The Novels of Arthur Conan Doyle

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

The Novels of Arthur Conan Doyle is an article written by Andrew Lang published in The Living Age on 10 september 1904.


The Novels of Arthur Conan Doyle *

The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 641)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 642)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 643)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 644)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 645)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 646)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 647)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 648)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 649)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 650)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 651)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 652)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 653)
The Living Age (10 september 1904, p. 654)

If this country's education were conducted on truly scientific principles, we ought to have statistics of the great Novel industry. It is not enough to know how many copies of popular novels are sold; on that point the publishers often give us ample information. From 80,000 to 150,000 copies of a novel that really reaches the heart of the English people are promptly disposed of; and, allowing only ten readers for each copy, the millions are plainly being influenced by our authors of genius. This is a grave thought for conscientious novelists: the making of the spiritual life of England is in their bands. They feel it, and are till but overborne by the too vast orb of their responsibilities. In their photographs, which accompany the reports of interviews with them, we mark with sympathy the ponderous brow, supported by the finger so deft on the type-writing machine; and, as we read the interview, we listen to the voice that has whispered so many thousands of words into the phonograph.

The popular novelists of England and of America are serious men; they occupy at least in their own opinion, a position which, since the days of the great Hebrew prophets, has been held by few sous of earth. Now and again they descend, as it were, from the mountain and wearily tell the world the story of their aims, their methods, and their early struggles, before they were discovered by enterprising publishers, before their books provided the text of many a sermon. Just as did Mr. Richardson's "Pamela."

These men and women are our social, spiritual, religious, and political teachers. This is an important fact. for their readers take fiction seriously; their lives are being directed, their characters are being framed, by authors such as Mr. Hall Caine, Miss Marie Corelli, Mr. Anthony Hope, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unluckily we have, for lack of statistics, no means of knowing the nature and limits of the moulding of character and direction of life exercised by these energetic authors. Can it be possible that they sometimes neutralize each other's effects, and that the earnest reader of Mr. Wells finds the seeds of his doctrine blown away on the winds of the mighty message of Mr. Hall Caine? Does the inquirer who sets out to follow the star of Miss Marie Corelli become bewildered and "pixy-led," as they say in Devonshire, by the will-o'-the-wisps of Mr. Kipling?

The serious writers on "the Novel," in the Press, like the late Mr. Norris, author of "The Octopus," assure us that all is well, that the Novel is, or ought to be, everything; that the novelist is our inspired teacher in matters theological, social, political, and perhaps (when we think of Mr. H. G. Wells) scientific; not to mention that the historical novelist writes the only sort of history which should be, and which is, read by the world. But the pity of it is that novelists, like other teachers, differ vastly in doctrine among themselves; so that, if we read all the popular authors, we "come out," like Omar Khayyam, "no wiser than we went," but rather perplexed in our intellects.

The owners of the stores in America which gave away a celebrated British novel as a bounty on soap, are said to have expressed themselves thus:—

Our hands were never half so clean,
Our customers agree;
And our beliefs have never been
So utterly at sea.

The beliefs of the public may, of course, be brought back to dry land by some more orthodox novelist, but the whole process is unsettling. Yet it may be that the populace, in various sections, cleaves to one teacher, neglecting others. Do the devotees of Miss Marie Corelli read the discourses of Mr. Hall Caine; and do the faithful of Mrs. Ward peruse either, or both, of the other two spiritual guides? Lacking the light of statistics we can only guess that they do not; that the circles of these authors never intersect each other, but keep apart; just as a pious Mussulman does not study "Hymns Ancient and Modern," while a devotee of Mr. Swinburne seldom declines upon "The Christian Year." Meanwhile the mere critic fails to extract a concrete body of doctrine from the discourses of any of our teachers.

Concerning Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is, we trust, nearly as popular as any teacher, it may be said with gratitude that he aims at entertaining rather than at instructing his generation. We venture to think that the contemplative and speculative elements in his nature are subordinate to the old-fashioned notion that a novelist should tell a plain tale. A handsome and uniform edition of his works lies before us, with manly, brief, and modest prefaces by the author. The volumes are fair to see; the type and paper are good, though the printing is not incapable of correction, and the spelling is sporadically American.

There are authors whom we like best in stately "library editions," others whom we prefer in first editions — of such are Keats and Charles Lamb; and, handsome as is the format of Sir Arthur's collected works, there are a few of them which please us most "in the native pewter." Now the native pewter of Sherlock Holmes is a six penny magazine, with plenty of clever illustrations; he takes better in these conditions than in a sumptuous text with only one or two pictures. Sir Arthur is an unaffected writer. His style is not "a separate ecstasy," as in the case of Mr. R. L. Stevenson's writings; his is a simple narrative manner. He does not pass hours in hunting for le mot propre; and a phrase is apparently none the worse in his eyes because It is an old favorite of the public, and familiar to the press and the platform. However, like Aucassin in the cantefable, "we love a plain tale even better than none," and love anything better than the dull and tormented matter of the prigs who, having nothing that deserves to be said, say it in a style which standeth in an utterly false following of Mr. George Meredith. "The Author's Edition" is a delightful set for a smoking room in a club or in a country house.

