Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

Gifted with a rare variety of talents, Lover heartily enjoyed the exercise of each, and found his chief pleasure in their development. He worked incessantly at painting, writing or musical composition—worked for love of the work, not from uneasy effort or outside pressure. In this respect he presents a happy contrast to his fellow-countryman and brother-humorist Charles Lever, whose biography, published some months ago, left a painful impression on the mind in its view of a man of genuine talent and attractive qualities living in a feverish way and writing constantly against his inclination, too often below his powers. As writers the two stand side by side. Lover had more versatility of talent, taking him partly outside the field of literature. He made the most of his powers: nothing which he has written gives the idea that he might have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the book before us in praise of a friend and physician:

  Whene'er your vitality  Is feeble in quality,  And you fear a fatality    May end the strife,  Then Dr. Joe Dickson  Is the man I would fix on  For putting new wicks on    The lamp of life.

In his stories Lover relied less on drollery of incident and indulged more in play upon words than Lever, but the humor of both is essentially of the same kind and drawn from the same source. Compared with much of our American humor, it has a spontaneousness, and above all a lovable quality, that ours lacks. The boy who has laughed over Lorrequer and Handy Andy is apt to look back at them not merely with amusement, but with a feeling of camaraderie and even tenderness. He has laughed with them as well as at them—has somehow gained through the laughter a glimpse of the writer which inspires liking and respect.

New England Bygones. By E.H. Arr. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

E.H. Arr has produced a very pleasant book by a simple effort of memory. By letting the mind's eye travel back carefully and vigilantly over the scenes of a youth passed in a rural part of New England, and taking notes of its journey, she has made a graphic picture of life in that corner of the country forty years ago. Not a few men and women who were "raised" there have carried away, bit for bit, the same reminiscences, so exactly does one New England landscape resemble another, in details of foreground at least. The same description of orchard, stone walls or old well will fit any farm in Maine or Massachusetts, and fond recollection sniffs the same odor of sputtering doughnuts through the kitchen-door, whether it carries one back to the Green hills or the White. Recollections are alike, but impressions differ, one class of minds retaining the sense of bareness and gloom which is so continually insisted upon in some New England books, and others, as in the book before us, dwelling lovingly upon the wholesome flavor, pungent yet mellow, which gives New England country life a distinctive charm unlike anything else either in this or the mother-country. Even the Sunday is pleasant to look back upon to E.H. Arr; which is probably one instance of the fact that retrospective pleasure is sometimes totally disproportionate to present enjoyment.

The author is more successful in her treatment of landscape than of figures. Her village people are shown too much under one aspect: she possesses none of the humor which dares to take the most opposite traits, the grotesque and the beautiful alike, and blend them in a sound, artistic whole. Her characters are evidently drawn from life, but we miss the many little touches which would make them alive. An essay on "Old Trees" contains some of the best work in the book, with its charming sketch of an old orchard, bringing to view the twisted trees and even the irregularities of the ground, and to the palate a sharp after-taste of yellowing apples picked up from tufts of matted grass. After all, the New England of the writer's bygones does not differ essentially from the New England of to-day, though a more vivid study of life would perhaps have brought out more contrasts between the two.

Books Received.

Homo Sum: A Novel. By Georg Ebers. From the German by Clara Bell. New York: William S. Gottsberger.

Unto the Third and Fourth Generation: A Study. By Helen Campbell. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert.

Allaooddeen, a Tragedy, and Other Poems. By the author of "Constance," etc. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Third-Term Politics: A Lecture. By Horace White. New York: Independent Republican Association.

The American Bicycler. By Charles E. Pratt. Illustrated. Boston: Press of Rockwell & Churchill.

Alva Vine; or, Art versus Duty. By Henri Gordon. New York: American News Company.