[3] Barrie’s great novel is The Little Minister.
At the top of the ladder of literature is poetry, to which only a few succeed in climbing. Next is the essay, a large comfortable niche cut in the side of the rock of ages, which is never crowded, and so is all the more grateful to those who frequent it. And down at the bottom is the novel, which we all read.
Novels are read for various reasons, which are not often truthfully set down by the professional critic. Truth, however, is always best, and no one need be ashamed of it.
Most of us read novels for the same reason that we go to the theatre—for amusement. We want to get away from the weary commonplace things about us, and get some refreshment by dipping into another world. Perhaps our social world is narrow; but in a good novel we may move in the best society. Possibly we are ambitious, and wish to read of the things we would like to have if we could. Reading about them is next best to having them. Or possibly our world is so unexciting and dreary that we need the excitement of an exciting novel to keep us from dying of decay. Excitement is a good thing, really necessary to life, however bad it may be when carried to extremes. Some people become feverish in their chase for excitement and in their constant reading of exciting novels; but we must not condemn the healthy for the excesses of the mentally sick.
The excitement afforded by novels is of several different kinds. There is the excitement of love and passion—perhaps the most deeply grained sentiment of the human heart, and apparently the most necessary to health of the heart, especially in these days when our spontaneous emotions are constantly being repressed. Then there is the excitement of travel and adventure. Finally we have the novel of intellectual piquancy, the book full of epigrams and smart sayings such as Oscar Wilde might have written. The novel of love and passion may be the lascivious and dirty book, or sin equally by being the weakly sentimental Sunday school story. The abuse of the novel of travel and adventure is the cheap dime novel, or the high-priced dime novel called the historical romance. And the extreme of the epigrammatic story is the snobby smart novel, which tends to make prigs of us. This last novel is largely a modern development.
In any of these lines a novel is good if it gives us real men and women, acting naturally and truly, and is written with sufficient rapidity and lightness. The great sin in a novel is ignorance of human nature; and the next sin is dullness. Either is fatal.
The oldest examples of modern fiction are two great collections of tavern tales—Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Arabian Nights. These stories were told to amuse; because they amused those who listened to them, they have well succeeded in amusing English readers for several hundred years since. The Decameron is largely a series of stories of love and passion. They are many of them exceedingly amusing even to the modern reader; but according to modern standards so many of them are actually indecent that a translation of this book is hardly to be obtained in a respectable bookstore, and should never be allowed in the hands of a person under twenty-five.
For the young the great book of exciting adventure is the Arabian Nights. All the indecent stories have been omitted in the modern translations, and the excitement stops short of the point at which it can do any serious harm in over-stimulation. The best story to begin with is that of Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp—a story every one ought to be familiar with; and next to that the series of tales of the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor. After reading these, turn to Poe’s clever “Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade,” which closely follows the adventures of Sinbad, but bases every wonder on a scientific fact stated in a note. This modern tale of wonder is much more marvellous than the imaginary wonder stories of the ancients, though its wonders are in reality strict truths. Mr. H. G. Wells, the modern novelist, has followed out the same line successfully in his pseudo-scientific stories. By comparative study of this kind one will find fresh interest in an old book.
The Decameron and the Arabian Nights are not properly novels, but rather collections of short stories. The oldest readable novel is Don Quixote. It is an excellent book to read aloud in a mixed company, and is still as funny as any modern book. Don Quixote is a gentleman of kind heart and a certain innate refinement, in spite of the crack in his brain and his tilting at windmills. Sancho Panza is the thoroughly practical, faithful clown; and Sancho Panza’s mule and Don Quixote’s warhorse are characters in themselves. The book was written as a satire on chivalry; but its humanity has made it live long since the death of knight-errantry. Gulliver, too, was a satire, but now we read it merely as an amusing story; and Fielding’s Joseph Andrews was commenced as a satire on Richardson’s Pamela, but became so interesting as a story that even in its own day readers forgot all about the parody.
