Part 8 (2/2)

This last sentence--if I rehtly--was called a very bold one when it first appeared in print To h Scott, and which of the novels can you choose to coorous, lifelike, and truthful picture of a tiay and beautiful romance, no doubt; but surely, as the late Mr Freeman was at pains to point out, not a ”lifelike and truthful picture” of any age that ever was Is it _Old Mortality_?

Well, but even if we here get soorous, lifelike, and truthful picture of a tione by,” we are bound to consider the scale of the two books Size counts, as Aristotle pointed out, and as we usually forget It is the whole of Western Europe that Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his siht have pointed out that no novel of Scott's approaches the _Cloister_ in lofty hues of the tale reach an elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or drea

And the sentiht of his great argument easily and without strain It seee that tells of Margaret's death is the finest thing in fiction It appeals for a score of reasons, and each reason is a noble one We have brought together in that page extreious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end of a good woood round, no cheap parade of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the e is Charles Reade's at its best--which is alood as at its worst it is aboht of Margaret's death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain Moreover in the _Cloister_ Reade challenges coround of sustained adventurous narrative--and the advantage is not with Scott Once h for two passages to beat the adventures of Gerard and Denis the Burgundian (1) with the bear and (2) at ”The Fair Star” Inn, by the Burgundian Frontier I do not think you will succeed, even then Indeed, I will go so far as to say that to ain to Charles Reade, to the hora_ in _Hard Cash_ For these and for sundry other reasons which, for lack of space, cannot be unfolded here, _The Cloister and the Hearth_ seems to me a finer achievement than the finest novel of Scott's

And noe coed by his best work If this proposition be true, then I reater novelist than Scott But do I hold this? Does anyone hold this? Why, the contention would be an absurdity

Reade wrote some twenty novels beside _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and not one of the twenty approaches it One only--_Griffith Gaunt_--is fit to be named in the same day with it; and _Griffith Gaunt_ is marred by an insincerity in the plot which vitiates, and is at once felt to vitiate, the whole work On everything he wrote before and after _The Cloister_ Reade's essential vulgarity of reat instance is one of the miracles of literary history It hout in a state of unnatural exaltation If the case cannot be explained thus, it cannot be explained at all Other of his writings display the same, or at any rate a like, capacity for sustained narrative _Hard Cash_ displays it; parts of _It is Never Too Late to Mend_ display it But over much of these two novels lies the trail of that defective taste which y of cheap ineptitude

But if Reade be hopelessly Scott's inferior in manner and taste, what shall we say of the invention of the two men? Mr Barrie once affirmed very wisely in an essay on Robert Louis Stevenson, ”Critics have said enthusiastically--for it is difficult to write of Mr Stevenson without enthusias in Scott

Alan Breck is certainly a reatest of all story-tellers, _who, nevertheless, it should be remembered, created these rich side characters by the score, another before dinner-time_” Inventiveness, is, I suppose, one of the first qualities of a great novelist: and to Scott's invention there was no end But set aside _The Cloister_; and Reade's invention will be found to be extraordinarily barren Plot after plot turns on the sa people are in love: by the villainy of a third person they are separated for a while, and one of the lovers is persuaded that the other is dead Theby various devices; but always he is supposed to be dead, and always evidence is brought of his death, and always he turns up in the end

It is the same in _The Cloister_, in _It is Never Too Late to Mend_, in _Put Yourself in His Place_, in _Griffith Gaunt_, in _A Simpleton_

Sometimes, as in _Hard Cash_ and _A Terrible Tefully incarcerated as a madman; but this is obviously a variant only on the favorite trick Now the device is good enough in a tale of the fourteenth century, when news travelled slowly, and when by the suppression of a letter, or by a piece of false neo lovers, the one in Holland, the other in Rome, could easily be kept apart But in a tale of ier Besides the incoood to hear Mr Besant say, ”No heroine in fiction is more dear to me”--Reade drew some admirable portraits of woish young heroes--seeain, of course, I except _The Cloister_ Omit that book, and you would say that such a character as Bailie Nicol Jarvie or Dugald Dalgetty were altogether beyond Reade's range Open _The Cloister_ and you find in Denis the Burgundian a character as good as the Bailie and Dalgetty rolled into one

Other authors have been lifted above themselves But was there ever a case of one sustained at such an unusual height throughout a long, intricate and arduous work?

