Essays on Modern Novelists Part 8

and Kipling clubs sprang up like mushrooms. It was difficult to read him in cool blood, because he was discussed pro and con with so much pa.s.sion. He was fas.h.i.+onable, in the manner of ping-pong; and there were not wanting pessimistic prophets who looked upon him as a comet rather than a fixed star. So late as 1895 a well-known American journal said of him: "Rudyard Kipling is supposed to be the cleverest man now handling the pen. The magazines accept everything he writes, and pay him fabulous prices. Kipling is now printing a series of Jungle Stories that are so weak and foolish that we have never been able to read them. They are not fables: they are stories of animals talking, and they are pointless, so far as the average reader is able to judge. We have asked a good many magazine editors about Kipling's Jungle Stories; they all express the same astonishment that the magazine editors accept them. Kipling will soon be dropped by the magazine editors; they will inevitably discover that his stories are not admired by the people. Robert Louis Stevenson died just in time to save him from the same fate."

Many honestly believed that Mr. Kipling could write only in flashes; that he was incapable of producing a complete novel. His answer to this was _The Light that Failed_, which, although he made the mistake of giving it a reversible ending, indicated that his own lamp had yet sufficient oil. In 1895 he added immensely to the solidity of his fame by printing _The Brushwood Boy_, the scenes of which he announced previously would be laid in "England, India, and the world of dreams."

Here he temporarily forsook the land of mysterious horror for the land of mysterious beauty, and many were grateful, and said so. In 1896 the appearance of _The Seven Seas_ proved beyond cavil that he was something more than a music-hall rimester--that he was really among the English poets. The very next year _The Recessional_ stirred the religious consciousness of the whole English-speaking race. And although much of his subsequent career seems to be a nullification of the sentiment of that poem, it will remain imperishable when the absent-minded beggars and the flannelled fools have reached the oblivion they so richly deserve.

In 1897 he tried his hand for the second time at a complete novel, _Captains Courageous_, and the result might safely be called a success.

The moral of this story will be worth a word or two later on. The next year an important volume came from his pen, _The Day's Work_--important because it is in this volume that the new Kipling is first plainly seen, and the mechanical engineer takes the place of the literary artist. Such curiosities as _The s.h.i.+p that Found Herself_, _The Bridge-Builders_, _.007_, became anything but curiosities in his later work. This collection was sadly marred by the inclusion of such wretched stuff as _My Sunday at Home_, and _An Error in the Fourth Dimension_; but it was glorified by one of the most exquisitely tender and beautiful of all Mr.

Kipling's tales, _William the Conqueror_. And it should not be forgotten that the author saw fit to close this volume with the previously printed and universally popular _Brushwood Boy_. Then, at the very height of his ten years' fame, Mr. Kipling came closer to death than almost any other individual has safely done. As he lay sick with pneumonia in New York, the American people, whom he has so frequently ridiculed, were more generally and profoundly affected than they have been at the bedside of a dying President. The year 1899 marked the great physical crisis of his life, and seems also to indicate a turning-point in his literary career.

Whatever may be thought of the relative merits of Mr. Kipling's early and later style, it is fortunate for him that the two decades of composition were not transposed. We all read the early work because we could not help it; we read his twentieth-century compositions because he wrote them. It is lucky that the _Plain Tales from the Hills_ preceded _Puck of Pook's Hill_, and that _The Light that Failed_ came before _Stalky and Co._ Whether these later productions could have got into print without the tremendous prestige of their author's name, is a question that has all the fascination and all the insolubility of speculative philosophy. The suddenness of his early popularity may be perhaps partly accounted for by the fact that he was working a new field. The two authors who have most influenced Mr. Kipling's style are both Americans--Bret Harte and Mark Twain; and the a.n.a.logy between the sudden fame of Harte and the sudden fame of Mr. Kipling is too obvious to escape notice. Bret Harte found in California ore of a different kind than his maddened contemporaries sought; his early tales had all the charm of something new and strange. What Bret Harte made out of California Mr. Kipling made out of India; at the beginning he was a "sectional writer," who, with the instinct of genius, made his literary opportunity out of his environment. The material was at hand, the time was ripe, and the man was on the spot. It was the strong "local colour"

in these powerful Indian tales that captivated readers--who, in far-away centres of culture and comfort, delighted to read of primitive pa.s.sions in savage surroundings. We had all the rest and change of air that we could have obtained in a journey to the Orient, without any of the expense, discomfort, and peril.