By a laudable arrangement, Sir Arthur has confined his speculative and contemplative exercises to a pair of books, "The Stark Munro Letters" and "A Duet." In the former, a young man has his "first fight" (not at all in the style of the author's "Rodney Stone") "with the spiritual and material difficulties which confront him at the out set of life. There is no claim that his outlook is either profound or original." Indeed his outlook is not remarkable for subtlety or distinction. Sir Arthur is not a Pascal; and, if he were, his "Pensées," presented in a work of fiction, would fail to exhilarate. As he says, Tom Jones and Arthur Pendennis and Richard Feverel "do not indicate their relation to those eternal problems which are really the touch stone and centre of all character." Thank heaven they do not!

An eternal problem can hardly be "the centre of a character"; and, if it were, we do not always pine to read a novel about an eternal problem. A little of "Obermann" goes a long way. If a problem is eternal it has obviously never been solved; and what chance had Thomas Jones, a foundling, of solving eternal problems. As for Pen, he frankly abandoned the attempt. The narrator in the "Stark Munro Letters" ends his speculation by deciding that "something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast." Having arrived at this acceptable solution, we do not care to follow the mental processes by which the young thinker reaches the result. We have ever been of his mature opinion, which, moreover, has the sanction of the Church, and of the best heathen and Christian philosophers.

There is no speculation and no preaching of doctrines, no nonsense about a "message" or a "mission," in the rest of Sir Arthur's books, where the good people are plucky, kind, and honorable, while the bad people are usually foiled in their villainous machinations. The quality which recommends Sir Arthur's stories to his readers, and to ourselves, is a quality which cannot be taught or learned; which no research, or study, or industry can compass; which is born with a man; which can hold its own without the aid of an exquisite style; and which is essential. Sir Arthur can tell a story so that you read it with ease and pleasure. He does not shine as a creator of character. Perhaps Micah Clarke, an honest English Porthos, is the best of his quite serious creations; while Sherlock Holmes, not so seriously intended, has become a proverb, like Monsieur Lecoq. But Brigadier Gerard is Sir Arthur's masterpiece; we never weary of that brave, stupid, vain, chivalrous being, who hovers between General Marbot and Thackeray's Major Geoghegan, with all the merits of both, and with others of his own.

The ladies who pass through the novels play their parts, and are excellent young women in their rôles, but they are not to be very distinctly remembered, or very fondly adored. There is not a Sophia Western, an Amelia, a Diana Vernon, a Becky Sharpe, an Anne Elliot, a Beatrix Esmond, or a Barbara Grant, in their ranks; and indeed such characters are scarce in all fiction. The greatest masters but seldom succeed in creating immortal women; only Shakespeare has his quiver full of such children as these. In short, we read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the story, and are very glad that we have such stories to read; rapid, varied, kindly, and honest narratives. As Mr. Arthur Pendennis remarked about his ancestral claret, "there is not a headache in a hogshead" of them.

We shall first glance at Sir Arthur's historical novels, "Micah Clarke," "The White Company," "The Refugees," and "Rodney Stone." The public is very far from sharing the opinion professed by James II in exile, that "history is much more instructive than novels, and quite as amusing." For ourselves we deem his Majesty's own historical work vastly more entertaining than any novel written during his lifetime; but, in the opinion of the public, history only exists as material for historical romances, just as the engineer said that rivers exist for the purpose of feeding navigable canals.

Sir Arthur's earlier historical novels are influenced, more than he probably suspects, by those of Sir Walter Scott. "Micah Clarke," like .Mr. Blackmore's "Lorna Doone," is a tale of the last romantic rebellion with a base in England — the futile attempt of Monmouth. The big Porthos-like hero is, in some ways, akin to John Ridd; but he occupies, as regards politics and religion, the juste milieu that Sir Walter favored when he wrote history, and assigned to such romantic heroes of his own as Henry Morton, and even Roland Graeme. Though "a simple-hearted unlettered yeoman," Micah Clarke is really wise with the wisdom of the later Victorian time, and, in one remark, speaks as if he had read Mr. Herbert Spencer with approval, so far as the problems of religion are concerned. He takes a calm view of history, and is no fanatic of the Protestantism of his period — that of Titus Oates. "The mob's ideas of Papistry were mixed up with thumbscrews" (not a Catholic implement, by the way) "and Fox's Martyrology." Micah is the son of a church-woman, and a Puritan, and himself has no particular bent, except in favor of freedom and fighting. "I believe that there was good in Papistry, Church, Dissent, but that not one was worth the spilling of human blood." King James was the rightful King, and Monmouth, black box and all, was a bastard, to Micah's mind; but, as fighting was toward, he fought for the son of Lucy Walters.

Decimus Saxon, the pedantic soldier of fortune, a most entertaining character, with his Latin and his professional skill, his indifference as to the cause for which he draws his sword, and his eye for "caduacs and casualties," is an English Dalgetty, and almost as amusing as the immortal laird of Drumthwacket, "that should be." He is a grandson, as it were, of Dugald's father, Sir James Turner, who was learned, but not pedantic, and a far better-hearted man than either Decimus or Dugald. Indeed Decimus "doth somewhat lean to cutpurse of quick hand." A more original character is the "Malignant" Monmouthite, the ruined, kind, dandified, and reckless Sir Gervas Gerome, so full of fight and foppery.

