It was in the year 1906, and in the novel Richard Baldock, that he revealed his power. This book, which will make its first American appearance in the autumn of 1918, contains a story so absorbing that it is only in the retrospect that one realizes the vitality of its characters and the delicacy of its art. There are no heroes and no villains. Every person has the taint that we all inherited from Adam, and every person has some reflection of the grace of God. There is no one who does not say something foolish or ill-considered; and there is no one who does not say something wise. In other words there are no types, like "heavies," "juveniles," and "ingenues." As is the case in nearly all the novels by its author, we are constantly revising our opinions of the characters; and we revise them, not because the characters are untrue, but because we learn to know them better. Human nature is consistent only in its inconsistency. It is forever fluid and dynamic; and although no individual has The more complex a character, the less de Every fine novel and every fine drama must of course illustrate the law of causation—the principle of sufficient reason. But characters that run in grooves are not human. In Richard Baldock, we have, as we so often have in the work of Archibald Marshall, strife between father and son—a kind of civil war. This war, like many others, is begotten of misunderstanding. There is not only the inevitable divergence between the older and the younger generation, there is the divergence between two powerful individualities. We at first sympathize wholly with the son. We say to ourselves that if any man is foolish enough to sacrifice all his joy in life to a narrow creed, why, after all, that is his affair; it is only when he attempts to impose this cheerless and barren austerity on others, that we raise the flag of revolt. At the deathbed of the young mother, one of the most memorable scenes in our author's books, we are quite certain that we shall never forgive the inflexible bigot; this hatred for him is nourished when he attempts to crush the son as he Tolerance—when based not on indifference, but on sympathy—is tolerant even of intolerance. |