The morning call., 1894-02-03
FORGOTTEN BOOKS.

The resurrecton-man keeps at work.
Contemporary fiction is so feeble and
yields such small profits to publisher or
author that dligeDt arch8ologlsts are
delvIng in to the graveyards of the century
before VANITY Fair" in search of books
which can he profitably reprinted. One of
these, which has just been brought out by
a London publisher. is MackeDzie's MAN
OF Feeling" which fifty years ago was
read by every pretender to literary knowl-
edge. Il can be found in the old editions
at public libraries. and it is safe to say
that the impression it will leave on the
readers mind is one of astonishment that
intelligent people should.have read it at all.
a careful perusal of the books of the
last half Of the eighteenth and the first
quarter of the nineteenth centuries demon
strates that public taste has improved
since the days of Richardson. Many of
the novels of those days offend by their
coarseness. but hardly any escape the
charge Of dullness. Horace WalpOle
started school of novels which were full
of mystery and horror. The best known
works of the school were the castle OF
Otranto," the mysteries of Udolpho" and
THE Monk" They were all full of
mysterious murders, and horrible specterS
and Dlood-curdling incidents. with the
clanking of chains and the drip of gore
on clammy pavements; bows and girls de-
voured them with their hair standing on
end. Now it is safe to say that no intelli-
gent boy or girl could get to the eud of any
one of them.
Mrs. Aphra Rebu's novels, which had
quite vogue in their day, mbled some
modern French novels in that they COM
mended themselves by their iDdecency. He
who tries to read them to-day forgets the
impropriety in his disgust at their STU
pidity. And he finds the same objection to
quite another class of novels which ap-
pealed to the gentle reader on the ground
of their high moral tone. Mrs. Hannah
More's "Cobbs in Search of Wife" was
a hit; modern readers get so exasperated
with it that they would give Cobbs the
best-looking of their female relations just
to get rid of him. Mrs. IDchbald was not
quite so dull, but most of her stories can
still be recommended as cure forsin SON.
MIA.
Just as Scott b egan the series of Waver-
ley novels which revolutiOnized British
taste in fctioD, a number of other novel
writers appeared and attained consider
able celebrity. One Of them was John
Gait whose ANNALS of the Parish" really
shows inventive and descriptive power.
but is only known to-day to bookish men.
Lady Morgan was a contemporary OF his !;
she wrote irish stories as lie wrote Scotch
stories, with remarkable fidelity to life,
but they did not hold the reading public.
Other ladies, in the first thirty years of this
century, were considered rivals of Scott,
Bulwer and young Dickens Such were
Lady Blessington. who wrote tales of
fashionable life and made the mouths Of
toad-eaters water, and Mrs. Gore, whom
many living mothers of families will re-
member to have read in their youth. 1t
would not be easy to buy copy of one of
Lady sngton's or Mrs. Cores novels
in San Francisco to-day, put they all had
great sale in their time.
One bookcase will hold all the English
novels which appeared before 1910 and
are still read to-day by others besides
students of letters. There is hardly one
between Fielding and Scott, hardly one
between Scott and Bulwer. hardly one
between Bulwer and Dickens. Here and
there, perhaps, a single bit of fiction may
possess attraction enough to warrant its
reproduction, but, as a rule, the resurree-
tion-men will find that, thin as the flo de
steele fancy is, il takes better with the
public than the dry bones and dust of
dpad tac