HENRY KINGSLEY

Feb 9, 1895 Henry Kingsley

Mr Shorter begins his Meraph:--

”The story of Henry Kingsley's life may well be told in a feords, because that life was on the whole a failure The world will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure unaccompanied by the halo of resley would be a quite different task Here was success, victorious success, sufficient indeed to gladden the heart even of Dr Smiles--success in the way of Church preferment, success in the way of public veneration, success, above all, as a popular novelist, poet, and preacher Canon Kingsley's life has been written in two substantial volu abundant letters and no indiscretions In this biography the nanored And yet it is not too much to say that, when time has softened his memory for us, as it has softened for us the memories of Marlowe and Burns and sley will be stronger than in his now more famous brother”[A]

A prejudice confessed

I alet rid of a prejudice, the wisest course is to acknowledge it candidly: and therefore I confessfair criticissley As for Henry, I worshi+pped his books as a boy; to-day I find them full of faults--often preposterous, usually ill-constructed, at times unnatural beyond belief John Gilpin never threw the Wash about on both sides of the way oose at play than did Henry Kingsley the decent flow of fiction when thea novel was to take equal parts of wooden ether in a paste of impertinent drollery and serious but entirely irrelevantAnd yet each tiures”--I like it better Henry did e, and I find it next to iive him up, and quite impossible to choose the venerated Charles as a substitute in e For here crops up a prejudice I find quite ineradicable To put it plainly, I cannot like Charles Kingsley Those who have had opportunity to study the deportn _table d'hote_ may perhaps understand the antipathy There was alsley when he sat down to write He had a knack of using thethe vilest ners and Roman Catholics and other extra-parochial folk, and would exhibit a pained and co that he had hurt the feelings of these unhappy inferiors--a kind of indignant wonder that Providence should have given theed by popular applause, this very second-rate man attacked a very first-rate e and with utter unscrupulousness; and the first-rate ently, scrupulously, decisively; returned hi his muscles

Charles and Henry

Still, oneit probable that his brother Henry will supersede hiht that he should Dislike hisley had a lyrical gift that--to set all his novels aside--carries him well above Henry's literary level It is sufficient to say that Charles wrote ”The Pleasant Isle of Aves” and ”When all the world is young, lad,” and the first two stanzas of ”The Sands of Dee” Neither in prose nor in verse could Henry coo farther Take the novels of each, and, novel for novel, you retfully--that Charles carries the heavier guns If you ask me whether I prefer _Westward Ho!_ or _Ravenshoe_, I ansithout difficulty that I find _Ravenshoe_ alhtful, and _Westward Ho!_ as detestable in some parts as it is adain es of _Westward Ho!_ without wishi+ng to put the book in the fire But if you ask reater novel, I ansith equal readiness that _Westward Ho!_ is not only the greater, but nized that in literary criticis his greatness

Even in his episodes it seeallop on Widderin in _Geoffry Hasley's finest achievement in vehement narrative: but if it can be coh's quest of the Great Galleon then I ae of narrative The one point--and it is an important one--in which Henry beats Charles as an artist is his sustained vivacity Charles soars far higher at times; but Charles is often profoundly dull Now, in all Henry's books I have not found a single dull page He may be trivial, inconsequent, irrelevant, absurd; but he never wearies It is a great h in itself to place a novelist even in the second rank In a short sketch of Henry Kingsley, contributed by his nephew, Mr Maurice Kingsley, to Messrs Scribner's paper, _The Bookbuyer_, I find that the younger brother was considered at ho more of the poet, historian, and prophet”

(Prophet!) ”My father only wrote one novel pure and si either historical novels or 'signs of the times'” Nohy an ”historical novel” should not be a ”novel pure and sin of the tie seesley faard to the fundamental divisions of literature And it see ”pure and simple”--in so far as they differentiated this fro not entirely respectable

Their opinion of Henry Kingsley in particular is indicated in no uncertain sley's life of her husband, Henry's existence is coraphical note was furnished forth for Mr Leslie Stephen's _Dictionary of National Biography_: and Mr Stephen dismisses our author with a few curt lines This disposition to treat Henry as an aarning and nothing more, while sleek Charles is patted on the back for a saint, inclines one to take up arms on the other side and assert, with Mr

Shorter, that ”when time has softened his sley will be stronger than in his now more famous brother” But can we look forward to this reversal of the public verdict? Can we consent with it if it ever coenerations will read Henry Kingsley, and will love him in spite of his faults