But after the spell of the wizard's imagination has left us, we cannot help asking, after the manner of the small boy, Is it true? Are these pictures of English and native life in India faithful reflexions of fact? Can we depend on Mr. Kipling for India, as we can depend (let us say) on Daudet for a picture of the _Rue de la Paix_? Now it is a notable fact that local colour seems most genuine to those who are unable to verify it. It is a melancholy truth that the community portrayed by a novelist not only almost invariably deny the likeness of the portrait, but that they emphatically resent the liberty taken.

Stories of college life are laughed to scorn by the young gentlemen described therein, no matter how fine the local colour may seem to outsiders. The same is true of social strata in society, of provincial towns, and Heaven only knows what the Slums would say to their depiction in novels, if only the Slums could read. One reason for this is that a novel or a short story must have a beginning and an end, and some kind of a plot; whereas life has no such thing, nor anything remotely resembling it. When honest people see their daily lives, made up of thousands of unrelated incidents, served up to remote readers in the form of an orderly progression of events, leading up to a proper climax, the whole thing seems monstrously unreal and untrue. "Why, we are not in the least like that!" they cry. And I have purposely omitted the factor of exaggeration, absolutely essential to the realistic novelist or playwright.

In a notice of the _Plain Tales from the Hills_, the London _Sat.u.r.day Review_ remarked, "Mr. Kipling knows and appreciates the English in India." But it is more interesting and profitable to see how his stories were regarded in the country he described. In the _Calcutta Times_, for 14 September, 1895, there was a long editorial which is valuable, at any rate, for the point of view. After mentioning the _Plain Tales_, _Soldiers Three_, _Barrack-room Ballads_, etc., the _Times_ critic said:--

"Except in a few instances which might easily be numbered on the fingers of one hand, nothing in the books we have named is at all likely to live or deserves to live.... It will probably be answered that this sweeping condemnation is not of much value against the emphatic approval of the British public and the aforesaid chorus of critics in praise of the new Genius.... And the English critics have this to plead in excuse of their hyperbolical appreciation of the Stronger d.i.c.kens, that his first work came to them fathered with responsible guarantee from men who should have known better, that it was in the way of a revelation of Anglo-Indian society, a-letting in the light of truth on places which had been very dark indeed.

"Now the average English critic knows very little of the intricacies of social life in India, and in the enthusiasm which Mrs. Hauksbee and kindred creations inspired he accepted too readily as true types what are, in fact, caricatures, or distorted presentments, of some of the more poisonous social characteristics to be found in Anglo-Indian as well as in every other civilised society.... Do not let us be understood as recklessly running down Kipling and all his works.... He possesses in a high degree the power of describing a certain cla.s.s of emotions, and the flights of his imagination in some directions are extremely bold and original.

In such tales, for instance, as 'The Man who would be a King'

(_sic_) and 'The Ride of Morrowby Jukes' (_sic_) there are qualities of the imagination which equal, if they do not surpa.s.s, anything in the same line with which we are acquainted.... The capital charge, in the opinion of many, the head and front of his offending, is that he has traduced a whole society, and has spread libels broadcast. Anglo-Indian society may in some respects be below the average level of the best society in the Western world, where the rush and stir of life and the collision of intellects combine to keep the atmosphere clearer and more bracing than in this land of tennis, office boxes, frontier wars, and enervation.