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was written in the seventeenth century, by a tinker, in prison; and it is a distinctly religious book. But even the non-religious will admit that it is a good human story. Intended originally as an allegory, we read it now for its own story interest.
Along with the Arabian Nights young people should, without exception, read Robinson Crusoe. Nearly every one has read it; but there are parts of it that will bear reading again and again and many times. The introduction may be skipped; but beginning with Crusoe’s shipwreck on the island we are deeply fascinated by all he does to care for himself and find some amusement. He is an intensely practical man, and never gets sentimental, because he is always at work, a good thing for some of us moderns who are inclined to bemoan our lot. For about a hundred pages this account of the life on the island continues, but when Crusoe is rescued the interest grows less, and we may very well omit the last half of the book.
The first modern novel was begun by Richardson somewhat over a hundred and fifty years ago as a book of instruction on correct letter writing. Richardson was a printer fifty years old. In his youth he had often helped young ladies write love letters. So it was thought he could write a good book of model letters. He put a story into them to make them more lifelike and interesting, and the story turned out to be the beginning of modern fiction as an established form of literature, for the good novels that had gone before had not led the way for others as Richardson’s books did.
All Richardson’s novels are written in the form of letters, and to modern readers are decidedly tedious.
Clarissa Harlowe is the best of them; but it is much too long, and often dull. Clarissa is beset by Lovelace, spirited away, made to quarrel with her family, and outwardly compromised in every possible fashion; but through it all she maintains her maiden purity, and finally compels the man to marry her. We would like her better if she were a little more human and spontaneous—in short, if she had been a little more of a sinner.
But there is one novel of that day and time which is first rate reading even to-day, and that is Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. Fielding was a rake and a joker. He started as a novelist by making fun of the good Richardson. But his characters are certainly natural, even if a little spicy. Tom came into the world in an irregular way, and led a very irregular life. He is by no means a model for the young, and Fielding tells of his sins in a way that to-day would be considered positively indecent. And yet we cannot help liking Tom, and he comes out all right at the end. Sophia Western forgives him for his faults, and loves and marries him. Old Squire Western is one of the most famous characters in the book, and a mixture of shrewdness, drollery, roughness and good-heartedness he certainly is.
Other books of this period which have been often spoken of are Smollett’s Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphrey Clinker, and Stern’s Tristram Shandy; but they are a little tedious to the modern reader, and like Richardson’s novels must probably be left on the library shelves.
The last of the good novels of this period is Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield. The perfect simplicity of this story is its eternal recommendation. The Vicar is a simple-minded man, and somebody is always “doing him” or his simple son or his vain wife and daughters. We cannot help liking the old man for his unquenchable cheerfulness under all misfortunes, and the women, though old-fashioned, are not yet out of date in their feminine weaknesses. It is the very shortest of old-time novels. Some may not like so very simple a story, but if one has a sense of sly humour, the Vicar will be found good reading.
There is also a French novel of this period which deserves to be read much more than it is. It is hard to tell just why it has somehow fallen into obscurity, unless it is the fact that it is French, and as unlike any other French novel as possible. It is Le Sage’s Gil Blas, and the scene is Spain. Gil is not unlike Tom Jones, though more of a wanderer, and goes from one adventure to another. Though some of his experiences are risqué, not one of them is offensive or even approaching indecency. The most innocent person will not be offended by anything in Gil Blas, for evidently Le Sage was a pure-minded man. The adventures are both exciting and amusing; and there is a fine string of them.
There is nothing subtle about the old-time novels. They are excellent amusing stories, and that is all. Originally no more than tavern yarns, they have lived because they give us real men and women, and tell the truth about human nature. They are not very refined, and there is nothing aristocratic about them. They come from the people, and have something of the vulgarity of the people about them. But time has softened away the objectionable points. While we may be offended by present-day vulgarity, we probably will not even recognize that of a former age.
After the publication of the Vicar of Wakefield in 1766, for nearly fifty years no great novel appeared. True, Frances Burney’s Evalina appeared, but it is dry reading to-day. It is also true that some of Jane Austen’s best novels were written, but they were not published. The long silence was broken by the anonymous publication of Waverley in 1814.