Rather to the surprise of the reader, at a given moment, while escorting a preacher and his rustic flock of "slashing communicants" to join Monmouth, Decimus suddenly ceases to be Dalgetty, and becomes John Balfour, called Burley. A cornet of the King's Horse approaches the psalm-singing conventicle with a flag of truce, and we quote what follows.

"Who is the leader of this conventicle?" he asked.

"Address your message to me, sir," said our leader from the top of the wagon, "but understand that your white flag will only protect you whilst you use such words as may come from one courteous adversary to another. Say your say or retire."

"Courtesy and honor," said the officer with a sneer, "are not for rebels who are in arms against their lawful king. If you are the leader of this rabble, I warn you if they are not dispersed within five minutes by this watch" — he pulled out an elegant gold time-piece — "we shall ride down upon them and cut them to pieces."

"The Lord can protect His own," Saxon answered, amid a fierce hum of approval from the crowd. "Is this all thy message?"

"It is all, and you will find it enough, you Presbyterian traitor," cried the dragoon cornet. "Listen to me, you fools," he continued, standing up upon his stirrups and speaking to the peasants at the other side of the wagon. "What chance have ye with your whittles and cheese-scrapers? Ye may yet save your skins if ye will but give up your leaders, throw down what ye are pleased to call your arms, and trust to the King's mercy."

"This exceeds the limits of your privileges," said Saxon, drawing a pistol from his belt and cocking it. "If you say another word to draw these people from their allegiance, I fire."

"Hope not to help Monmouth." cried the young officer, disregarding the threat, and still addressing his words to the peasants. "The whole royal army is drawing round him and——"

"Have a care!" shouted our leader, in a deep, harsh voice.

"His head within a month shall roll upon the scaffold."

"But you shall never live to see it," said Saxon, and stooping over he fired straight at the cornet's head. At the flash of the pistol the trumpeter wheeled round and rode for his life, while the roan horse turned and followed with its master still seated firmly in the saddle.

Here we have Drumclog, and Cornet Graham, and Burley's slaying of him under a flag of truce, with his excuse for so doing, all over again; whereof the author must have been as unconscious as Sir Walter himself when he annexed a verse by the poetical valet of his friend Rose. The Shirra justly said that, like Captain Bobadil, he "had taught many gentlemen to write almost or altogether as well as himself. This English Drumclog ends like the other, after a pretty fight; and the adventurers reach Taunton, where the condition of that unhappy and pious town, and of Monmouth's scythemen and other rude levies, is depicted with much fire and energy. The hero, with great self-sacrifice, hands over the love-making business to a humorous friend named Reuben, and is free to devote himself to manly adventure. At this point comes the news of the failure of Argyll; and Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth and Sir John Cochrane (whom Claverhouse had prophetically damned) receive from Decimus the same critical hard measure as Macaulay gives them. "The expedition was doomed from the first with such men at its head," says Decimus — with truth; for Argyll, if alone, would have been safe, though the Lowland leaders, in any case, being odious to the Remnant, could have raised no stir in Scotland.

Monmouth himself appears to us to be very well designed, though he was more fair to outward view than he seemed in the eyes of Micah Clarke. Though his Stuart blood was doubted by all but Charles II, his weakness, waywardness, and loss of nerve when Sedgemoor fight went against him, were quite in the vein of the Chevalier de St. George at Montrose, of Queen Mary at Langside, and of Charles Edward in the first hours after Culloden. Each one of that forlorn four had shown courage enough on other fields, but as leaders of a lost hope the terror of betrayal overmastered him. Unlike the rest, Monmouth was a sentimentalist of the most modern fashion. A worse commander could not have been found for a very bad cause.

Robert Ferguson is described as almost a maniac from sheer vanity; but the unique character of the Plotter cannot be unriddled in a novel, if it can be unriddled at all. Still, we do not recognize him when he speaks to Monmouth in the wildest manner of the Remnant. "Why was Argyll cutten off? Because he hadna due faith in the workings o' the Almighty, and must needs reject the help o' the children o' light in favor o' the bare-legged children o' Prelacy, wha are half Pagan, half Popish." The terms do not apply to the Campbells; and Ferguson had humor enough if Dalrymple says truly that he tided over a day's lack of supplies by inducing Monmouth to proclaim a solemn fast for the success of his arms. Probably Sir Arthur bases his account of Ferguson's demeanor on a passage of Burnet: "Ferguson ran among the people with all the fury of an enraged man that affected to pass for an enthusiast, though all his performances that way were forced and dry." He would not perform in this forced way before Monmouth.

Micah's personal adventures are excellent romantic reading, especially his captivity in a mysterious dungeon whence the most experienced reader, though he knows that the hero must escape, cannot imagine how he is to do it. Through "The Onfall at Sedgemoor" the author, like Scott at Flodden, "never stoops his wing," for Sir Arthur is a master in the rare skill of describing a battle with lucidity and picturesque vigor. There is no better account of Waterloo, from the private soldier's point of view, than that given in his brief novel, "The Great Shadow"; and Sedgemoor also is excellent.