But as far as it falls below what many would wish it to be, so far it rises above the description of it which now pa.s.ses current at home under the sanction of Kipling's name.... For whether Kipling is treating of Indian subjects pure and simple, of Anglo-Indian subjects, or is attempting a Western theme, the personality of the writer is pervasive and intrusive everywhere, with all its limitations of vision and information, as well as with its eternal panoply of cheap smartness and spiced vulgarity.... Smartness is always first with him, and Truth may s.h.i.+ft for herself."

Although the writer of the above article is somewhat blinded by prejudice and wrath, it is, nevertheless, interesting testimony from the particular section of our planet which Mr. Kipling was at that time supposed to know best. And out in San Francisco they are still talking of Mr. Kipling's visit there, and the "abominable libel" of California life and customs he chose to publish in _From Sea to Sea_.

Apart from Mr. Kipling's good fortune in having fresh material to deal with, the success of his early work lay chiefly in its dominant quality--Force. For the last thirty years, the world has been full of literary experts, professional story-writers, to whom the pen is a means of livelihood. Our magazines are crowded with tales which are well written, and nothing else. They say nothing, because their writers have nothing to say. The impression left on the mind by the great majority of handsomely bound novels is like that of a man who beholds his natural face in a gla.s.s. The thing we miss is the thing we unconsciously demand--Vitality. In the rare instances where vitality is the ground-quality, readers forgive all kinds of excrescences and defects, as they did twenty years ago in Mr. Kipling, and later, for example, in Jack London. The original vigour and strength of Mr. Kipling's stories were to the jaded reader a keen, refres.h.i.+ng breeze; like Marlowe in Elizabethan days he seemed a towering, robust, masculine personality, who had at his command an inexhaustible supply of material absolutely new. This undoubted vigour was naturally unaccompanied by moderation and good taste; Mr. Kipling's sins against artistic proportion and the law of subtle suggestion were black indeed. He simply had no reserve. In _The Man Who Would Be King_, which I have always regarded as his masterpiece, the subject was so big that no reserve in handling it was necessary. The whole thing was an inspiration, of imagination all compact. But in many other instances his style was altogether too loud for his subject. One wearies of eternal fortissimo. Many of his tales should have been printed throughout in italics. In examples of this nature, which are all too frequent in the "Complete Works" of Mr.

Kipling, the tragedy becomes melodrama; the humour becomes buffoonery; the picturesque becomes bizarre; the terrible becomes horrible; and vulgarity reigns supreme.

He is far better in depicting action than in portraying character. This is one reason why his short stories are better than his novels. In _The Light that Failed_, with all its merits, he never realised the character of Maisie; but in his tales of violent action, we feel the vividness of the scene, time and again. His work here is effective, because Mr.

Kipling has an acute sense of the value of words, just as a great musician has a correct ear for the value of pitch. When one takes the trouble to a.n.a.lyse his style in his most striking pa.s.sages, it all comes down to skill in the use of the specific word--the word that makes the picture clear, sometimes intolerably clear. Look at the nouns and adjectives in this selection from _The Drums of the Fore and Aft_:

"They then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and realised for the first time that an Afghan attacked is far less formidable than an Afghan attacking; which fact old soldiers might have told them.

"But they had no old soldiers in their ranks."

There are two defects in Mr. Kipling's earlier work that might perhaps be cla.s.sed as moral deficiencies. One is the almost ever present coa.r.s.eness, which the author mistook for vigour. Now the tendency to coa.r.s.eness is inseparable from force, and needs to be held in check.

Coa.r.s.eness is the inevitable excrescence of superabundant vitality, just as effeminacy is the danger limit of delicacy and refinement. Swift and Rabelais had the coa.r.s.eness of a robust English sailor; at their worst they are simply abominable, just as Tennyson at his worst is effeminate and silly. Mr. Kipling has that natural delight in coa.r.s.eness that all strong natures have, whether they are willing to admit it or not. A large proportion of his scenes of humour are devoted to drunkenness: "gloriously drunk" is a favourite phrase with him. The time may come when this sort of humour will be obsolete. We laugh at drunkenness, as the Elizabethans laughed at insanity, but we are only somewhat nearer real civilisation than they. At any rate, even those who delight in scenes of intoxication must find the theme rather overworked in Mr.

