The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-05-16


 has only wished to do than these which he has done. Desire is woadexfui tele- scope, and Pisgah the best observatory. Nov, while 1t is true that neither Mr. James nor the author of the work In Ques- tion has ever, in the Aeshly sense, gone quesaing afker gold, it is probable that both have ardently desired and fondly imagined the details of such a life in youthful day-dreams; and the author, counting upon that, and gell aware (cun. ming and low-minded man ! that this class of interest, having been frequently treated, finds a readily accessible and beaten road to the sympathies of the reader, addressed himself throeghoat to the building up and circumstansiation of this boyish dream. Character to the boy is a sealed book for him a pirate is a beard in wide trousers and literally bris- ting with pistols. The author, for the sake of circumstantiation, and because admitted character, within limits. Had the same puppets 6gured in a scheme of another sort, they had been drawn to very different purpose; for in this. ele- mentary novel of adventure the charac- ters need to be presented with bat one class of qualities the warlike and for midable. So as they appear insidious in deceit and fatal in the combat. they have served their end. Danger is the matter with which this class of novel deals fear, the passion with which 1t idly trifles; and the characters are portrayed only SO far as they realize the sense of danger and provoke the sympathy of fear. To add more traits, to be too clever, to start the hare of moral or intellectual interest while VIC are running the fox of material interest, is not to enrich, but to stultify your tale. The stupid reader will only be offended, and the clever reader lose the scent.
 The novel of character has this differ ence from all others that it requires no coherency Of plot, and for this reason, as in the case of" Gil Blas," it is sometimes called the novel oi adventure. It turns on the humors of the persons repre-. sented these are, to be sure, embodied in incidents, but the incidents themselves, being tributary, need not march in a progression and the characters may be statically shown. As they enter. 90 they may go out :; they must be consistent, but they need not grow. Here Mir. James will recognize the note of much of his own work he treats. for the most part, the statics of character, studying it at rest or only gently moved; and, with his usual delicate and just artistic in stinct, he avoids those stronger passions which would deform the attitudes he loves to study, and change his sitters from the humoris.s of ordinary life to the brute forces and bare types of more emotional moments In his recent Author of Beltraffio,'" so just in conception. so nimble and neat in workmanship, strong passion is indeed employed but observe that it is not displayed. Even in the heroine the working of the passion is suppressed; and the great struggle, the true tragedy, the scene a. fa;rc, passes un- seen behind the panels of locked door. The delectable invention of the young visitor is introduced, consciously or not, to this end: that Mr. James, true to his method, might avoid the scene of pas sion. trust no reader will suppose me guilty of underwriting this little master piece. mean merely that it belongs to one marked class of novel, and that it would have been very differently con- ceived and treated had it belonged to that other marked class, of which now proceed to speak.
 take pleasure in calling the dramatic novel by that name, because it enables me to point out by the way a strange and peculiarly English misconception It is sometimes supposed that the drama consists of incident. It consists of pas- sion, which gives the actor his opportu- nifty !; and that passion must progressively increase, or the actor, as the piece pro- ceeded, would be unable to carry the au- dience from lower to higher pitch of interest and emotion. A good serious play must, therefore, be founded on one of the passionate erHees of life, where duty and inclination come .cs!y .c the grapple and the same is true of what call, for that reason, the dramatic novel will instance few worthy specimens, all of our own day and language: Mere dith's Rhoda Fleming" that wonderful and painful book, long out of print and hunted for at bookstalls like an .Aldine :, Hardy's" Pair of Blue E 5es;" and two of Charles Reade's, Griffith Caunt and the" Double Marriage" originally called White Lies," and founded (by an acci- dent quaintiy favorable to my nomencls- ture) on play by Maquet, the partner of the great Dumas In this kind of novel the closed door of the Author cf B-ltraffio '' must be broken open pas sion must appear on the scene and utter it's last word; passion is the be.all and the epd-all, the plot and the solution, the protagonist and the atHs CT maehiaa in one. The characters may come any how upon the stage; VIC do not are the point is that, befoie they leave it, they shall become trans6gured and raised out of themselves by passion. It may be part of the design to draw them with de- tail, to depict full-length character, and then behold it melt and change in the furnace of emotion. But there is no ob- ligation of the sort nice portraiture is not required: and we are content to ac.