BOOKKTIMERS AN INHUMAN DOCUMENT. то criticise W. H. Mallock's strange story, "A Human Document" (Cassell), on the ground of its morality would be to fall into the very trap which the author has temptingly set in his elaborate Introduction. He asserts, with something of the air of a discoverer, that good and evil as realities are everywhere in the closest contact, in the same people, society, motives and actions; and that his story presents a picture equally complete of both. It is, therefore, just as moral or . immoral as life is, and if you don't like it, your disagreement is with life and not with Mr. Mallock. He has shown in previous books that if it were left to him he could make a better world; but he and you will have to take it as it is, in reality and in books, until the management of terrestrial affairs is fully turned over to him. In the meantime is it not better to look at novels as works of a certain sort of art, and let the moral question take the background? It is not at all likely that people who are profoundly interested in morality as an abstraction will read this or any other modern novel for anything but amusement. They take their morality in a more serious dress. * * THE task which the author avowedly set for himself is rather a huge one. He has tried to lay bare the hearts of a man and woman of extreme culture and refinement who are swept away from their principles and conventional standards by a real and serious passion. The author's belief is that each is raised to a more exalted plane of living by being faithful to the highest inspiration of Nature, before which laws and customs are worthless barriers. Now the test of the book as a work of art is that it shall persuade and convince the reader, for the time being, that this is true; that he shall follow the man and woman with increasing admiration for their fidelity to an ideal. If we may be allowed to speak for the gentle reader, we don't believe he pays any such tribute to Mr. Mallock's talent as an artist. He is probably charmed with the rhythmic style, the keen aphorisms, and the worldly wisdom of the first half of the book. For a time he shares in the poetic exaltation of Grenville and Irma, in the presence of what is beautiful in nature and pathetic in life. The growth of sympathy, the unfolding of new possibilities in companionship, the release of a charming woman's heart from dire imprisonment-all these the reader sees with increasing interest and approval. But when the result of this exaltation is to make the man sacrifice an honorable career in a reckless manner, resolve to lead an idle life that he may be near the woman he loves, and then spend days and weeks in fruitless fretting over her necessary or imaginary inconsistencies, you begin to have contempt for him. His whole adventurous career in skulking around Vienna, London, and out-of-the-way Hungarian castles in order to meet another man's wife, without arousing suspicions, is true enough to a certain phase of life, but one is never expected to see anything heroic in the man who does it. If one day he is shot, you simply say he took the risks of the game and lost. NEAR ENOUGH. She: YOU SAY THAT YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE. HOW NEAR HAVE YOU COME TO IT? He: I WAS MARRIED ONCE. What is Love? By Felix Dahn. Translated by Kannida. Chicago: N. C. Smith. The Old South. By Thomas Nelson Page. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. The Jew at Home. By Joseph Pennell, with illustrations by the author. New York: D. Appleton and Company. The Last Words of Thomas Carlyle. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Moonblight. By Dan Beard. With illustrations by the author. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company. "D° you believe in Christian Science ?" "Not this week. There is so much to believe in just now that I've had to divide up my time. One week I believe in Christian Science, and the next in rain-making, and the next in monkey-talk, and the next in objective apparitions. Then I take a week off to rest and not believe in anything, and then I begin again. It's a good way, and helps lots to keep a man's faith from getting over-strained." |