Kipling. This same defect in him leads to indulgence in his pa.s.sion for ghastly detail. This is where he ceases to be a man of letters, and becomes downright journalistic. It is easier to excite momentary attention by physical horror than by any other device; and Mr. Kipling is determined to leave nothing to the imagination. Many instances might be cited; we need only recall the gouging out of a man's eye in _The Light that Failed_, and the human brains on the boot in _Badalia Herodsfoot_.

The other moral defect in this early work was its world-weary cynicism, which was simply foolish in so young a writer. His treatment of women, for example, compares unfavourably with that shown in the frankest tales of Bret Harte. His att.i.tude toward women in these youthful books has been well described as "disillusioned gallantry." The author continually gives the reader a "knowing wink," which, after a time, gets on one's nerves. These books, after all, were probably not meant for women to read, and perhaps no one was more surprised than Mr. Kipling himself at the rapturous exclamations of the thousands of his feminine adorers. A woman rejoicing in the perusal of these Indian tales seems as much out of place as she does in the office of a cheap country hotel, reeking with the fumes of whiskey and stale tobacco, and adorned with men who spit with astonis.h.i.+ng accuracy into distant receptacles.

Mr. Kipling doubtless knows more about his own faults than any of the critics; and if after one has read _The Light that Failed_ for the sake of the story, one rereads it attentively as an _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_, one will be surprised to see how many ideas about his art he has put into the mouth of d.i.c.k. "Under any circ.u.mstances, remember, four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake." "One must do something always. You hang your canvas up in a palm-tree and let the parrots criticise." "If we sit down quietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may not do something that isn't bad. A great deal depends on being master of the bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think about success and the effect of our work--to play with one eye on the gallery--we lose power and touch and everything else.... I was told that all the world was interested in my work, and everybody at Kami's talked turpentine, and I honestly believed that the world needed elevating and influencing, and all manner of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, I actually believed that!... And when it's done it's such a tiny thing, and the world's so big, and all but a millionth part of it doesn't care."

Fortunately, four-fifths of Kipling's work isn't bad. We are safe in ascribing genius to the man who wrote _The Phantom 'Rickshaw_, _The Strange Ride_, _The Man Who Would Be King_, _William the Conqueror_, _The Brushwood Boy_, and _The Jungle Book_. These, and many other tales, to say nothing of his poetry, const.i.tute an astounding achievement for a writer under thirty-five.

But the Kipling of the last ten years is an Imperialist and a Mechanic, rather than a literary man. We need not cla.s.sify _Stalky and Co._, except to say that it is probably the worst novel ever written by a man of genius. It is on a false pitch throughout, and the most rasping book of recent times. The only good things in it are the quotations from Browning. The Jingo in Mr. Kipling was released by the outbreak of the South African War, and the author of _The Recessional_ forgot everything he had prayed G.o.d to remember. He became the voice of the British Empire, and the man who had always ridiculed Americans for bunk.u.m oratory, out-screamed us all. In this imperialistic verse and prose there is not much literature, but there is a great deal of noise, which has occasionally deceived the public; just as an orator is sure of a round of applause if his peroration is shouted at the top of his voice.

His recent book, _Puck of Pook's Hill_, is written against the grain; painful effort has supplied the place of the old inspiration, and the simplicity of true art is conspicuous by its absence. Of this volume, _The Athenaeum_, in general friendly to Kipling, remarks: "In his new part--the missionary of empire--Mr. Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly abandoned story-telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory in the interest of patriotic zeal." On the other hand, Mr. Owen Wister, whose opinion is valuable, thinks _Puck_ "the highest plane that he has ever reached"--a judgement that I record with respect, though to me it is incomprehensible.