The picture of Judge Jeffreys may be cited: probably it is quite accurate; yet Dry den admired this man!

Last of all, drawn by six long-tailed Flemish mares, came a great open coach, thickly crusted with gold, in which, reclining amidst velvet cushions, sat the infamous Judge, wrapped in a cloak of crimson plush with a heavy white periwig upon his head, which was so long that it dropped down over his shoulders. They say that he wore scarlet in order to strike terror into the hearts of the people, and that his courts were for the same reason draped in the color of blood. As for himself, it hath ever been the custom, since his wickedness hath come to be known to all men, to picture him as a man whose expression and features were as monstrous and as hideous as was the mind behind them. This is by no means the case. On the contrary, he was a man who, in his younger days, must have been remarkable for his extreme beauty. (1) He was not, it is true, very old, as years go, when l saw him, but debauchery and low living had left their traces upon his countenance, without, however, entirely destroying the regularity and the beauty of his features. He was dark, more like a Spaniard than an English man, with black eyes and olive complexion. His expression was lofty and noble, but his temper was so easily aflame that the slightest cross or annoyance would set him raving like a madman, with blazing eyes and foaming mouth. l have seen him myself with the froth upon his lips and his whole face twitching with passion, like one who hath the falling sickness. Yet his other emotions were under as little control, for l have heard say that a very little would cause him to sob and to weep, more especially when he had himself been slighted by those who were above him.

"Micah Clarke" is a long novel of five hundred and seventy pages; but nobody, when he has finished it, remembers that it is long — which is praise enough for any romance.

In the preface to "Micah Clarke" the author says:—

To me it always seems that the actual condition of a country at any time, a true sight of it with its beauties and brutalities, its life as it really was, its wayside hazards and its odd possibilities, are (sic) of greater interest than the small aims and petty love story of any human being. The lists, the woodlands, and the outlaws are more to me than Rebecca and Rowena.

passe pour Rowena, but surely Diana Vernon or Beatrix Esmond is not of inferior interest to Locksley, Friar Tuck, and the lists of Ashby de la Zouche? "To others the story of one human heart may be more than all the glamor of an age, and to these I feel that I have little to offer."

This is very true, and marks one of Sir Arthur's limitations. He does not interest us in love affairs, or in his women. Fielding could not only give us life "with its wayside hazards," but also bring us acquainted with Amelia and Sophia, whom to have known is great part of a liberal education, in the famous old phrase. In "The White Company" we have lists, indeed, and a scene reminiscent of that immortal passage in "Ivanhoe," where the Disinherited Knight smites, with the point, the shield of the Templar. Sir Arthur's romance of Froissart's age in some ways resembles "The Cloister and the Hearth"; its main interest lies in its "wayside hazards," whether in England, or with the wandering White Company in southern France. The hero, leaving the monastery where he has been educated with that useful old favorite a gigantic, hard-hitting laybrother, John of Hordle, marches to join a very good knight of fantastic chivalry, Sir Nigel Loring, and fights under his standard, south of the Pyrenees. It is a tale of swords and bows, and we cannot refrain from quoting "The Song of the Bow," which provokes the very unusual wish that the author had written more verse.

What of the bow?
The bow was made in England:
Of true wood, of yew wood
The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew-tree
And the land where the yew-tree grows.
What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love;
And so we will sing
Of the hempen string
And the land where the cord was wove.
What of the shaft?
The shaft was cut in England:
A long shaft, a strong shaft,
Barbed and trim and true;
So we'll drink all together
To the gray goose feather
And the land where the gray goose flew.
What of the mark?
Ah, seek it not in England:
A bold mark, our old mark
Is waiting oversea
When the strings harp in chorus
And the lion flag is o'er us
It is there that our mark shall be.
What of the men?
The men were bred in England:
The bowmen— the yeomen—
The lads of dale and fell.
Here's to you— and to you!
To the hearts that are true
And the land where the true hearts dwell.

The roadside adventures, especially that of the man who has taken sanctuary, and of the pursuing avenger of blood, are brilliant studies of life in Chaucer's time; and, though they are many, they are not too many. The little fighting Sir Nigel, the soul of chivalry, is a very tall man of his hands— almost too excellent a swords man for his weight and his inches — while the very plain middle-aged wife whose favor he wears, proclaiming her la plus belle du monde, is a figure as original as her lord. He is an expert in heraldry, and, his sole object being "advancement" in the way of honor, he holds his own in single combat with du Guesclin, though the natural odds are those of Tom Sayers against Heenan. Like the hero of the old song who

Met the devil and Dundee
On the braes of Killiecrankie,

Sir Nigel "fought by land and fought by sea"; and the adventure of the "Yellow Cog" with the rover galleys is one of the best fights in a book full of fighting. Even after "Ivanhoe" the tournament at Bordeaux and the adventure of the unknown knight seem fresh and stirring; and the unknown knight, du Guesclin, is quite equal to his reputation, when we reach the Jacquerie, which was a predestined incident. The siege of a house is always a lively affair, though the artist does not represent the bald and unhelmeted Sir Nigel as a very dangerous opponent; his attitude of self-defence rather resembles that of Mr. Pickwick, which was "paralytic"; indeed he is offering a tame and unheard-of kind of lunge, or rather poke, from the shoulder at an almost naked adversary, who "takes it very unconcernedly." When an archer shoots six hundred and thirty paces, we must presume that the author has warrant for such a prodigious deed with the long bow; to be sure the bowman makes use of his feet, "turning himself into a crossbow." Sir Arthur relies on "one chronicler," criticized by Mr. C. J. Longman in the Badminton "Book of Archery"; and that chronicler, Giraldus Cambrensis, does not stand the test of modern experiment.

