In delineation of character, our artist has done little worth notice. His highest merit in this respect is, with a solitary exception, the negative one of not having subjected himself to dispraise. Catharine and Camilla are—pretty well in their way. Philip is very much like all other heroes—perhaps a little more stiff, a little more obstinate, and a little more desperately unlucky than the generality of his class. Sydney is drawn with truth. Plaskwith, Plimmins, and the Mortons, just sufficiently caricatured, are very good outline copies from the shaded originals of Dickens. Of Gawtrey—father and son,—of De Burgh Smith, of Robert Beaufort and of Lilburne, what is it possible to say, except that they belong to that extensive firm of Gawtrey, Smith, Beaufort, Lilburne and company, which has figured in every novel since the days of Charles Grandison, and which is doomed to the same eternal configuration till romance-writing shall be no more?
For Fanny the author distinctly avows a partiality; and he does not err in his preference. We have observed, in some previous review, that _original_ characters, so called, can only be critically praised as such, either when presenting qualities known in real life, but never before depicted (a combination nearly impossible) or when presenting qualities which, although unknown, or even known to be hypothetical, are so skilfully adapted to the circumstances around them, that our sense of fitness is not offended, and we find ourselves seeking a reason why those things _might not have been_ which we are still satisfied _are not_. Fanny appertains to this latter class of originality—which in itself belongs to the loftier regions of _the Ideal_. Her first movements in the story, before her conception (which we have already characterized as an after-thought) had assumed distinct shape in the brain of the author, are altogether ineffective and frivolous. They consist of the unmeaning affectation and rhodomontade with which it is customary to invest the lunatic in common-place fiction. But the subsequent effects of love upon her mental development are finely imagined and richly painted; and, although reason teaches us their impossibility, yet it is sufficient for the purposes of the artist that fancy delights in believing them possible.