It is so long a time since Mr. W. H. Mallock published the ‘Romance of the Nineteenth Century’ that the book might now very well be left alone, if it were not for the fact that in a fashion it marked an epoch in the history of English literature. It was, so far as I know, the first example of the School of the Downright Nasty. For half a year it ran in ‘Belgravia’ side by side with a novel of my own, and under those conditions I read as much as I could stand of it. Its main object appears to be to establish the theory that a young woman of refined breeding may be an amateur harlot. The central male figure of the book is a howling bounder, who has a grievance against the universe because he can’t entirely understand it. Within the last two or three years it has occurred to Mr. Mallock to recast the book, and in a preface dated 1893 (I think) he informs the world that on re-reading the story he personally has found portions of it to be offensive. These portions he declares himself to have eliminated, and he now thinks—or thought in 1893—that there is nothing on that score to cavil at. All I remembered of the story was that a certain Colonel Stapleton debauched the mind of the heroine by lending her obscene books with obscene prints attached. This episode is retained, in spite of the work of purification which has been performed; and it may be said that if the original novel were nastier than this deodorised edition of it, it is very much of a wonder how the critical stomach kept it down.

It is a refreshment to turn from this particular problem seeker to the work of a writer like Mrs. Humphry Ward, who, if she invests the questions she handles with more importance than actually belongs to them, is as wholesome and sincere as one could ask. She has read both deeply and widely, she thinks with sanity and clearness, she discerns character, she can create and tell a story, her style is excellently succinct and full, and any book from her pen may safely be guaranteed to fill many charmed and thoughtful hours. She is still a seeker of problems, and shares the faults of her school, inasmuch as she sets herself to the solution of themes which all thoughtful people have solved for themselves at an early age. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find a better and more salutary stimulant for the mind of a very young man or woman than ‘Robert Elsmere,’ to cite but one work of hers, but to the adult intelligence she seems a day behind the fair. She expends something very like genius in establishing a truth which is only doubted by here and there a narrow bigot—that truth being that a man may find himself forced to abandon the bare dogma of religion, and may yet conserve his faith in the Unseen and his spiritual brotherhood with men. ‘Robert Elsmere’ is a very beautiful piece of work, and it is impossible not to respect the ardour which inspires it, and the many literary excellences by which it is distinguished. But, all the same, it leaves upon the mind a sense of some futility. It would be easy to write a story which would prove—if a story can be imagined to prove anything—the precise opposite of the truth so eloquently preached in ‘Robert Elsmere,’ and the tale might be perfectly true to the experience of life. There are men who, parting with dogmatic religion, part with religion altogether, and whose only chance of salvation from themselves lies in the acceptance of a hard and fast creed. It would be easy enough, and true enough, to show such a man assailed by doubt, struggling and succumbing, and then going headlong to the devil. The thing has happened many a time. Mrs. Humphry Ward shows another kind of man, and depicts him most ably. Robert Elsmere is even a better Christian when he has surrendered his creed than he was whilst he held it, for he has reached to a loftier ideal of life, and he dies as a martyr to its duties. But the story has the air of being controversial, and fiction and controversy do not work well together. It is possible to establish any theory, so far as a single instance will do it, when you have the manufacture both of facts and of characters in your own hands. Accept an extreme case. A practised novelist might take in hand the character of a morose and surly fellow who was generous and expansive in his cups. So long as the wretch was sober he might be made hateful; half fill him with whisky, and you gift him with all manner of emotional good qualities. The study might be real enough, but it would prove nothing. The novelist who assails a controversial question begs everything, and the answer to a problem so posed is worthless except as the expression of an individual opinion. It may be urged—and there is force in the contention—that there are many people who are only induced to think of serious themes when they are dressed in the guise of fiction, as there are people who cannot take pills unless they are sugar-coated. Again—as admitted already—a mind in process of formation might be strengthened and broadened by the influence of such a book as ‘Robert Elsmere.’ There are some to whom its apparent trend of thought will appear to be simply damnable. That one may have scant respect for their judgment, and no share at all in their opinion, does not alter the fact that the weapon employed against them is not and cannot be fairly used.