As Sir Arthur adds historical notes, he might as well name his "old chroniclers," with their dates; other wise their evidence is of no great value. The novel reader, who is terribly afraid of coming to know anything accurately, is not likely to look at the notes, and be frightened away by a name and a date. "The White Company" is a lively romance, and very good reading for boys and friends of old times and tall knights. There is a love story; but, by separating hero and heroine early in the tale, the author ingeniously avoids a subject in which he does not pretend to shine. The mystic Lady Tiphaine, wife of du Guesclin, with her limited clairvoyance, is not a success; and the author has never distinguished himself in dealing with the supernormal. ln consulting with seeresses, "physical contact" is very properly "barred," so as to avoid "muscle-reading"; but Lady Tiphaine (who has a view of the future glories of the British Empire) "would fain lay hands upon someone" when she practices her clairvoyant art. After her success with the vision of the Union Jack, or the English banner, at all events,

"It is over," said du Guesclin, moodily.... "Wine for the lady, squire. The blessed hour of sight hath passed!"

Here the author is more patriotic than imaginative, though du Guesclin was naturally vexed, being a good French man, at hearing of our superior colonial expansion.

"The Refugees," a tale of the court of Louis XlV, about the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, ends in the Iroquois country, whither the Huguenot characters have fled. The story, though full of life and action, deals with a theme which does not "set the genius" of the author. He has not the finesse for a romance of the court of France; and his foil to all its artificialities, Amos Green, a young English colonial trapper, is of incredible simplicity. He certainly would not have been allowed to shoot at casual birds in the streets of such rising American townships as Boston and New York, and he could not have expected such sporting privileges in Paris. Yet he is amazed and annoyed when he is not permitted to go about gunning in the midst of the French capital. He is, of course, very shrewd, much too shrewd to be so innocently simple, and he is our old friend the useful Porthos of the novel, like John of Hordle in "The White Company." It is well to have a character who can open any door with out a key, and fight more than the three enemies at once, whom Major Bellenden, in "Old Mortality," found too many for any champion except Corporal Raddlebanes. As to the Iroquois, we know their fiendish cruelties even too well from the "Lettres Edifiantes" of the Jesuit missionaries, and we do not care to make closer acquaintance with them in a novel. The following passage shows the courtiers waiting for the king to get out of bed.

Here, close by the king, was the harsh but energetic Louvois, all powerful now since the death of his rival Colbert, discussing a question of military organization with two officers, the one a tall and stately soldier, the other a strange little figure, undersized and misshapen, but bearing the insignia of a marshal of France, and owning a name which was of evil omen over the Dutch frontier, for Luxembourg was Mocked upon already as the successor of Condé, even as his companion Vauban was of Turenne.... Beside them, a small, whitehaired clerical with a kindly face, Père la Chaise, confessor to the king, was whispering his views upon Jansenism to the portly Bossuet, the eloquent Bishop of Meaux, and to the tall, thin, young Abbé de Fénelon, who listened with a clouded brow, for it was suspected that his own opinions were tainted with the heresy in question. There, too, was Le Brun, the painter, discussing art in a small circle which contained his fellow-workers Verrio and Laguerre, the architects Blondel and Le Nôtre, and sculptors Girardon, Puget, Desjardins, and Coysevoix, whose works have done so much to beautify the new palace of the king. Close to the door, Racine, with his handsome face wreathed in smiles, was chatting with the poet Boileau and the architect Mansard, the three laughing and jesting with the freedom which was natural to the favorite servants of the king, the only subjects who might walk unannounced and without ceremony into and out of his chamber.

"What is amiss with him this morning?" asked Bolleau in a whisper, nodding his head in the direction of the royal group. "I fear that his sleep has not improved his temper."

"He becomes harder and harder to amuse," said Racine, shaking his head. "I am to be at Madame de Maintenon's room at three to see whether a page or two of the 'Phédre' may not work a change."

This passage cannot but remind us of the scene with the wits at Button's in "George de Barnwell," and also of an imaginative reporter's account of people at a private view, or some such function. At the period indicated, we need not be told, as we are, that people were not talking about "the last comedy of Molière" or of "the insolence of Pascal." Molière was dead; Pascal was dead; and Paris did not talk for ever about the "Lettres Provinciales." The rivalries of Madame de Montespan and Madame de Maintenon, the night ride of Amos—as adventurous, for a short distance, as that of the musketeers to Calais — remind us of Dumas, and do not bear the comparison. Montespan's attempt to have his wife beheaded is much less convincing than the decapitation of Milady. Here it is.

