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'miching mallecho." The inn at Burford Bridge, with its arbors and green garden and silent, eddying river-though it is known already as the place where Keats finished his " Endymion " and Nelson parted from his Emma- still seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend. Within these ivied walls, behind these old

the active and the passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny; anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and dashed we know not how into the future. Now we are pleased by our conduct, anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more effec-green shutters, some further business tive, but the latter is surely the more constant. Conduct is three parts of life, but it is not all the four. There is a vast deal in life and letters both which is not immoral, but simply a-moral; which either does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest turns, not upon what a man shall choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on the passionate slips and hesitations of the conscience, but on the problems of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean, open-air adventure, the shock of arms, or the diplomacy of life. With such material as this it is impossible to build a play, for the serious theatre exists solely on moral grounds, and is a standing proof of the dissemination of the human conscience. But it is possible to build, upon this ground, the most joyous of verses, and the most lively, beautiful, and buoyant tales.

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smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old
Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry is an-
other. There it stands, apart from the
town, beside the pier, in a climate of its
own, half inland, half marine-in front,
the ferry bubbling with the tide and the
guardship swinging to her anchor; be-
hind, the old garden with the trees.
Americans seek it already for the sake of
Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined there at
the beginning of "The Antiquary." But
you need not tell me that is not all;
there is some story, unrecorded or not yet
complete, which must express the mean-
ing of that inn more fully. So it is with
names and faces; so it is with incidents
that are idle and inconclusive in them-
selves, and yet seem like the beginning of
some quaint romance, which the all-care-
less author leaves untold. How many of
these romances have we not seen deter-
mine at their birth; how many people
have met us with a look of meaning in
their eye, and sunk at once into idle ac-
quaintances; to how many places have
we not drawn near, with express intima-
tions-"here my destiny awaits me
and we have but dined there and passed
by! I have lived both at the Hawes and
Burford in a perpetual flutter, on the heels,
as it seemed, of some adventure that
should justify the place; but though the
feeling had me to bed at night and called
me again at morning in one unbroken
round of pleasure and suspense, nothing
befell me in either worth remark. The
man or the hour had not yet come; but
some day, I think, a boat shall put off
from the Queen's Ferry, fraught with a
dear cargo, and some frosty night a
horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with
his whip upon the green shutters of the

One thing in life calls for another; there
is a fitness in events and places. The
sight of a pleasant arbor puts it in our
mind to sit there. One place suggests
work, another idleness, a third early ris-
ing and long rambles in the dew. The
effect of night, of any flowing water, of
lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships,
of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an
army of anonymous desires and pleas-
ures. Something, we feel, should hap-
pen; we know not what, yet we proceed
in quest of it. And many of the happiest
hours of life fleet by us in this vain atten-
dance on the genius of the place and mo-
ment. It is thus that tracts of young fir,
and low rocks that reach into deep sound-
ings, particularly torture and delight me.
Something must have happened in such
places, and perhaps ages back, to mem-inn at Burford.
bers of my race; and when I was a child
I tried in vain to invent appropriate games
for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to
fit them with the proper story. Some
places speak distinctly. Certain dank
gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain
old houses demand to be haunted; cer-
tain coasts are set apart for shipwreck.
Other spots again seem to abide their
destiny, suggestive and impenetrable,

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Now, this is one of the natural appetites with which any lively literature has to count. The desire for knowledge, I had almost added the desire for meat, is not more deeply seated than this demand for fit and striking incident. The dullest of clowns tells, or tries to tell, himself a story, as the feeblest of children uses invention in his play; and even as the imaginative grown person, joining in the