Scott had got into the printing business with James Ballantyne, and then into the publishing business. His Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and Lady of the Lake—story poems as they were—were read like novels, and had brought him thousands of pounds. But his popularity was waning, and he needed some book to make good the losses of bad business investments. Waverley had been begun several years before, but as Ballantyne did not like what had been written, it was thrown into a drawer and forgotten. Scott now pulled it out and finished it. It was published, and made an instant success. The name of the author was withheld at first, because Scott was somewhat ashamed of being known as a novelist—he who was famous as a poet; and afterwards because of Scott’s humour, as he called it. Perhaps the mystery of the “Great Unknown” added some commercial value to the publications.
Waverley is not one of Scott’s best. The hero is rather a disagreeable fellow, and the scenes are neither great nor memorable. But the book is noteworthy because it is the first of one of the most successful series of novels ever produced.
The best of the Waverley novels is usually considered to be Ivanhoe, though many like Kenilworth, Old Mortality, or Quentin Durward better.
Ivanhoe is a tale of the time of Richard I, called the Lion-hearted. Richard has been imprisoned on the continent of Europe, whither he had gone to take part in the Crusades. His brother is on the throne in his absence, and now is preparing to make himself king.
The story opens with preparations for a grand tournament. Ivanhoe, the son of a Saxon lord, has secretly returned from the Holy Land, where he has served with Richard, and takes part in the tourney, winning the crown on the first day and choosing Rowena, his cousin, the Queen of Love. But he has seen and been fascinated by Rebecca, a beautiful Jewess, whose father had lent him armour. On the second day Ivanhoe is overcome, but he is saved by the entrance of a strange black knight, in reality Richard himself returned. The Black Knight wins the crown, but instantly disappears and leaves Ivanhoe to be adjudged the victor of the day.
One of the most amusing scenes is that in the woods when the king feasts with Friar Tuck, the confessor of Robin Hood’s men, for Robin Hood and his outlaws play an important part in this story. One of the most dramatic scenes is the burning of the castle in which De Bracy has imprisoned the beautiful Rowena, the Jewess Rebecca, and the wounded Ivanhoe.
Scott’s novels are filled with splendid descriptions, his characters are noble gentlemen and ladies, and he tells of historic events worth chronicling. They are sometimes too long; but it is easy to skip the less interesting passages. Scott can never be said to be tiresome.
Kenilworth is a story of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth’s lover. He has married Amy Robsart; but that there may be no barrier to his marriage with the Queen, he causes Amy to be made away with. In the course of the story Queen Elizabeth visits the castle of Kenilworth, and we have a splendid description of the historic shows and games, as we had of the tournament in Ivanhoe. Our sympathies are with Amy Robsart, and the story of her death is intensely dramatic.
Quite different is the story of Quentin Durward—a young Englishman in France in the days of Louis XI. Quentin was sent to escort a certain beautiful Isabelle and her aunt to the Bishop of Liege, on an understanding that a certain outlaw was to capture the girl and marry her. Quentin Durward succeeded in defending his charge, and after many adventures and escapes, was given the girl in marriage.
To many the best of Scott’s novels are his Scottish stories. The best of these is Old Mortality, a strictly historical tale of the seventeenth century. But to many a more fascinating tale is the Bride of Lammermoor, with its pathetic story of Effie and Jeanie Deans. Other good Scotch novels of Scott’s are The Monastery, Redgauntlet and The Antiquary. Guy Mannering is an English historical story, in which Scott himself is said to figure as Alan Fairford. Other good novels are Robin Hood, Woodstock, The Abbot, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Pirate. The only poor stories he ever wrote are Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous, both written when he was declining to his death and kept on writing merely in the hope that he might finish paying off his debts before he died.
