Volume 101 — OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Reading edition
There is a judicial review of GEORGE MEREDITH's work in the Quarterly for October—masterly, too, quoth the Baron, as striking a balance between effect and defect, and finding so much to be duly said in high praise of the diffuse and picturesquely-circumnavigating Novelist through whose labyrinthine pages the simple Baron finds it hard to thread his way, and yet keep the clue. When the unskippingly conscientious peruser of GEORGE M.'s novels is most desirous that the author shall go ahead, GEORGE, like an Irish cardriver, will stop to "discoorse us," and at such length, and so diffusely, and with such a wealth of eccentric word-coming and grammar-dodging, that at last the Baron gasps, choked by the rolling billows of sonorously booming or boomingly sonorous words, battles with the waves, ducks, and comes up again breathlessly, wondering where he may be, and what it was all about. "Story! God bless you, I haven't much to tell, Sir!" says the luxuriantly fanciful novel-grinder. And he hasn't much, it must be owned, for essenced it would go into half a volume, or less, and all over and above is pot-fuls of rich colour, spilt about almost at haphazard, permutations and combinations, giving the effect of genius. Which—genius it is; but a little of it goes a great way, in fact, a very great way, wandering and straying until at length the Baron calls for his Richard Feverel, and says, "This is the best that GEORGE MEREDITH has written, as sure as my name is
"THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS."
Bard v. Bard.
There was a poor Poet named CLOUGH, Poet SWINBURNE declares he wrote stuff. Ah, well, he is dead! 'Tis the living are fed, By log-rollers, on butter and puff.
A SUGGESTION.—In a new poetical play at the Opera Comique there is a good deal of hide-and-seek. It might have had a second title, and been appropriately called The Queen's Room; or, Secret Passages in the Life of Mary Stuart.
STREET IMPROVEMENTS.
["If we really used the Thames Embankment sensibly and liberally, it would abound with handsome shops and cheerful cafés a and volksgartens, with newspaper kiosks and long lines of bookstalls."—Daily Telegraph, Oct. 21.]
BLENDIMUS!
SPORT!
Cockney Sportsman (eager, but disappointed). "I SAY, MY BOY, SEEN ANY BIRDS THIS WAY?"
'Cute Rustic (likewise anxious to make a bag). "OH, A RARE LOT, GUV'NOR—A RARE LOT—JUST FLEW OVER THIS 'ERE 'EDGE, AND SETTLED IN THAT 'ERE FIELD, CLOSE TO SQUIRE BLANK'S RICKS."
[Grateful Cockney Sportsman tips boy a shilling, and goes hopefully after ... a flock of Starlings!