ircles, and directly or indirectly
ruled the middle, the popularity of this curious
romance-exhortation was, at any rate for a time, nipped in
the bud, to revive only in the permanent but not altogether
satisfactory conditions of a school-book. Whether Hamilton
dealt discreetly with the matter by purposely confining
himself to the record of a fact, or at least mixing praise
to which no exception could be taken, with what might be
taken for blame, one cannot say. By dotting a few i's,
crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden
letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a
not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this
envelope. _Telemaque_, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's
"thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "_Lovel
Parsonage_ and _Framley the Widower_," has, or with some
easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments
might have, much more pure romance interest than its
centuries of scholastic use allow it to have for most
people. Eucharis is capable of being much more than she is
allowed to show herself; and some Mrs. Grundys, with more
intelligence than the average member of the clan, have
hinted that Calypso might be dangerous if the persons who
read about her were not likely to consider her as too old to
be interesting. The style is, of course, admirable--there
has hardly ever been a better writer of French than Fenelon,
who was also a first-rate narrator and no mean critic.
Whether by the "mysteries" Hamilton himself meant politics,
morals, religion, or all three and other "serious" things,
is a point which, once more, is impossible to settle. But it
is quite certain that, whether there is any difficulty in
comprehending them or not, a great many--probably the huge
majority--of novel readers would not care to take the
trouble to comprehend them, and might, even if they found
little difficulty, resent being asked to do so. And so we
have here not the first--for, as has been said, the Heroic
romance itself had much earlier been "conscripted" into the
service of didactics--but the first brilliant, or almost
brilliant, example of that novel of purpose which will meet
us so often hereafter. It may be said to have at once
revealed (for the earlier examples were, as a r