United States or Saudi Arabia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From the plays of Aristophanes to the tales of Stevenson that mockery has been made familiar to all who are properly saturated with letters. Where, then, was the novelty in Lever's tale? Partly, I think, in a new seriousness in dealing with Potts's disease.
In Lever's time it was now or never; the chance not taken then would be lost for ever, and the English publicist of to-day is not in doubt that it is now too late. His heart-searchings need another formula of expression no longer a conditional assertion of doubt, but a positive questioning of impending fact, "is it too soon."
Philpot's pupils was a shy and very delicate boy, whose parents took a house at Littlehampton, and with whom he lived. His father was a fire-eating Irish baronet, who might have walked out of the pages of one of Lever's novels. His diet was as meager as that of an Indian fakir, though not otherwise resembling it.
Much of the time, I am sorry to say, was devoted to novels, but not those of a trashy sort. I read all of Bulwer's then published, Cooper's, Marryat's, Scott's, Washington Irving's works, Lever's, and many others that I do not now remember. Mathematics was very easy to me, so that when January came, I passed the examination, taking a good standing in that branch.
When Cervantes relented over Don Quixote, and Dickens relented over Pickwick, they did not become impartial: they simply changed sides, and became friends and apologists where they had formerly been mockers. In Lever's story there is a real change of attitude.
'Come on oot wi' me, an' I'll stan' ye a dizzen sliders. Macgregor, his countenance shining with lover's anticipation and Lever's soap, was more surprised than gratified to find Willie Thomson awaiting him at the close-mouth.
To begin with, Lever's stories are always concerned with the Quality; peasants only come in for an underplot, or in subordinate parts; and the gentry all through Ireland resemble one another within reasonable limits. It is different with the peasantry.
Gib is the wrong place to bring out a young lady, though Major Dalrymple's daughters, immortalized in Lever's novel, could not well have found a better hunting-ground. But then Major Dalrymple's daughters were regular garrison hacks so the irreverent subs of the Rovers used to call them and never stood a chance beside the daughters of the county families.
His author is not throwing a stone at a creature of another and inferior order, but making a confession, with the effect that the stone hits everybody full in the conscience and causes their self-esteem to smart very sorely. Hence the failure of Lever's book to please the readers of Household Words. That pain in the self-esteem nowadays causes critics to raise a cry of Ibsenism.
I speculated, as one or two specially reckless riders dashed past me, on what the chance would be of making a spring at the bridle of a horse going half as fast again as theirs, and bringing him gracefully on to his knees. I didn't like the idea. And yet had not a fellow done it in one of Kingsley's novels, and another in one of Lever's? At last I screwed myself up to it.
Word Of The Day