In all there are thirty-two of these books. No other English novelist has written so many that continue popular. Dumas is said to have written or attached his name to twelve hundred; but only three or four are considered very well worth reading to-day. Victor Hugo wrote one great novel, Les Miserables, but his next greatest, The Toilers of the Sea, is far below the first one. Balzac and Dickens alone have lists to compare with Scott’s.
Scott’s novels are romantic and interesting. They are on the whole excellent history,—indeed their history is as good as that of Shakspere. Scott was a noble, generous, lovable man, and his books are as pure and great as he is. There is no fine character-drawing, no sentimental studies of women, no philosophy, no moralizing. But we see a splendid and varied company of gentlemen and ladies of historic Britain, dressed in all the picturesqueness, of their age, and passing through a series of scenes as romantic and exciting as gentlemen and ladies could ever participate in. There is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be wary of in Scott, and there is nothing that suggests vulgarity. No one can help loving, admiring, and respecting the man, or enjoying his novels.
Scott’s own life is almost as romantic in a way as his novels. His father was a lawyer, and he entered that profession, but did little more than hold a number of salaried positions. His first book was a volume of old ballads which he had collected and partly rewritten. Then came the wonderfully successful poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and after that Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. He was only less popular as a narrative poet than Byron. But he became entangled in business investments with the brothers Ballentyne, old school friends of his, and saved himself and them from bankruptcy only by the lucky venture of Waverley, which immediately carried him to world-wide and lasting fame, and put him in the way of earning a million dollars by his writings. “Novelist, critic, historian, poet, the favorite of his age, read over the whole of Europe,” says Taine, “he was compared and almost equalled to Shakspere, had more popularity than Voltaire, made dressmakers and duchesses weep, and earned about £200,000.” It was his ambition to found a sort of feudal family, and on land which he purchased at Abbotsford he built a castle in imitation of the ancient knights, “with a tall tower at either end ... sundry zig-zag gables ... a myriad of indentations and parapets and machiolated eaves; most fantistic waterspouts; labelled windows, not a few of them painted glass ... stones carved with innumerable heraldries.” Here he kept open house. But in 1825 his publisher, Constable, failed, carrying down the printing firm of James Ballantyne & Co., and Scott, because of his partnership interest, found himself liable for debts amounting to over half a million dollars. He immediately set about paying these off by his pen. For a Life of Napoleon he got $90,000, and for the novel of Woodstock he got $40,000. He exhausted himself in the effort, and died seven years later, owing only £30,000, which a publisher advanced on all his copyrights.
He did not begin to write novels until he was forty-two, and then he turned them out with incredible speed. Waverley was written in three weeks, and another was written in “six weeks at Christmas.” He wrote thirty-two novels in sixteen years, besides doing various other work such as his Life of Napoleon.
Taine summarizes his style as a novelist thus: “In history as in architecture he was bent on arranging points of view and Gothic halls. He had neither talent nor leisure to reach the depths of his characters.” And again, “After all, his characters, to whatever age he transfers them, are his neighbours, cannie farmers, vain lords, gloved gentlemen, young marriageable ladies, all more or less commonplace.”
But the romantic novel was carried to its greatest heights of interest and excitement by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo—especially Dumas. These two young Frenchmen had heard of Scott’s fame, and had read his novels, and they made up their minds that this was the popular line to follow. So each brought out a romantic play in Paris, which was successful. Thus the romantic movement was started in France; and it was not long before the novels began to appear, and were so popular that Dumas set up a sort of novel factory, where he had many people working for him writing novels for which he had orders. In all he turned out over twelve hundred.
Next to Scott, Dumas is the great original historic novelist. His books are not such good history as Scott’s, but they are much more interesting. Yet there are comparatively few of the twelve hundred bearing the name of Dumas that one cares to read to-day.
Of these the most characteristic is The Three Musketeers and its two sequels, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
The three novels cover the period in France from 1625 to 1665, and every page is alive with duels, escapes, intrigues, and all sorts of French adventures. A country lad from Gascony named D’Artagnan comes up to Paris in search of adventure. He is riding a raw-boned yellow pony, and has three crowns in his pocket. The first day he gets into three duels, and in each case makes a friend of his antagonist. These three friends, called Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, follow him through all his adventures. All become great and powerful men in France. This is the point in which the great novelists differ from the less. They give us great men, while the little ones give us only common men.
