Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-10-03
WILKIE COLLINS.

y. \. Press.
William Wilkie Collins, the last of tn,
great school of English novelists whose
master and originator was Charles Dick
ems, has passed away after long anC
useful life. Born in 1924, he began hi:
literary career in early manhood, anG
quickly achieved an enviable reputation
as an accurate delineator of human pas,
sion and safe though brilliant writer
of fiction, which was intensely dramatic
and interesting without being objection
able from moral standpoint.
During the forty years of his intellec-
tual activity Wilkie Collins has been a
favorite with all English-speaking ma
tions. His name on the title page of a
book has always assured the reader that
the choicest thoughts of vigorous i'm
agination were to be found within its
covers. He knew how to arrange his
matter to the best advantage, and he
| possessed to perfection the art of hold
ing the attention of the reader while
weaving the intricate threads of plot
from the solid woof to the separated
cords and thence to the graceful knot of
satisfactory conclusion.
Wilkie Collins had no lessons to teach
the world, nor did he endeavor to referm
abuses by the sturdy welding of cru
sader's pen. On the contrary, he was
romancer pure and simple, and his object
was accomplished when he attracted the
attention of the reader in the first chap
ter and kept it chained by an almost
servile fear of losing one item of the
plot, until on the last page perfected
climax allowed the dropping of the book
with sigh of satisfaction.
1t is not easy to make a comparison
of his works, because all of them are
good His earlier and later novels ma
turally suffer somewhat when placed be-
side those which he wrote when his in
tellect had brOadened and his style be-
come terse and vigorous with the ma
turing of his body. The chief praise
must therefore be given to "The Woman
in White" mo Name" "The Moon
stone," "Armadale," "Man and Wife,
and "The New Magdalen," all of which
were written between his 36th and 50th
years.
Like the works of other purely imag-
NATIVE writers, the novels of Wilkie
Collins are doomed, as concerns general
popularity, to oblivion in the near future,
and it is perhaps well that such a fate
should await them. He gave the world
no picture of his life and times after the |
manner of Fielding; he did not, like
Thackeray, try to shame us into virtue;
he did not feel the sense of duty which |
compelled Dickens to Illustrate the car
dinal virtues and vices; nor did he stamp |
out a single mOnstrOus public wrong, |
like Charles Reade. He aimed to please, |
and succeeded, but other story tellers
have come upon the scene who cater to
the same public taste in other ways, and
popular favor has turned to the new COM
ers, while the older friend is left alone.
With all this, Wilkie Collins life work
is not lost. Cultivated readers will al
ways find fascination in his pages, and
every well-appointed library will contain
his works. This is the reward he has
obtained, and after all it is enough for
one whose sole wish was to satisfy pop
ular craving for scenes and incidents
unknown to the commonplace life of
work a. day work.