Kipling the Mechanic is less useful than an encyclopaedia, and not any more interesting. A comic paper describes him as "now a technical expert; at one time a popular writer. This young man was born in India, came to his promise in America, and lost himself in England. His _Plain Tales of the Hills_ (_sic_) has been succeeded by _Enigmatical Expositions from the Dark Valleys_.... Mr. Kipling has declared that the Americans have never forgiven him for not dying in their country. On the contrary, they have never forgiven him for not having written anything better since he was here than he did before. But while there's Kipling, there's hope." It is to be earnestly hoped that he will cease describing the machinery of automobiles, s.h.i.+ps, locomotives, and flying air-vessels, and once more look in his heart and write. His worst enemy is himself. He seems to be in terror lest he should say something ordinary and commonplace. He has been so praised for his originality and powerful imagination, that his later books give one the impression of a man writing in the sweat of his face, with the grim determination to make every sentence a literary event. Such a tale as _Wireless_ shows that the zeal for originality has eaten him up. One can feel on every page the straining for effect, and it is as exhausting to read as it is to watch a wrestling-match, and not nearly so entertaining. If Mr.

Kipling goes on in the vein of these later years, he may ultimately survive his reputation, as many a good man has done before him. I should think even now, when the author of _Puck of Pook's Hill_ turns over the pages of _The Man Who Would Be King_, he would say with Swift, "Good G.o.d! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!"

His latest collection of tales, with the significant t.i.tle, _Actions and Reactions_, is a particularly welcome volume to those of us who prefer the nineteenth century Kipling to the twentieth. To be sure, the story _With the Night Mail_, shows the new mechanical cleverness rather than the old inspiration; it is both ingenious and ephemeral, and should have remained within the covers of the magazine where it first appeared.

Furthermore, _A Deal in Cotton_, _The Puzzler_, and _Little Foxes_ are neither clever nor literary; they are merely irritating, and remind us of a book we would gladly forget, called _Traffics and Discoveries_. But the first narrative in this new volume, with the caption, _An Habitation Enforced_, is one of the most subtle, charming, and altogether delightful things that Mr. Kipling has ever given us; nor has he ever brought English and American people in conjunction with so much charity and good feeling. I do not think he has previously shown greater psychological power than in this beautiful story. In the second tale, _Garm--A Hostage_, Mr. Kipling joins the ranks of the dog wors.h.i.+ppers; the exploits of this astonis.h.i.+ng canine will please all dog-owners, and many others as well. Naturally he has to exaggerate; instead of making his four-footed hero merely intelligent, he makes him n.o.ble in reason, infinite in faculty, in apprehension like a G.o.d, the paragon of animals.

But it is a brilliant piece of work. The last story, _The House Surgeon_, takes us into the world of spirit, whither Mr. Kipling has successfully conducted his readers before. This mysterious domain seems to have a constantly increasing attraction for modern realistic writers, and has enormously enlarged the stock of material for contemporary novelists. The field is the world, yes; but the world is bigger than it used to be, bigger than any boundaries indicated by maps or globes. It would be interesting to speculate just what the influence of all these transcendental excursions will be on modern fiction as an educational force. Mr. Kipling apparently writes with sincere conviction, and in a powerfully impressive manner. The poetic interludes in this volume, like those in _Puck of Pook's Hill_, show that the author's skill in verse has not in the least abated; the lines on _The Power of the Dog_ are simply irresistible. It is safe to say that _Actions and Reactions_ will react favourably on all unprejudiced readers; and for this relief much thanks. If one wishes to observe the difference between the inspired and the ingenious Mr. Kipling, one has only to read this collection straight through.[16]

[16] I have not discussed a new collection of Mr. Kipling's stories, called _Abaft the Funnel_, consisting of reprints of early fugitive pieces; because there is not the slightest indication that this book is in any way authorised, or that its publication has the approval of the man who wrote it. Perhaps an authorised edition of it may now become necessary.