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game, at once enriches it with many de- English people of the present day are lightful circumstances, the great creative apt, I know not why, to look somewhat writer shows us the realization and the down on incident, and reserve their adapotheosis of the daydreams of common miration for the clink of tea-spoons and His stories may be nourished with the accents of the curate. It is thought the realities of life, but their true mark is clever to write a novel with no story at to satisfy the nameless longings of the all, or at least with a very dull one. Rereader and to obey the ideal laws of the duced even to the lowest terms, a certain daydream. The right kind of thing interest can be communicated by the art should fall out in the right kind of place; of narrative; a sense of human kinship the right kind of thing should follow; and stirred; and a kind of monotonous fitness, not only the characters talk aptly and comparable to the words and air of "Santhink naturally, but all the circumstances dy's Mull," preserved among the infinitesin a tale answer one to another like notes imal occurrences recorded. Some people in music. The threads of a story come work, in this manner, with even a strong from time to time together and make a touch. Mr. Trollope's inimitable clergy. picture in the web; the characters fall men naturally arise to the mind in this from time to time into some attitude to connection. But even Mr. Trollope does each other or to nature, which stamps the not confine himself to chronicling small story home like an illustration. Crusoe beer. Mr. Crawley's collision with the recoiling from the footprint, Achilles bishop's wife, Mr. Melnotte dallying in shouting over against the Trojans, the deserted banquet-room, are typical Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian running with his fingers in his ears, these are each culminating moments in the legend, and each has been printed on the mind's eye forever. Other things we may forget; we may forget the words, although they are beautiful; we may forget the author's comment, although perhaps it was ingenious and true; but these epoch-making scenes, which put the last mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. This, then, is the plastic part of literature: to embody character, thought, or emotion in some act or attitude that shall be remark ably striking to the mind's eye. This is the highest and hardest thing to do in words; the thing which, once accomplished, equally delights the schoolboy and the sage, and makes, in its own right, the quality of epics. Compared with this, all other purposes in literature, except the purely lyrical or the purely philosophic, are bastard in nature, facile of execution, and feeble in result. It is one thing to write about the inn at Burford, or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is something besides, for it is likewise art.

incidents, epically conceived, fitly em.
bodying a crisis. If Rawdon Crawley's
blow were not delivered, "Vanity Fair"
would cease to be a work of art. That
scene is the chief ganglion of the tale;
and the discharge of energy from Raw-
don's fist is the reward and consolation of
the reader. The end of "Esmond" is a
yet wider excursion from the author's
customary fields; the scene at Castlewood
is pure Dumas; the great and wily En-
glish borrower has here borrowed from
the great, unblushing French thief; as
usual, he has borrowed admirably well,
and the breaking of the sword rounds off
the best of all his books with a manly,
martial note. But perhaps nothing can
more strongly illustrate the necessity for
marking incident than to compare the liv-
ing fame of "Robinson Crusoe" with the
discredit of "Clarissa Harlowe."
"Cla-
rissa" is a book of a far more startling
import, worked out, on a great canvas,
with inimitable courage and unflagging
art; it contains wit, character, passion,
plot, conversations full of spirit and in-
sight, letters sparkling with unstrained
humanity; and if the death of the heroine
be somewhat frigid and artificial, the last
days of the hero strike the only note of
what we now call Byronism, between the
Elizabethans and Byron himself. And
yet a little story of a shipwrecked sailor,
with not a tenth part of the style nor a
thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring
none of the arcana of humanity and de-
prived of the perennial interest of love,
goes on from edition to edition, ever
young, while "Clarissa" lies upon the
shelves unread. A friend of mine, a

breathed who shared these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and Dantès little more than a name. The sequel is one long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnat

Welsh blacksmith, was twenty-five years old, and could neither read nor write, when he heard a chapter of "Robinson " read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat content, huddled in his ignorance; but he left that farm an-ural, and dull; but as for these early chapother man. There were daydreams, it ters, I do not believe there is another appeared, divine daydreams, written and volume extant where you can breathe the printed and bound, and to be bought for same unmingled atmosphere of romance. money and enjoyed at pleasure. Down It is very thin and light, to be sure, as on he sat that day, painfully learned to read a high mountain; but it is brisk and clear Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. and sunny in proportion. I saw the other It had been lost, nor could he find another day, with envy, an old and a very clever copy but one that was in English. Down lady setting forth on a second or third he sat once more, learned English, and at voyage into " Monte Christo." Here are length, and with entire delight, read stories, which powerfully affect the reader, "Robinson." It is like the story of a which can be reperused at any age, and love-chase. If he had heard a letter where the characters are no more than from "Clarissa," would he have been fired puppets. The bony fist of the showman with the same chivalrous ardor? I won- visibly propels them; their springs are an der. Yet "Clarissa" has every quality open secret; their faces are of wood, their that can be shown in prose, one alone bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillexcepted: pictorial, or picture-making ro-ingly partake of their adventures. mance. While "Robinson" depends, for the most part and with the overwhelming majority of its readers, on the charm of circumstance.

