The Argosy — page 87: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

"Dees ree. re OUR LOG-BOOK. N a fiction of last century, which scarcely deserves the obscurity into which it has fallen, the heroine is represented as receiving important tidings from one of those airy puppets who then flounced and fluttered with such elaborate graces everywhere in good society. The messengers tongue far outran the lady’s love of witty comment, and his overlaid conceits at last exhausted her well-trained patience. “Oh, I prithee tell me what thou sawest, and perplex me not with fine words,” she cned; ‘give me the marrow of thy story in simplicity, as beseems its sombre matter, for men’s opinions I vow will be the death of me.” And the lady was doubtless nght, though she wore patches, and dashed the powder out of her wig when anything chanced to displease her. Opinions have often a high value; but we detract nothing from the weight we set on our own when we say that in these few pages we shall keep them in reserve as far as it is compatible with our design. We wish to tell what we have seen—to indicate the track on which we have voyaged, rather than to formally detail the incidents as they occurred: in other words, our aim is not systematic cniticizing of individual authors. Our criticisms shall be subordinate to our purpose of directing our readers to pleasant, healthy, elevating literature. Unconsciously, we may thus, perhaps, help to form some tastes, by simply leading the way and pointing out the beauties that lie on either hand. What is intolerable or injurious we shall pass by. Amid the varying impressions produced by the reading of many books, it is often hard to fix on a starting-point in giving one’s conclusive estimate of them. In our case this has been all the more difficult that our arrangement may, in a rough way, be taken to indicate the com- parative importance we attach to the works we have had under notice. But we have for a moment or two kept before our mind the nebulous “world unrealized” of our past month’s reading, and more and more clearly the longer we gaze one star emerges from the mass, grows in magnitude, and asserts its own sphere. This is “ Mabel’s Progress ”—a novel characterized by fine clear readings of character, excellent grouping, and, on the whole, well sustained plot-interest. In this latter particular, however, we should say the author has experienced most difficulty ; there being unmistakeable traces of self-consciousness, and frequent wavering between two paths. But there is a nimble, healthy nature behind all the conventionalities which occasionally hamper her, and she moves along steadily, exciting here to innocent laughter, and there, again, to tears, which are perhaps a little too much comicaocks _ EO mn