Dumas’s success with The Three Musketeers has led to many modern books of the same sort, the best of which are probably Stanley Weyman’s House of the Wolf, Under the Red Robe, and Gentleman of France, and Anthony Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda.
But Dumas wrote one modern, semi-historical novel which has not been imitated so successfully, and if anything it is more famous than The Three Musketeers. It is The Count of Monte Cristo. (It really appeared before The Three Musketeers.)
The hero is a mate of a ship, of which he hopes soon to become captain, and lover of a beautiful girl, whom he hopes soon to marry. The story opens in 1815. The hero is accused by his two rivals (one of whom wants the ship and the other the girl), of being engaged in carrying dangerous information to Napoleon, who is in exile on the island of Elba. He is thrown into prison, where he remains for twenty years.
Among the prisoners is a fellow thought to be mad, who tells of a wonderful treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo, off the coast of Italy.
Our hero escapes from prison, finds the treasure, and appears in the fashionable world as the rich and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo.
His motive in life now is revenge upon those who had put him in prison. One is a rich banker. Another is a distinguished general. A third is an influential magistrate.
The story is exciting and romantic in the extreme, and ends in tragic and dramatic pathos. Some think the gloomy ending spoils it; but if it has any fault it is that of being, like most of Dumas’s novels, a little too long.
The stories already mentioned will give most persons reading enough of this kind; but if more is wanted, we might recommend The Queen’s Necklace and the three connected novels, Queen Margot (or Marguerite of Valois), The Lady of Monsoreau, and The Forty-five. Less interesting is The Memoirs of a Physician, for which Dumas made a study of hypnotism. Also Thackeray recommends a simple little story called The Black Tulip—which is so innocent any schoolgirl might read it without offense. The truth is, Dumas is seldom immoral, never indecent. To these add his two accounts of himself, his Memoirs and the story of the animals he loved, My Pets.
Dumas’s father was the son of a marquis, who had gone to Hayti and married a negress. The novelist was therefore a quadroon. The young fellow came to Paris with nothing, made his fortune as a playwright (his income in one year was $200,000, it is said), became even more successful as a novelist, built a theatre and a chateau which he called Monte Cristo, contracted for forty novels in one year, ruined himself by his recklessness and gaieties, was reduced to poverty, and died with less than he began life with. Throughout his novels we find the same reckless gaiety, and this is the element which makes them so popular. At one extreme is Scott, the honest, the honourable, the faithful; at the other is Dumas, an adventurer, reckless, irresponsible, but good at heart and as much a genius as Scott.
Victor Hugo is undoubtedly a far greater figure in French literature than Dumas. In France he is honoured as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of French poets. He was an accomplished artist, and a man of strong and admirable character. Victor Hugo is a large figure in the French history of the nineteenth century, and his one great novel is a colossal monument to his fame that all may understand and read with intense interest.
Born of a noble family in 1802, he went to Paris and at twenty published a volume of poems that laid the foundation of his literary and artistic reputation. In 1830 he, like Dumas, produced a successful play, and found himself established in French literature. The next year—long before Dumas thought of writing a story—he published Notre Dame de Paris, his first great novel. It is a many-sided story of Fate, centred about the famous old cathedral of Notre Dame, the “book” of the middle ages.
Many years passed before Victor Hugo was again to appear as a novelist. He wrote plays and poems, and took part in politics. As a result of the revolution which brought Napoleon III. to the throne, Victor Hugo was forced into exile, and lived for a number of years in the British island of Guernsey. Here he wrote his one great, monumental novel, Les Miserables, which is as fascinating and romantic as it is great as a work of literary art and a portrayal of social conditions and a study of universal human nature. When it appeared in 1862 Dumas had made his fame and fortune and had fallen into poverty, Thackeray was dead, and Dickens had but a few years to live. Balzac and Poe were already gone some years, and Hawthorne had but two more years to live. In a way Les Miserables is a summary of all these.