Like almost all Anglo-Saxon writers, Mr. Kipling is a moralist, and his gospel is Work. He believes in the strenuous life as a cure-all. He apparently does not agree with Goethe that To Be is greater than To Do.

The moral of _Captains Courageous_ is the same moral contained in the ingenious bee-hive story. The unpardonable sin is Idleness. But although Work is good for humanity, it is rather limited as an ideal, and we cannot rate Mr. Kipling very high as a spiritual teacher. G.o.d is not always in the wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. The day-dreams of men like Stevenson and Thackeray sometimes bear more fruit than the furious energy of Mr. Kipling.

But the consuming ambition of this man, and his honest desire to do his best, will, let us hope, spare him the humiliation of being beaten by his own past. After all, Genius is the rarest article in the world, and one who undoubtedly has it is far more likely to reach the top of the hill than he is to take the road to Danger, which leads into a great wood; or the road to Destruction, which leads into a wide field, full of dark mountains.

XII

"LORNA DOONE"

The air of Devon and Somerset is full of literary germs. The best advice a London hack could give to a Gigadibs would be _Go west, young man_.

The essential thing is to establish a residence south of Bristol, grow old along with Wess.e.x, and inhale the atmosphere. Thousands of reverent pilgrims, on foot, on bicycle, and in automobile, are yearly following the tragic trails of Mr. Hardy's heroines; to a constantly increasing circle of interested observers, Mr. Eden Phillpotts is making the topography of Devon clearer than an ordnance map; if Mrs. Willc.o.c.ks writes a few more novels like _The Wingless Victory_ and _A Man of Genius_, we shall soon all be talking about her--just wait and see; and in the summer season, when soft is the sun, the tops of coaches in North Devon and Somerset are packed with excited Americans, carrying Lornas instead of Baedekers. To the book-loving tourists, every inch of this territory is holy ground.

Yet the author of our favourite romance was not by birth a Wess.e.x man.

Mr. Richard D. Blackmore (for, like the creator of _Robinson Crusoe_, his name is not nearly so well known as his work) first "saw the light"

in Berks.h.i.+re, the year being 1825. But he was exposed to the Wess.e.x germs at the critical period of boyhood, actually going to Blundell's School at Tiverton, a small town in the heart of Devons.h.i.+re, fourteen miles north of Exeter, at the union of Exe and Lowman rivers. To this same school he sent John Ridd, as we learn in the second paragraph of the novel:--

"John Ridd, the elder, churchwarden, and overseer, being a great admirer of learning, and well able to write his name, sent me, his only son, to be schooled at Tiverton, in the County of Devon. For the chief boast of that ancient town (next to its woolen staple) is a worthy grammar-school, the largest in the west of England, founded and handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by Master Peter Blundell, of that same place, clothier."

From this inst.i.tution young Blackmore proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford, where he laid the foundations of his English style by taking high rank in the cla.s.sics. Like many potential poets and novelists, he studied law, and was called to the bar in 1852. But he cared little for the dusty purlieus of the Middle Temple, and not at all for city life: his father was a country parson, as it is the fas.h.i.+on for English fathers of men of letters to be, and the young man loved the peace and quiet of rural scenery. He finally made a home at Teddington, in Middles.e.x, and devoted himself to the avocation of fruit-growing. On this subject he became an authority, and his articles on gardening were widely read. Here he died in January, 1900.

