Pascarel: Only a Story. By "Ouida," author of "Tricotrin,"
"Folle-Farine," "Under Two Flags," etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
& Co.

The genius of "Ouida" is _sui generis_, and must in part create the
standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are so different from
the common type of modern novels that they demand to be looked at from
a different point of view. The present standard of excellence in prose
fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what
is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but
is manifestly _not_ the test by which to gauge the recent works of
"Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men
and things as they are. Her characters are idealizations: her later
books are prose-poems, not only in the affluence and rhythm of their
style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This
characteristic is plain enough in _Tricotrin_ and _Folle-Farine_, but
finds its most marked expression in _Pascarel_. "Only an Allegory"
would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story,"
for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a
series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed,
she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in _Pascarel_ is the
author's design to teach them made so manifest.

The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of expression
and recklessness of all established codes of taste which have diverted
attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate of the
character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the hindrances,
for instance, which prevent many from seeing the magnificence of the
conception in _Folle-Farine_. Its object is to enforce the lesson that
the only true greatness is that which loses sight of self--that Love,
and Love alone, is, both in its insight and its purpose, divine.
"Love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon."
"Laughter and love are all that are really worth having in the world,"
but to gain them "one must seek them first for others, with a wish
pure from the greed of self." "The world owes nothing to so personal
a passion as ambition." "The first fruits of a man's genius are always
pure of greed." What makes a great artist is the "vital, absolute
absorption of personality in his love of art." The experience of the
donzella (which constitutes what there is of the story), a nobler,