The principal character is Jean Valjean, a criminal who again and again builds up his little social position, only to see it crumble in an hour when his prison record is revealed. He wanders through Paris, and into the provinces of France, and stops on the battlefield of Waterloo. Everywhere he finds tragedy, human joy and suffering, and incidents that hold the attention breathless. Nothing seems forced or strange or unusual, yet everything is as dramatic as the most fanciful imaginations of Scott or Dumas. And like Dickens, he gave us a long role of notable characters.
Les Miserables is an immense book, extending into six large volumes, and would require two or three months to read through carefully. It is a sort of library of fiction, to be compared to Balzac’s Comedie Humaine, or Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series of novels. Few will read it from preface to finis, but it does not need to be read as a whole, for every book, nearly every chapter, is fairly complete in itself.
Hugo wrote only three other novels, Toilers of the Sea, which has some fine descriptions of life at the bottom of the ocean, Ninety-three, his last, and the Man Who Laughs, an inferior work.
Though Eugene Sue is not reckoned a great novelist, two of his books which appeared when the fame of Dumas was at its height have continued to be read. They are the Wandering Jew and the Mysteries of Paris. The story of the Wandering Jew is based on the legend of the man at whose door the Saviour asked to rest His cross only to receive the reply “Go on!” “Thou shalt go on forever!” answered the Saviour, and the Jew became an eternal wanderer. One of his descendants turned Catholic to save his fortune, but his secret was discovered and his estate confiscated, all but a hundred and fifty thousand francs, which was left to accumulate for a hundred and fifty years, when it might be claimed by certain of his heirs. The story is largely concerned with the various ways in which the Jesuits hunt down all the heirs but a young priest who has made over to the society all his fortune. But they are defeated in the end. The book is written from the extreme Protestant point of view, and is a series of episodes and exciting adventures.
In the romantic and historical school of Scott an important writer is the American James Fenimore Cooper. He first tried an English domestic novel, which he published at his own expense; but Scott, whose novels were then at the height of their popularity (1820) inspired him with different ambitions, and he wrote The Pilot to correct the nautical errors of Scott’s Pirate.
Cooper wrote a large number of novels, but the only ones read to-day are those which describe American pioneer life. His characters are less real and individual than Scott’s even; but his fine pictures of the woods, the Indians, and the adventures of the early pioneers have never been surpassed.
His first readable novel is The Spy, in which appears his one good character, Harvey Birch. The others of special interest are in the so-called Leatherstocking series, and are—
The Pioneer, 1823.
The Pilot, 1823.
The Last of the Mohicans, 1826 (called his best).
The Prairie, 1827.
The Pathfinder, 1840.
The Deerslayer, 1841.
Wyandotte, 1843.
The Redskins, 1846 (the least notable).
Bulwer-Lytton was a prolific novelist, but only one of his stories remains to us as indisputably great. That is The Last Days of Pompeii, which we read for its history quite as much as for its fascinating story.
Charles Kingsley a little later produced two good novels, Hypatia and Westward, Ho. Hypatia is an historical account of Egypt in the days when Alexandria was the flourishing city, and Hypatia is truly and learnedly drawn. The narrative is by no means so exciting as most other famous historical novels.
Captain Frederick Marryat was popular in his day, but he seems to be little read in the present age. His most popular novel was Mr. Midshipman Easy, and The Phantom Ship is said to be the best sea novel ever written. The Pacha of Many Tales is a collection of most romantic and exciting short stories, told by one man, and probably the best worth reading of anything Marryat has left.
The last of the great historical novelists was Charles Reade, whose Cloister and the Hearth is considered by many one of the greatest novels of this kind ever written. But the fame of this is shared by his Dickenesque stories Never Too Late to Mend, Hard Cash, and Put Yourself in His Place.
Among modern historical novelists Gen. Lew Wallace with his Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ, and the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz with his Quo Vadis and other novels, are most likely to become classic.