His death was mourned by many thousand persons who never saw him, and who knew nothing about his life. The public always loves the makers of its favourite books; but in the case of Mr. Blackmore, every reader of his masterpiece felt a peculiarly intimate relation with the man who wrote it. The story is so full of the milk of human kindness, its hero and heroine are so irresistibly attractive, and it radiates so wholesome and romantic a charm, that one cannot read it without feeling on the best possible terms with the author--as if both were intimate friends of long standing. For _Lorna Doone_ is a book we think we have always been reading; we can hardly recall the time when it had not become a part of our literary experience; just as it takes an effort to remember that there were days and years when we were not even aware of the existence of persons who are now indissolubly close. They have since become so necessary that we imagine life before we knew them must really have been more barren than it seemed.

Like many successful novelists, Mr. Blackmore began his literary career by the publication of verse, several volumes of poems appearing from his pen during the years 1854-1860. Although he never entirely abandoned verse composition, which it was only too apparent that he wrote with his left hand, the coolness with which his Muse was received may have been a cause of his attempting the quite different art of the novel. It is pleasant to remember, however, that in these early years he translated Vergil's _Georgics_; combining his threefold love of the cla.s.sics, of poetry, and of gardening. Of how much practical agricultural value he found the Mantuan bard, we shall never know.

Contrary to a common supposition, _Lorna Doone_ was not his first story.

He launched two ventures before his masterpiece--_Clara Vaughan_ in 1864, and _Cradock Nowell_ in 1866. These won no applause, and have not emerged from the congenial oblivion in which they speedily foundered.

After these false starts, the great book came out in 1869, with no blare of publisher's trumpet, with scanty notice from the critics, and with no notice of any kind from the public. In the preface to the twentieth edition, and his various prefaces are well worth reading, the author remarked:--

"What a lucky maid you are, my Lorna! When first you came from the Western Moors n.o.body cared to look at you; the 'leaders of the public taste' led none of it to make test of you. Having struggled to the light of day, through obstruction and repulses, for a year and a half you s.h.i.+vered in a cold corner, without a sun-ray. Your native land disdained your voice, and America answered, 'No child of mine'; knowing how small your value was, you were glad to get your fare paid to any distant colony."

The _Sat.u.r.day Review_ for 5 November, 1870, uttered a few patronising words of praise. The book was called "a work of real excellence," but the reviewer timidly added, "We do not pretend to rank it with the acknowledged masterpieces of fiction." On the whole, there is good ground for grat.i.tude that the public was so slow to see the "real excellence" of _Lorna_. A sudden blaze of popularity is sometimes so fierce as to consume its cause. Let us spend a few moments in devout meditation, while we recall the ashes of "the book of the year." The gradual dawn of Lorna's fame has a.s.sured her of a long and fair day.

Possibly one of the reasons why this great romance made so small an impression was because it appeared at an unpropitious time. The sower sowed the seed; but the thorns of Reade and Trollope sprang up and choked them. These two novelists were in full action; and they kept the public busy. Realism was strong in the market; people did not know then, as we do now, that The _Cloister and the Hearth_ was worth all the rest of Charles Reade put together. Had _Lorna Doone_ appeared toward the end of the century, when the Romantic Revival was in full swing, it would have received a royal welcome. But how many would have recognised its superiority to the tinsel stuff of those recent days, full of galvanised knights and stuffed chatelaines? For _Lorna_ belongs to a cla.s.s of fiction with which we were flooded in the nineties, though, compared with the ordinary representative of its kind, it is as a star to a glow-worm. Readers then enjoyed impossible characters, whose talk was mainly of "gramercy" and similar curiosities, for they had the opportunity to "revel in the glamour of a bogus antiquity." But an abundance of counterfeits does not lower the value of the real metal; and _Lorna_ is a genuine coin struck from the mint of historical romance. In the original preface its author modestly said:--

"This work is called a 'romance,' because the incidents, characters, time, and scenery are alike romantic. And in shaping this old tale, the writer neither dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or c.u.mber it with the difficulty of an historic novel."

In warmth and colour, in correct visualisation, and in successful imitation of the prose of a bygone day (which no one has ever perfectly accomplished), it ranks not very far below the greatest of all English historical romances, _Henry Esmond_.