The Quarterly Review 1888. July & October [antikvár]

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. Aut. L—Robert Elsmere. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. London, 1888. Sixth Edition. TI "IHE success of this novel is the most interesting, and in I some respects the most instructive, literary event of the present year. It is an instance of Mr. Gladstone's keen eye for popular sensation that he at once threw himself into the stream of current interest in the book ; and this interest was no doubt augmented by the article which he published in one of those monthly Reviews, which devote themselves to the impartial dissemination of truth and falsehood. But the book had run rapidly through two or three editions before it had received this impulse. In six months it had gone through five editions in its original form of three closely-printed volumes ; and it is now commanding a further sale in the cheaper and more popular form of a single volume. A success of this kind is proof that a book has touched some general and deep source of public feeling, and has given vivid expression to thoughts or interests which are widely spread. Of the thoughts and interests which have been touched in the present case there can be no doubt. The main subject of the book is very different from that of an ordinary novel. There is, indeed, a good deal of love and passion and social life in it; and these perennial sources of human interest are the material of several beautiful and brilliant passages. The love of Robert Elsmere and of Catherine his wife is, with one grievous exception, a very 'a/--gracious and tender picture. The series of struggles in Catherine's mind ; the transition from her simple life of religious and domestic devotion in a Westmoreland dale, to the deep and ^ -gentle love of married life in a Surrey vicarage; the wrench 07, v/hich her heart and soul undergo when her husband's abjura- .; , . tion of Christianity obliges her to follow him, in solitude and bitterness of spirit, to an unknown and uncongenial career in Vol. 167.—iVo. 334. T London;