And thus it was that Amory de Catinat and Amos Green saw from their dungeon window the midnight carriage which discharged its prisoner before their eyes. Hence, too, came that ominous planking and that strange procession in the early morning. And thus it also happened that they found themselves looking down upon Francoise de Montespan as she was led to her death, and that they heard that last piteous cry for aid at the instant when the heavy hand of the ruffian with the axe fell 'upon her shoulder, and she was forced down upon her knees be side the block. She shrank screaming from the dreadful red-stained, greasy billet of wood; but the butcher heaved up his weapon, and the seigneur had taken a step forward with hand out stretched to seize the long auburn hair and to drag the dainty head down with it when suddenly he was struck motionless with astonishment, and stood with his foot advanced and his hand still out, his mouth half open, and his eyes fixed in front of him.

We think of the terrific scene when Barbazure's head was struck from his cruel shoulders as he was directing the execution of his innocent and injured spouse, for,

Quick as a flash de Catinat had caught up the axe, and faced dc Montespan with the heavy weapon slung over his shoulder, and a challenge in his eyes.
"Now!" said he.
The seigneur had for the instant been too astounded to speak. Now he under stood at least that these strangers had come between him nnd his prey.

However, Montespan stabs "his bearded seneschal through the brown beard and deep into the throat" — strange doings in the golden prime of Louis XlV. The Iroquols adventures are more plausible, and very exciting; while for villain, we have a Francis can, more fierce and tenacious than any Dominican, who pursues a French heretic into the heart of the Iroquois country, where he gets his end more easily than the brave Père Brébeuf.

A more interesting novel, despite the wild improbabilities of the plot, is "Rodney Stone," where the author is on English soil, among the bloods of the Regency and the heroic bruisers of an heroic age. The prize-fighters and country folk may be more truly drawn than the dandies; but every one who, like the Quaker lady known to George Borrow, adores "the bruisers of England" will find this a book to his heart's desire. From the old champion, Harrison, to that Sir Nigel Loring of the fancy, young Belcher, and the strange old Buckhorse with his bell-like cry, all Sir Arthur's fighting men are painted in a rich and juicy manner, with a full brush; and his hard-driving Corinthian blackguards are worthy of them, while the Prince Regent is more successful, as an historical portrait, than Louis XIV. There are plenty of "spirited rallies" and "rattling sets-to" in Sir Arthur's short stories; but "The Smith's Last Battle" is his master piece, and the chivalrous honesty of that excellent man would have made him justly dear to Borrow's Quakeress.

The best of the author's tales of times past, we have little doubt, are collected in the volume of "The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard." This gal lant, honest, chivalrous, and gay soldier represents a winning class of Frenchmen of the sword, with a considerable element of sympathetic caricature. The vanity of the Brigadier and his extreme simplicity are a little exaggerated; perhaps the author did not know at first how dear Gerard was to grow to himself and to his readers. In Napier's famous "History of the Peninsular War" we meet many young French officers doing things as desperate as Gerard does, and doing them, like the great Montrose, with an air, with a flourish, with a joyous acceptance of a dramatic opportunity. The English officer who captures Gerard, and plays a game of écarté with him for his liberty, was just such another as himself; but "Milor the Hon. Sir Russell, Bart" could never have told his own story. Like Thackeray's General Webb, and like General Marbot, the Brigadier "is not only brave, but be knows it," and is not at all diffident in making bis bearers aware of his prowess. His fight with the Bristol Bustler is not the least audacious of his combats, though, being ignorant of the rules of the fancy, the Brigadier kicked his man. "You strike me on the head, l kick you on the knee"; he thinks that this is perfectly legitimate. "What a glutton he'd have made for the middle-weights," exclaims the Bustler's admiring trainer, after observing, "it's something to say all your life, that you've been handled by the finest light-weight in England." The Bible, as Izaak Walton observes, "always takes angling in the best sense"; and Sir Arthur takes boxing in the same liberal way. Keats would have sympathized with him deeply, for the poet was a man of his hands, and is said to have polished off a truculent butcher. But the Brigadier, of course, shines most with the sword, and mounted; and there is not a tale in the collection which we cannot read with pleasure more than once; indeed they are so equally good that it is hard to select a favorite. Perhaps "How Gerard Won his Medal" and "The Brothers of Ajaccio" come back most pleasantly to the memory, with the Brigadier's remarkable feat in saving the Emperor at Waterloo.

To prefer this book among Sir Arthur's is as much as to say that we deem him better at a conte than in the composition of a novel of the conventional length. This is natural, as adventure and description, rather than character and analysis and love stories, are his forte. He has omitted "The Firm of Girdlestone" from this collection, though we prefer it to "A Duet," where the story is one of young married affection, and there are neither swords in the sun nor wigs on the green. Ladies may write love letters about merinos and alpacas, and "a little white trimming at neck and wrists, and the prettiest pearl trimming. Then the hat en suite, pale gray lisse, white feather, and brilliant buckle." These things may be written, but the wooer would be as much bored as Bothwell probably was by Queen Mary's sonnets, if she really defied "the laws of God, and man, and metre" (especially metre) in the poems attributed to her by her enemies.

