The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-12-02

De a great literary blunder. The strug
gle with sMoriarty and its fatal termin
alton was fitting climax to the
career of the greatest of all the detec-
tives. 1t was an artistic rounding off
of the life of the man who had been
the hero of SO many adventures from
"A Study in Scarlet" to 1.-The Final
Problem" DR.. Doyle did the only
thing literary artist can do with q
great character-kill him off. 1t has
to be done to save the character.
Scott, great artist that he was, once
committed the same blunder that DR.,
Doyle has been urged to commit with
Sherlock Holnes-brought him to life
after he had received death-dealing
blow, and his usefulness to the plot
of the story was over. This charac-
ter so brought back to life was the
noble Athelstane. Gle really was not
noble; at best he was but glutton
and a boor.) When the Templar, Bois-
Guilbert, half wheeling his steed,
made "a demi-courbette towards the
Saxon, and, rising in his stirrups, so
as to take full advantage of the de-
scent, he discharged fearful blow
upon the head of Athelstane," and the
Saxon was held to be dead by all his
companions, he should have remained
dead, Scott recognized this, and also
the fact that his temperance married
the harmony of the whole. 1t was a
response to popular clamor, and 1t was
wrong.
Cervantes himself found that he had
to kill the immortal Don Quixote to
save him. He does not seem to have
been overly fond of the knight of La
Manche at first, and took no particular
care to guard his reputation. After he
put forth the first and second parts of
the great novel he allowed it to take
care of itself. This was dangerous in
the extreme. Cervantes himself TAX
ing no heed of the estimation in which
his work was held busted himself with
'Persiles and Sigismunda." The conse-
quence was that Second Volume of
the Ingenius Gentleman Don QuiXote
of La Manche; by the Licentiate Alon
so Fernando de Avellaneda of Torde-
sillas,' appeared. Avellandea really
did mankind a service, as it is doubt
full if Cervantes would otherwise have
completed his work and brought the
career of the dear old Knight and the
inimitable Sancho to a close.
Addison, haying the example of Ger
vantes before him no doubt, decided
that he himself would bury Sir Roger,
although he did not create him in the
first instance. Budget tells the story
as follows:
Mr.. Addison was so fond of this
character, that little before he laid
down the Spectator, foreseeing that
some nimble gentleman would catch
up his pen the moment he quilted iD,
he said to an intimate friend, with a
certain warmth in his expression,
which he was not often guilty of, BY
G., I'll kill Sir Roger, that nobody
else may murder him And he did
we'll.
DR.. Doyle has made the only decision
he could make regarding Sherlock
Holmes. But the stories about him are
so clever, so Interesting, so exciting,
that we Should be very glad to have
more of them. And he can give them
TO the world without the clumsy expe-
dent of finding that Sherlock was not
killed by his fall over the cliff. Sher-
lock said that his brother Mycroft had
his powers of observation and deduc-
ton in a much larger degree than he,
but that he lacked energy. Let DR..
Doyle put energy in Mycroft Holmes,
then let Mycroft devote himself to de-
tective work, ana the problem of more
Sherlock Holmes adventures is solved.