With what personal charm he invested his romances! He is the literary progenitor of a long line of young men, artistic in taste, a trifle sceptical as to final causes, wealthy, worldly, widely cultured, and aristocratic. The staler art of Oscar Wilde gives the individual of Mallock petrified into a rather unpleasant type. Walter Pater's fear that the word "hedonist" would be suspected as immoral came true in Wilde's books. The heroes of A Romance of the Nineteenth Century, Tristram Lacy and The New Republic have a strong family resemblance. They were supermen before Nietzsche was discovered. They are prepossessed by theological problems, they love the seven arts, and are a trifle decadent; though when action is demanded they do not fail to respond. As stories go, A Romance is the best of Mallock's; the canvas of Tristram Lacy is larger, the intrigue less intense, and the characterisation more human. The unhappy girl, Cynthia Walters, who so shocked our mothers, is not duplicated in Tristram. Mr. Mallock wrote a preface to the second edition of A Romance, a superfluous one, for the book needs no apology. It never did. It is as moral as Madame Bovary, though not as pleasant. The Triangle is a revered convention in French fiction, but the naturalistic photographs in A Romance are not agreeable, and Cynthia's epitaph, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. It is in the mode ironical almost projected to the key of cynicism. No doubt the leisurely gait of these fictions would be old-fashioned to the present generation, with its preference for staccato English, morbid sensationalism, and lack of grace and scholarship. Mr. Mallock is a scholar and a gentleman who writes a prose of distinction, and he is also a thinker, reactionary, to be sure, but a tilter at sham philosophies and sham religions. Last, but not least, he has abundant humour and a most engaging wit. Possibly all these qualities would make him unpopular in our present century.
What a gathering of choice spirits in The New Republic: Matthew Arnold, Professor Jowett--a fine character etching--Huxley, Tyndall, Carlyle, Pater--rather cruelly treated--Ruskin, Doctor Pusey, Mrs. Mark Pattison, W. K. Clifford, Violet Fane--how the author juggles with their personalities, with their ideas. It's the cleverest parody of its kind. Otho Laurence and Robert Leslie are closely related in aspirations to Ralph Vernon, Alie Campbell, and the priest Stanley of A Romance. As portraits, those of the Premier Lord Runcorn in Tristram Lacy, and the faded dandy, poet, and man about town, Lord Surbiton, of A Romance, are difficult to match outside of Disraeli. Epigrams drop like snowflakes. The décor is always gorgeous--Monte Carlo, Provence, Cap de Juan, countries flowing with milk and honey, marble ruins, the ilex, cypress, and palm. Palaces there are, and inhabited by languid, fascinating young men who anxiously examine in the glass their expressive countenances, asking the Lord whether He is pleased with them. And lovely girls, charming, and in Cynthia Walters's case a lily with a cankered calyx. Then there are the Price-Bousefields and the inimitable Mrs. Norham, "celebrated authoress and upholder of the people." One of the notable blackguards in fiction is Colonel Stapleton; and the Poodle and the new-rich Helbecksteins--a complete picture-gallery may be found in these interesting novels. Romance rules; poetry, tenderness in the appreciation of the eternal feminine, and a pity for living things. Poor Cynthia Walters, the "dear, dead woman," lingers in the memory, as modern as yesterday, and as effaced as a daguerreotype.