Not here, oh Apollo,
Are haunts meet for thee.

We cannot pretend to be interested in Frank and Maude, and "the exact position of the wife of the assistant accountant of the Co-operative Insurance Company" — certainly no lofty position for a bride whose father, we learn, had a billiard-room of his own, and every thing handsome about him, at "The Laurels, St. Albans." Francis writes "critical papers in the monthlies," and here is an example of his discourse when, with his bride, he visits Westminster Abbey:—

What an assembly it would be if at some supreme day each man might stand forth from the portals of his tomb. Tennyson, the last and almost the greatest of that illustrious line, lay under the white slab upon the floor. Maude and Frank stood reverently be side it.
Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me.

Frank quoted. "What lines for a very old man to write! I should put him second only to Shakespeare had l the marshalling of them."

"I have read so little," said Maude.

"We will read it all together after next week. But it makes your reading so much more real and intimate when you have stood at the grave of the man who wrote. That's Chaucer, the big tomb there. He is the father of British poetry. Here is Browning beside Tennyson — united in life and in death. He was the more profound thinker, but music and form are essential also." ...

"Who is that standing figure?"

"It is Dryden. What a clever face, and what a modern type. Here is Walter Scott beside the door. How kindly and humorous his expression was! And see how high his head was from the ear to the crown. It was a great brain. There is Burns, the other famous Scot. Don't you think there is a resemblance between the faces? And here are Dickens, and Thackeray, and Macaulay. I wonder whether, when Macaulay was writing his essays, he had a premonition that he would be buried in Westminster Abbey. He is continually alluding to the Abbey and its graves. I always think that we have a vague intuition as to what will occur to us in life."

"We can guess what is probable."

To find a likeness in the faces of Burns and Scott is certainly original criticism. These young married people certainly "do not overstimulate," whether they moralize in Mr. Carlyle's house or in the Abbey.

It may be a vulgar taste, but we decidedly prefer the adventures of Dr. Watson with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Watson is indeed a creation; his loyalty to his great friend, his extreme simplicity of character, his tranquil endurance of taunt and insult, make him a rival of James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck. Dazzled by the brilliance of Sherlock, who doses himself with cocaine and is amateur champion of the middle-weights, or very nearly (what would the Bustler's trainer say to this?), the public overlooks the monumental qualities of Dr. Watson. He, too, had his love affair in "The Sign of Four"; but Mrs. Watson, probably, was felt to be rather in the way when heroic adventures were afoot. After Sherlock returned to life — for he certainly died, if the artist has correctly represented his struggle with Professor Moriarty — Mrs. Watson faded from this mortal scene.

The idea of Sherlock is the idea of Zadig in Voltaire's conte, and of d'Artagnan exploring the duel in "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," and of Poe's Dupin, and of Monsieur Lecoq; but Sir Arthur handles the theme with ingenuity always fresh and fertile; we may constantly count on him to mystify and amuse us. ln we forget what state trial of the eighteenth century, probably the affair of Elizabeth Canning, a witness gave evidence that some one had come from the country. He was asked how he knew, and said that there was country mud on the man's clothes, not London mud, which is black. That witness possessed the secret of Sherlock; he observed, and remembered, and drew inferences, yet he was not a professional thief-taker.

The feats of Sherlock Holmes do not lend themselves as inspiring topics to criticism. If we are puzzled and amused we get as much as we want, and, unless our culture is very precious, we are puzzled and amused. The roman policier is not the roof and crown of the art of fiction, and we do not rate Sherlock Holmes among the masterpieces of the human intelligence; but many persons of note, like Bismarck and Moltke, are known to have been fond of Gaboriau's tales. In these, to be sure, there really is a good deal of character of a sort; and there are some entertaining scoundrels and pleasant irony in the detective novels of Xavier de Montépin and Fortuné du Boisgobey, sonorous names that might have been borne by crusaders! But the adventures of Sherlock are too brief to permit much study of character. The thing becomes a formula, and we can imagine little variation, unless Sherlock falls in love, or Watson detects him in blackmailing a bishop. This moral error might plausibly be set down to that over-indulgence in cocaine which never interferes with Sherlock's physical training or intellectual acuteness. Sir Arthur writes in one of his prefaces:—

I can well imagine that some of my critics may express surprise that, in an edition of my works from which I have rigorously excluded all that my literary conscience rejects, I should retain stories which are cast in this primitive and conventional form. My own feeling upon the subject is that all forms of literature, however humble, are legitimate if the writer is satisfied that he has done them to the highest of his power. To take an analogy from a kindred art, the composer may range from the oratorio to the comic song and be ashamed of neither so long as his work in each is as honest as he can make it. It is insincere work, scamped work, work which is consciously imitative, which a man should voluntarily suppress before time saves him the trouble. As to work which is unconsciously imitative, it la not to be expected that a man's style and mode of treatment should spring fully formed from his own brain. The most that he can hope is that as he advances the outside influences should decrease and his own point of view become clearer and more distinctive.
Edgar Allen Poe, who, in his carelessly prodigal fashion, threw out the seeds from which so many of our present forms of literature have sprung, was the father of the detective tale, and covered its limits so completely that I fail to see how his followers can find any fresh ground which they can confidently call their own. For the secret of the thinness and also of the intensity of the detective story is that the writer is left with only one quality, that of intellectual acuteness, with which to endow his hero. Everything else is outside the picture and weakens the effect. The problem and its solution must form the theme, and the character-drawing be limited and subordinate. On this narrow path the writer must walk, and he sees the footmarks of Poe always in front of him. He is happy if he ever finds the means of breaking away and striking out on some little side-track of his own.