In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and the pictorial, the moral and romantic interest rise and fall together by a common and organic law. Situation is animated with passion, passion clothed upon with situation. Neither exists for itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the other. This is high art; and not only the highest art possible in words, but the highest art of all, since it combines the greatest mass and diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. Such are epics, and the few prose tales that have the epic weight. But as from a school of works, aping the creative, incident and romance are ruthlessly discarded, so may character and drama be omitted or subordinated to romance. There is one book, for example, more generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in childhood, and still delights in age I mean the "Arabian Nights" where you shall look in vain for moral or for intellectual interest. No human face or voice greets us among that wooden crowd of kings and genies, sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found enough. Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian authors in the purely material charm of his romances. The early part of "Monte Christo," down to the finding of the treasure, is a piece of perfect story-telling; the man never

And

the point may be illustrated still further. The last interview between Lucy and Richard Feverell is pure drama; more than that, it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the English tongue. Their first meeting by the river, on the other hand, is pure romance; it has nothing to do with character; it might happen to any other boy and maiden, and be none the less delightful for the change. And yet I think he would be a bold man who should choose between these passages. Thus, in the same book, we may have two scenes, each capital in its order: in the one, human passion, deep calling unto deep, shall utter its genuine voice; in the second, according circumstances, like instruments in tune, shall build up a trivial but desirable incident, such as we love to prefigure for ourselves; and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to give the preference to either. The one may ask more genius-I do not say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the memory.

True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. It reaches into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not refuse the most pedestrian realism.

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Robinson Crusoe" is as realistic as it is romantic; both qualities are pushed to an extreme, and neither suffers. Nor does romance depend upon the material impor tance of the incidents. To deal with strong and deadly elements, banditti, pirates, war, and murder, is to conjure with great names, and, in the event of failure, to double the disgrace. The arrival of Haydn and Consuelo at the Canon's villa

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is a very trifling incident; yet we may or virtue. But the characters are still read a dozen boisterous stories from themselves; they are not us; the more beginning to end, and not receive so fresh clearly they are depicted, the more widely and stirring an impression of adventure. do they stand away from us, the more It was the scene of Crusoe at the wreck, imperiously do they thrust us back into if I remember rightly, that so bewitched our place as a spectator. I cannot idenmy blacksmith. Nor is the fact surpris- tify myself with Rawdon Crawley or with ing. Every single article the castaway Eugene de Rastignac, for I have scarce a recovers from the hulk is "a joy forever" hope or fear in common with them. to the man who reads of them. They are not character, but incident, that wooes us the things he ought to find, and the bare out of our reserve. Something happens, enumeration stirs the blood. I found a as we desire to have it happen to ourglimmer of the same interest the other selves; some situation, that we have long day in a new book, "The Sailor's Sweet dallied with in fancy, is realized in the heart," by Mr. Clark Russell. The whole story with enticing and appropriate debusiness of the brig Morning Star" is tails. Then we forget the characters; very rightly felt and spiritedly written; then we push the hero aside; then we but the clothes, the books, and the money plunge into the tale in our own person satisfy the reader's mind like things to and bathe in fresh experience; and then, eat. We are dealing here with the old and then only, do we say we have been cut-and-dry, legitimate interest of treasure reading a romance. It is not only pleas trove. But even treasure trove can be urable things that we imagine in our day made dull. There are few people who dreams; there are lights in which we are have not groaned under the plethora of willing to contemplate even the idea of goods that fell to the lot of the Swiss our own death; ways in which it seems Family Robinson, that dreary family. as if it would amuse us to be cheated, They found article after article, creature wounded, or calumniated. It is thus pos. after creature, from milk kine to pieces of sible to construct a story, even of tragic ordnance, a whole consignment; but no import, in which every incident, detail, informing taste had presided over the se- and trick of circumstance shall be wel. lection, there was no smack or relish in come to the reader's thoughts. Fiction the invoice; and all these riches left the is to the grown man what play is to the fancy cold. The box of goods in Verne's child. It is there that he changes the "Mysterious Island" is another case in atmosphere and tenor of his life. And point: there was no gusto and no glamor when the game so chimes with his fancy about that; it might have come from a that he can join in it with all his heart, shop. But the two hundred and seventy- when it pleases him with every turn, when eight Australian sovereigns on board the he loves to recall it and dwells upon its Morning Star" fell upon me like a sur- recollection with entire delight, fiction is prise that I had expected; whole vistas called romance. of secondary stories, besides the one in hand, radiated forth from that discovery, as they radiate from a striking particular in life; and I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the right to be.

