetrical story. His attempt at the story form is fortunately slight. Perhaps he regards the poetry which is introduced as equivalent. — The Early Tudors, Henry VII., Henry VIII., by C. E. Moberly. (Scribners.) A new volume of Epochs of Modern History. Mr. Moberly appears to have struck a very happy mean in this book between the too general and popular and the too scientific. He is a fresh and agreeable writer, and the subjects with which he deals are full of interest to American as well as English readers. He does not treat England as an isolated section of Europe, but gives useful hints of the whole movement of thought in state at the important period covered by his book.

Poetry and the Drama. Translations from Horace, and a few original poems, by Sir Stephen E. DeVere. (George Bell and Sons, London.) A second and enlarged edition of an earlier publication, the author having increased the number of his translations from ten to thirty-one. It is a pity that the Latin which is given at the end of the volume had not been more conveniently placed opposite the corresponding translations. Sir Stephen's versions are rather paraphrases than translations; they have a certain dignity, but it is the dignity of leisurely form, rather than the wonderful dig

"Death takes a rush-light, but he gives a star!" Yet is not the immortality of Tennyson's dirge to be found in the expanse of light into which the mourner finally rises, and in Tennyson's case was not the element of time which brings the healing hour the salvation of his elegy? The Lady of Dardale and Other Poems, by Horace Eaton Walker (Browne & Rowe), is a volume containing six hundred pages of closely printed meaningless verse. It is seldom that we come across a more pathetic instance of self-delusion and misdirected assiduity. Daffodils, by A. D. T. W. (Houghton.) Mrs. Whitney's allusiveness of style serves a better purpose in verse than in prose. Her ear is not over-critical, and her verse thus sometimes is not very musical, but it is charged with a spiritual energy, and conveys her feeling upon deep subjects with a suggestiveness which will be appreciated by many. - Madrigals and Catches, by Frank Dempster Sherman. (White, Stokes & Allen.) Mr. Sherman differs from most young poets in not having passed through the dark tunnel in which so many get lost, and from which issue many doleful sounds. At least, there is no evidence in this book of a discovery of the general emptiness of life. On the contrary, there is a careless, bright humming of verse which disarms the critic. The verse is pretty light; it is sometimes almost an echo of an echo, and one is half inclined to be vexed that the author doing so well does not do better, does not carry his fancy into thought, occasionally, and give the touch of passion which thrills; but at any rate there is no mocking and there is no foolish cynicism. In Divers Tones, by Charles G. D. Roberts. (Lothrop.) There is an eagerness about many of these poems which is not far from a real poetic fire, and in general a fullness of life which is in contrast with the timidity and hesitation of much contemporaneous poetry. At the same time we cannot think that Mr. Roberts has yet separated the essential from the accidental in his poetic nature. At last we are to have a uniform and beautiful edition of Browning's poems, the first four volumes of which have been issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Six volumes will include all the works of the writer up to date. These are very elegant books in typography and all externals, being similar

in style to the Riverside Edition of Shakespeare. The work is printed from entirely new electrotype plates, and the poems, with the author's latest revision, are grouped in accordance with his own plan. The first volume contains a fine steel portrait of Browning, engraved by Wilcox from a recent photograph.

Fiction. The Confessions of Claud, by Edgar Fawcett. (Ticknor.) Mr. Fawcett impresses us as having made a somewhat violent effort in this book, and to have depressed himself, autobiographically, with unnecessary gloom. Somehow we do not seem to be going down into the unrelieved depths of human life, but into the cavernous abyss, several feet deep, of a city theatre. Even the satirical pictures of high life are somewhat solemn, and we come upon such three-storied names as Mrs. Trinitysteeple with a feeling that there is suicide from the top of them. Drops of Blood is the somewhat curdling title of a volume of short stories by Lily Curry. (J. S. Ogilvie & Co., New York.) They all have astounding situations, and movements as rapid as a lightning express; there is blood of some kind on each one, and by a grim sort of humor the last page of the book closes with an advertisement of Sapolio. One needs lots of it to clean off with, and yet, and yet, there is, even if misdirected, a trace of power now and then, which makes one regret that the author has not a little less sanguinary mood. The Feud of Oakfield Creek, a novel of California life, by Josiah Royce, (Houghton) has the somewhat uncommon quality of ending well; that is to say, the climax of the interior story coincides with a climax of exterior events. There is also at least one good character in the study of a California millionaire, and there is a heartiness and general breeziness about the book which reconciles one a little to the somewhat wasteful character of the language. The au thor seems to have one of those expansive minds which are curious of everything that momentarily interests them, so that their pleasure is rather to turn a subject round than to carry it forward. The result is repetition, a lack of real proportion, and an inordinate amount of speculation in place of action. The Old House at Sandwich, by Joseph Hatton. (Appleton.) An English story of American life, mainly. A traveler in America, Mr. Hatton makes use of his travels to work out more effectively a conventional plot. He is lively, conversational, and carries his story along in a negligée manner. It is conventionalism which has taken off the dress coat and put on the Oxford jacket. —Mrs. Hephaestus and other short stories, together with West Point, a comedy in three acts, by George A.

Baker. (White, Stokes & Allen.) Mr. Baker seems to have read The Tinted Venus in preparation for his first story, but he somehow does not succeed in creating much of an illusion with his Venus. - A Child of the Century, by John J. Wheelwright. (Scribners.) Mr. Wheelwright has written an entertaining book, and perhaps we ought not to ask more. Entertaining books are not so common that one should make us querulous. All the same, we can't help wishing that Mr. Wheelwright were more than an amateur instantaneous photographer. — The Strike in the B― Mill (Ticknor) is a story in which the too common incidents of a conflict between manufacturers and their hands are given with fairness. The moral of the book is the safe and desirable one that employers and employed have a pretty equal share of human nature, and one of the remedies for the present disorder is found in a methodical readjustment of manufactures and agriculture, by which the lands of New England should be reclaimed. The book is honestly written, and has the force of reason rather than of special literary art. — Juanita, a romance of real life in Cuba fifty years ago, by Mary Mann. (Lothrop.) Mrs. Mann has woven pictures of life under the slave system, drawn from personal observation, with scenes of imaginary action. There is almost a quaintness about the book, an old-fashioned air; but we cannot help thinking that if she had confined herself to actual record of what she saw, she would have made a more valuable book. - Roberts Brothers have added two volumes to their admirable series of translations from Balzac, The Country Doctor, and Two Brothers. —The Startling Exploits of Dr. Quies, translated from the French of Paul Célière by Mrs. Cashel Hoey and Mr. John Lillie (Harpers), is a capital book of the Jules Verne kind and very spiritedly illustrated. Dr. Quies's whimsical adventures are calculated to please boy-readers between sixteen and sixty years of age. - Beauchamp's Career (Roberts Brothers) is, we believe, the final volume of the American edition of George Meredith's novels. Beauchamp's Career is regarded by many of Meredith's admirers as his best work. The curious thing about Meredith's admirers is that no two groups agree on the same masterpiece. Mr. Crawford is so prolific a novelist as to make it difficult for a critic to do more than to record that author's publications. Mr. Crawford's latest story-and it is one in which some of his very best qualities are shown-is entitled Saracinesca, and deals with that Roman life which Mr. Crawford knows more intimately than any living writer of fiction; in English, we mean. (Macmillan & Co.)