Not much more is left to be said by the most captious reviewer. A novelist writes to please; and if his work pleases, as it undeniably does, a great number and variety of his fellow citizens, why should his literary conscience reject it? If Poe had written more stories about Dupin — his Sherlock Holmes — and not so many about corpses and people buried alive, he would be a more agreeable author. It is a fact that the great majority of Sherlock's admirers probably never heard of Poe; do not know that detective stories date from Dupin, and stories of ciphers and treasure from "The Golden Bug," or beetle, as the insect is usually styled in English. Of Sir Arthur's debt to Poe there is no more to say than he has said. Perhaps he has not himself observed that his tale of "The Man with the Twisted Lip" is a variant of the adventure of Mr. Altamont in the "Memoirs of James Fitzjames de la Pluche." The "mistry" of that hero's "buth," by the way, seems to have revealed in his Christian names, which, like the motto of Clan Alpine, murmur, "My race is royal." Readers who remember the case of Mr. Altamont are not puzzled by the disappearance of Mr. Neville St. Clair.

Possibly the homicidal ape in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" suggested the homicidal Andaman islander in "The Sign of Four." This purely fictitious little monster enables us to detect the great detective and expose the superficial character of his knowledge and methods. The Andamanese are cruelly libelled, and have neither the malignant qualities, nor the heads like mops, nor the weapons, nor the customs, with which they are credited by Sherlock. He has detected the wrong savage, and injured the character of an

amiable people. The bo:jig-ngijji is really a religious, kindly creature, has a Deluge and a Creation myth, and shaves his head, not possessing scissors. Sherlock confessedly took his knowledge of the bo:jig-ngijji from "a gazetteer," which is full of nonsense. "The average height is below four feet!" The average height is four feet ten inches and a half. The gazetteer says that "massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast." Mr. E. H. Man, who knows the people thoroughly, says "no lengthened investigation was needed to disprove this long-credited fiction, for not a trace could be discovered of the existence of such a practice in their midst, even in far-off times."

In short, if Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in stead of turning up a common work of reference, had merely glanced at the photographs of Andamanese, trim, elegant, closely-shaven men, and at a few pages in Mr. Man's account of them in "The Journal of the Anthropological Institute" for 1881, he would have sought elsewhere for his little savage villain with the blow-pipe. A Fuegian who had lived a good deal on the Amazon might have served his turn.

A man like Sherlock, who wrote a monograph on over a hundred varieties of tobacco-ash, ought not to have been gulled by a gazetteer. Sherlock's Andamanese fights with a blow-pipe and poisoned arrows. Neither poisoned arrows nor blow-pipes are used by the islanders, according to Mr. Man. These melancholy facts demonstrate that Mr. Holmes was not the paragon of Dr. Watson's fond imagination, but a very superficial fellow, who knew no more of the Mincopies (a mere nick name derived from their words for "come here") than did Mr. Herbert Spencer.

Sherlock is also as ignorant as Dickens was of a very simple matter, the ordinary British system of titles. He has a client, and he looks for that client in another "book of reference," not the light-hearted gazetteer which he consults with the pious confidence that Mrs. Gallup bestows on the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." He discovers that the client's name is "Lord Robert Walsingham de Vere St. Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral" — not a plausible title at best. Yet, knowing this, and finding, in the "Morning Post," the client's real name, both Sherlock and the egregious Watson speak of Lord Robert St. Simon throughout as "Lord St. Simon"! The unhappy "nobleman," with equal ignorance of his place in life, signs himself, "Yours faithfully, St. Simon."

Of course we expect that so clumsy a pretender to be the second son of a duke will be instantly exposed by the astute Sherlock. Not so; Sherlock "thinks it all wery capital." Now would Sherlock have called the late Lord Randolph Churchill "Lord Churchill," or would he have been surprised to hear that Lord Randolph did not sign himself "Churchill"? Anthropology we do not expect from Sherlock, but he really ought to have known matters of everyday usage. The very "page boy" announces "Lord Robert St. Simon"; but Sherlock salutes the visitor as "Lord St. Simon," and the pretended nobleman calls his wife "Lady St. Simon." But do not let us be severe on the great detective for knowing no more of anthropology than of other things! Rather let us wish him "good hunting," and prepare to accompany Dr. Watson and him, when next they load their revolvers, and go forth to the achieving of great adventures.

(*) "Collected Edition." Smith, Elder: London, 1903. (1) "The painting of Jeffreys in the National Portrait Gallery more than boars out Micah Clarke's remarks. He is the handsomest man in the collection." (Author's note.)