n." "Adonijah" is
simply the feeblest kind of love story, supposed to be instructive, we
presume, because the hero is a Jewish captive and the heroine a Roman
vestal; because they and their friends are converted to Christianity
after the shortest and easiest method approved by the "Society for
Promoting the Conversion of the Jews;" and because, instead of being
written in plain language, it is adorned with that peculiar style of
grandiloquence which is held by some lady novelists to give an antique
coloring, and which we recognize at once in such phrases as these:--"the
splendid regnal talent, undoubtedly, possessed by the Emperor Nero"--"the
expiring scion of a lofty stem"--"the virtuous partner of his
couch"--"ah, by Vesta!"--and "I tell thee, Roman." Among the quotations
which serve at once for instruction and ornament on the cover of this
volume, there is one from Miss Sinclair, which informs us that "Works of
imagination are _avowedly_ read by men of science, wisdom, and piety;"
from which we suppose the reader is to gather the cheering inference that
Dr. Daubeny, Mr. Mill, or Mr. Maurice may openly indulge himself with the
perusal of "Adonijah," without being obliged to secrete it among the sofa
cushions, or read it by snatches under the dinner-table.

* * * * *

"Be not a baker if your head be made of butter," says a homely proverb,
which, being interpreted, may mean, let no woman rush into print who is
not prepared for the consequences. We are aware that our remarks are in
a very different tone from that of the reviewers who, with perennial
recurrence of precisely similar emotions, only paralleled, we imagine, in
the experience of monthly nurses, tell one lady novelist after another
that they "hail" her productions "with delight." We are aware that the
ladies at whom our criticism is pointed are accustomed to be told, in the
choicest phraseology of puffery, that their pictures of life are
brilliant, their characters well drawn, their style fascinating, and
their sentiments lofty. But if they are inclined to resent our plainness
of speech, we ask them to reflect for a moment on the chary praise, and
often captious blame, which their panegyrists give to writers whose works
are on the way to become classics. No sooner does a woman show that she
has genius or effective talent, than she receives the tribute of being
moderately praised and severely criticised. By a peculiar therm