Rank and Talent

The Novel

The Summer assizes excited in the county-town where they were held rather more than the usual sensation; but in the remote and smaller town of Brigland, they roused a stirring interest. Long before the day of the trial, every vehicle which could be hired was engaged to carry the curious to the assizes, to hear the action brought by poor old Richard Smith against the Hon. Philip Martindale, for an assault and false imprisonment. In addition to the excitement which this action produced, there was also another, though smaller stimulus to curiosity, in the first appearance on the circuit of a young barrister, Horatio Markham…


The Author

William Pitt Scargill, unitarian minister and author, was born in London in 1787. Originally intended for a business life, he attracted the notice of Hugh Worthington, minister at Salters' Hall, under whose advice he studied for the ministry at Wymondley academy. In 1812 he succeeded Thomas Madge as minister of Churchgate Street Chapel, Bury St. Edmunds, and held this charge for twenty years. His ministry was not successful, and he turned to literature as a means of augmenting a narrow income, contributing to periodicals, and producing original tales and sketches. He had been a liberal in politics, but displeased his congregation by becoming a writer for the tory press. Resigning his charge in 1832, he became an adherent of the established church. He made a precarious living by his pen, yet his sketches are brisk and readable, with a curious vein of paradox. He was famed as a punster. He died of brain fever at Bury St. Edmunds on 24 Jan. 1836. He married Mary Anne, daughter of Robert Cutting of Chevington, Suffolk, who survived him with two children.


Contemporary Reviews

The Athenaeum, January 1829 — The author of Rank and Talent is evidently a very clever man, and his novel, in our judgment, would be insulted by comparison with almost any of the fashionable novels. We prefer recommending to our readers this book. They will find it very lively and amusing, written in a particularly quaint and dry style, and exhibiting unusual sagacity in the sketches of character. Mr. Tippetson is a very cleverly-managed character. To introduce any novelties into the treatment of an ordinary coxcomb, we should, à priori, have pronounced impossible; but our author has succeeded in throwing some new light upon the hackneyed subject.


The Ladies' Museum, 1829 — The author of Truckleborough Hall has published a novel of a very different character and pretensions, under the title of Rank and Talent. An acute observer of men and things, he analyses human nature with great fearlessness, and as he has no theory to support, he is generally successful in his delineation of character. The plot is sufficiently intricate to keep the reader in suspense.


The New Monthly Magazine, 1829 — This work will occupy a respectable rank in the higher class of novel-writing. The story of the novel (with two incidents excepted) is the mere common-place routine of life, and is used solely as the canvass on which to exhibit the author's powers in depicting characters, and in painting fashionable society.