Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/173

166 by the renowned and effervescent volumes devoted to "Mothers and Daughters"—of which the critical Phœbus of "Blue-Stocking Revels," who confessed he sometimes wished Mrs. Gore’s three volumes were two, was fain to protest,Another year, and she produced ""The Fair of May Fair," a series of a rather fade and passé aspect. After "Mrs. Armytage" there came (1838) "The Heir of Selwood”—a complicated story, which involves both reader and writer in a labyrinth that once or twice threatens a "fix"—illustrative of the wrongful acquisition of a noble estate, and the perplexities of a childless heroine, who adopts a strange infant as her own, and anon finds herself a mother de facto as well as de jure. In this tale Mrs. Gore is more restrained and serious than usual. Neat came "The Cabinet Minister," represented by a Sir Robert Crewe—one of those official veterans whom she describes with such gusto; the time being that of the Carlton House regency, and the theme one to which, in its salient points, she is marvellously au fait. The same year (1839) appeared "Preferment; or. My Uncle the Earl"—full of satiric touches, and supported by one or two capital full-length figures. It has been said, that so faithful are her portraits, that it is by no means difficult for one moving in the same circles to detect the individuals from whom particular traits are drawn; yet are they not portraits, nor, what is still more common, caricatures of well-known personages; the peculiarities only are derived from distinct originals, and combined with general characteristics. "Her pages are a complete Rochefoucauld of English high life." But the satire is not crabbed, the irony is not morose, the ridicule is not snappish: for this we may take Apollo’s word at the Feast of the Violets,

In 1840 we had ""The Dowager; or, the New School for Scandal," of which the name is its own interpreter, being a motley and high-coloured picture of the results of babbling and gossip, the prolific seeds sown by Mrs. Candours and Sir Benjamin Backbites. The dowager herself. Lady Delmaine, is one of our author’s most felicitous characters; but, with one or two exceptions, the others are pasteboard, and that of the flimsiest make; and the story is rattled through with a careless rapidity, and overflow of colloquial levity, which makes us approve once again the criticism of the divinity afready appealed to;If we have wished it more than once, may Mrs. Gore and her tutelar god forgive us!

Her familiarity with Parisian life and manners found room for lively display in "Grenville; or, a Season in Paris." which was succeeded in 1842 by a novel, where the scene is laid in Russia, viz. "The Ambassador's Wife," spoilt by haste and recklessness of construction, but clever, piquant, and