Many years ago, Mr. Clark Russell, whose name is now a household word, was the editor of an ill-fated society journal. I was a contributor to its little-read pages, and I came one day upon an article entitled ‘Pompa Mortis.’ This article was written in such astonishingly good English, so clean, so hardbitten and terse, and yet so graceful, that I could not resist the temptation to ask its author’s name. My editor modestly acknowledged it for his own, and when I told him what I thought of its style he confessed to a close study of Defoe and a great admiration for him. I saw nothing more from his hand until I read ‘The Wreck of the Grosvenor,’ the first of that series of sea stories which has carried Mr. Russell’s name about the world. An armchair voyage with Russell is almost as good as the real thing, and sometimes (as when the perils and distresses of shipwreck are in question) a great deal better. Had any man ever such an eye for the sea before, or such a power of bringing it to the sight of another? Few readers, I fancy, care a copper for his fable, or very much for his characters, except for the mere moment when they move in the page; but his descriptions of sky and sea linger in the mind like things actually seen. They are so sharp, so vivid, so detailed, so true, that a marine painter might work from them. And the really remarkable thing about them is the infinite variety of these seascapes and skyscapes. He seems never to repeat himself. He is various as the seas and skies he paints. One figures his mind as some sort of marvellous picture gallery. He veritably sees things, and he makes the reader see them. And all the strange and curious sea jargon, of which not one landsman in a thousand understands anything—combings and back-stays and dead-eyes, and the rest of it—takes a salt smack of romance in his lips. He can be as technical as he pleases, and the reader takes him on faith, and rollicks along with him, bewildered, possibly, but trusting and happy. And Clark Russell has not only been charming. He has been useful, too, and Foc’sle Jack owes him a debt of gratitude. For though he does not shine as a draughtsman where the subtleties of character are concerned, he knows Jack, who is not much of a metaphysical puzzle, inside and out, and he has brought him home to us as no sea-writer ever tried to do before. Years ago it seemed natural to fancy that he might write himself out, but he goes on with a freshness which looks inexhaustible. If I cannot read him with the old enjoyment it is my misfortune and not his fault. If his latest book had been his first I should have found in it the charm which caught me years ago. But it is in the nature of things that an individual writer like Clark Russell should be his own most dangerous rival.

Clark Russell is captain on his own deck, whether he sail a coffin or a princely Indiaman of the old time. Sir Walter Besant is lord of his own East End, and of that innocent seraglio of delightful and eccentric young ladies to which he has been adding for years past Sir Walter Besant is chiefly remarkable as an example of what may be done by a steadfast cheerfulness in style. His creed has always been that fiction is a recreative art, and we have no better sample of a manly and stout-hearted optimist than he. He is optimistic of set purpose, and sometimes his cheerfulness costs him a struggle, for he is tender-hearted and clear-sighted, and he is the Columbus of ‘the great joyless city’ of the East. He has had a double aim—to keep his work recreative and to make it useful. In one respect he has been curiously happy, for he once dreamt aloud a beautiful dream, and has lived to find it a reality. It was his own bright hope which built the People’s Palace, and a man might rest on that with ample satisfaction.

He has given us many well-studied types of character, but he excels in the portraiture of the manly young man and the lovable young woman. In this regard I find him at his apogee with Phyllis Fleming and Jack Dunquerque, who are both frankly alive and charming. He is good, too, at the portraiture of a humbug, and finds a humorous delight in him, very much as Dickens did. There is more than a touch of Dickens in his method, and in his way of seeing people, and, most of all, in the warm-hearted cheer he keeps.

It is outside the purpose of this series to dwell on anything but the literary value of the works of the people dealt with; but little apology, after all, is needed for a side-glance at the work which Sir Walter Besant has done for men of letters. He has worked hard at the vexed and difficult question of copyright; he has founded an Authors’ Club and an authors’ newspaper; and he has devoted with marked unselfishness much valuable time and effort to the general well-being of the craft. He has stood out stoutly for the State recognition of authorship, and in his own person he has received it. Esprit de corps is a capital thing in its way. Whether it is well to have too much of it in a body of men who hold the power of the Press largely in their own hands, whilst at the same time publicity is the breath of their nostrils, is perhaps an open question. But of Sir Walter Besant’s single-mindedness in this voluntary work there is no shadow of doubt. Remembering his popularity with the public, and the price he can command for his work, it is evident that he has expended in the pursuit of his ideal time which would have been worth some thousands of pounds to him. He has striven in all ways to do honour to letters, and the esteem in which he is held is a just payment for high purpose and unselfish labour.