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To come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we must bear in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any art. No art produces illusion; in the theatre, we never forget that we are in the theatre; and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now condescending to take an active part in fancy with the characters. This last is the triumph of story-telling: when the reader consciously plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now in character studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we watch, we approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with courage, suffering,

Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. "The Lady of the Lake" has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, "The Lady of the Lake," or that direct, romantic opening -one of the most spirited and poetical in literature

"The stag at eve had drunk his fill." The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged

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book, "The Pirate," the figure of Cleve- with his omission, instead of trying back
land, cast up by the sea on the resound- and starting fair, crams all this matter,
ing foreland of Dunrossness, moving, tail foremost, into a single shambling
with the blood on his hands and the Span- sentence. It is not merely bad English,
ish words on his tongue, among the sim- or bad style; it is abominably bad narra-
ple islanders, singing a serenade under tive besides.
the window of his Shetland mistress, is
conceived in the very highest manner of
romantic invention. The words of his
song, "Through groves of palm," sung
in such a scene and by such a lover,
clench, as in a nutshell, the emphatic con-
trast upon which the tale is built. In
"Guy Mannering," again, every incident
is delightful to the imagination; and the
scene when Harry Bertram lands at El-
langowan is a model instance of romantic
method.

666

"I remember the tune well,'" he says, 'though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.'

He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune awoke the corresponding associations of a damsel. . . . She immediately took up the song:

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Are these the links of Forth, she said;
Or are they the crooks of Dee,
Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head
That I so fain would see?

'By heaven!' said Bertram, ‘it is the
very ballad.'"

Certainly the contrast is remarkable; and it is one that throws a strong light upon the subject of this paper. For here we have a man, of the finest creative instinct, touching with perfect certainty and charm the romantic junctures of his sto ry; and we find him utterly careless, almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical matter of style; and not only frequently weak, but frequently wrong, in points of drama. In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scotch, he was delicate, strong, and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of too many of his heroes have already wearied two generations of readers. At times, his characters will speak with something far beyond propriety, with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole of words. The man who could conceive and write the character of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, as Scott has conceived and written it, had not only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic gifts. How comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid, inarticulate twaddle?

but he had hardly patience to describe it.
He was a great daydreamer, a seeër of fit
and beautiful and humorous visions; but
hardly a great artist; hardly, in the man-
ful sense, an artist at all." He pleased
himself, and so he pleases us. Of the
pleasures of his art he tasted fully; but
of its toils and vigils and distresses never
man knew less. A great romantic — an
idle child.
R. L. STEVENSON.

On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance of mod- It seems to me that the explanation is ern feeling for romance, this famous touch to be found in the very quality of his surof the flageolet and the old song is se- prising merits. As his books are play to lected by Miss Braddon for omission. the reader, so were they play to him. He Miss Braddon's idea of a story, like Mrs. | conjured up the beautiful with delight, Todgers's idea of a wooden leg, were something strange to have expounded. As a matter of personal experience, Meg's appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the Dominie's recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes that continue to ring in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: "a damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen." A man who gave in such copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to prepare the reader for the presence of the "damsel;" he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face

From Blackwood's Magazine.
THE STORY OF JAMES BARKER:
A TALE OF THE CONGO COAST.
PART II.

THE Sound was the rattle of the dice, and M'Gibbon and the Portuguese were the gamblers. For some time the pair continued to throw the Portuguese al

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