BOOKS AND BOOK-MEN

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 18, 30 April 1892, Page 450

BOOKS AND BOOK-MEN

UNDOUBTEDLY the most important book that has reached the colony lately is Lord Rosebery’s ‘ Life

of Pitt.’ It may be thought that enough ha J been written about that great defunct statesman, but this first book by Rosebery is of interest in showing the living rather than telling about the dead. Its interest lies not so much in the life of the subject as in the glimpses we get of the author’s mind and character. To every subject of the British Empire Lord Rosebery is perhaps the most interesting man—young man—that is of the present day. He is almost certainly destined one day to become Prime Minister, and the broad liberality of his views, together with great administrative power,coolness, and level-headedness, fithirn as no other man in the Liberal party is fitted to step into Mr Gladstone’s shoes.

All through the new life of Pitt, which is, by the way, written in very excellent literary style, the workings of the author's own mind are clearly seen. Self-revelatory passages abound, and in several instances the young author betrays himself most thoroughly. His contempt for his own order is strongly emphasised, for instance in the following passage, in which he speaks of the possible consequences of the removal of Pitt to the House of Lords :—‘ While London was illuminating for the King’s recovery Lord Chatham lay mortally ill. So grave was his malady that the hunters after Providence had fixed on Grenville as the new Minister. For Lord Chatham’s death, by the grim humour of our Constitution, would have removed Pitt from the Commons to the Peers. In the prime of life and intellect he would have been plucked from the governing body of the country, in which he was incomparably the most important personage, and set down as a pauper Peer in the House of Lords. It would have been as if the Duke of Wellington, in the middle of the Peninsular War, had been transferred by the operation of constitutional law to the government of Greenwich Hospital. The system in which Burke could find no flaw had ruled that default in the possession of an elder brother should be thus punished, and that the accident of an accident should have power to blight this great career.’

As a boy, Lord Rosebery was quiet and thoughtful. He was rather fond of listening whilst others were talking, and then astonishing his hearers by some smart and apropos remark. So great was his reserve, that his tutor, it is said, had on one occasion to tear up his verses in order to ensure his coming forward for a necessary interview in the class room. When his political career begun he was warned, and obeyed the warning, not to accept any of the subordinate appointments which Ministers are fond of offering to promising young men. When his party, through the fall of Khartoum and the death of Gordon, was in some discredit, Lord Rosebery wrote to Mr Gladstone, offering the services, which in prosperity he had not been willing to give.

< >UT of the new novels worth reading this season, undoubtedly that remarkable work of Mr Thomas Hardy, ‘ Tess of the D’Vrbevilles : A Pure Woman,’occupies an important position. The heroine, Tess, is a loveable character, with plenty of faults, bnt sufficient virtue to counteract them. The hero, Angel Clare, is curiously inconsistent, but this idea is well carried out by Mr Hardy. The sketches of rustic life are cleverly executed, and form a pleasant relief to the profound seriousness and ethical questions which underlie the story and crop up continually. As a study the book deserves attentive perusal. Possibly some people might term it too realistic, bnt it is an exceedingly interesting novel, and already much in demand.