The pendulum of human interest swings quickly from one side to the other. Within five years of the appearance of the last of the Waverley novels there appeared in England a novelist as great as Scott and in every way his direct antithesis. Scott was a splendid story-teller. With a swift brush he painted large scenes and large characters. His brilliant pageantry moved easily and steadily from the beginning to the end of more than thirty novels, most of which were published in three stately volumes. In 1835 came Dickens, with his disconnected sketches of ordinary types of Englishmen. His first great success, Pickwick, was written from week to week as it was published. The author never knew three chapters ahead what would happen to his characters; nor did it matter. He had his characters, he had Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller and the rest; what mattered anything else? As the story went on something would happen to them, and that was enough.
And with Dickens we have an entirely different style of writing. The Waverley novels are written with more or less fine language, large words, sweeping phrases; Pickwick was a great bubbling mass of sentiment and emotion, pathos, humour, the cold feeling, the hot feeling, the shaky feeling, the melancholy feeling, the riotous feeling—one might go on forever. With every turn of his pen this new magician plays upon our heart-strings, possesses us, fills us, makes us laugh or cry at will. The very collocation of his words causes our flesh to quiver and the blood to leap in our veins, and holds our attention spell-bound. What Jane Austen did in her fine way, to the despair of Scott, Dickens did in his big, coarse, splashing way, and with ten times the genius.
Dickens’s father was a poor man in the navy-pay office, at first with a yearly salary of £80. Micawber in David Copperfield was drawn from him. Even when he got as much as £350 a year he was always in debt, and finally landed in the Marshalsea, which Dickens so vividly describes in Little Dorrit.
While still a child, Charles was sent to work in a blacking warehouse, described as the establishment of Murdstone & Grinby in David Copperfield. He had a terribly hard life of it. But after a while he was taken away and sent to school for a short time, finally studying shorthand and becoming a newspaper reporter of the debates in Parliament at a time when these were taken down verbatim.
By the time he was twenty-four he was getting about thirty-five dollars a week. He tried a few sketches in a magazine (Sketches by Boz) which were successful in their way, and finally was asked by Chapman & Hall to write the text for some sporting pictures by a noted artist of the day. This turned out to be Pickwick, became instantly popular, and Dickens was a famous novelist before he was twenty-five. He wrote about twenty novels, and earned as much money as Scott (a million dollars), though many more copies of his novels have been published. He may be considered the most popular English novelist that ever wrote.
Pickwick, Dickens’s first novel, is undoubtedly also his most humorous. It tells of the doings of a farcical club headed by Mr. Pickwick. But Pickwick’s servant, Sam Weller, is the most amusing character in it, and as a character probably the most famous in all Dickens’s works.
Next to Pickwick in popularity, and by many liked much better, is David Copperfield. This is nothing less than a pathetic and intensely human autobiography of Dickens himself, with certain fictitious additions. David Copperfield is Charles Dickens (notice the reversed initials), Micawber is Dickens’s own father, and Dora was Dickens’s first love. Only a passionately sympathetic heart could have conceived this story, and only a man with an overflowing genius for work could have written it in the spontaneous and natural way that Dickens did.
Third in the list of popularity is probably The Old Curiosity Shop, in which appears Little Nell, the description of whose pathetic death is found in every school reader. This volume also tells the story of Mr. Quilp, the dwarf, the Marchioness, and Dick Swiveller. Oliver Twist was written partly as an attack on workhouses in Dickens’s day. It tells us the story of a poor waif, and takes us among thieves, introducing us to the famous Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy. Little Dorrit is the story of the Marshalsea, the great debtors’ prison in which Dickens’s own father at one time resided. Dombey & Son tells the pathetic story of little Paul Dombey, the boy mate to Little Nell; Martin Chuzzlewit introduces us to the inimitable Pecksniff and family. Barnaby Rudge is a sort of detective story, telling of a murder and how it was found out. Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby are also considered to be among the best of Dickens’s novels.
By many his greatest is thought to be A Tale of Two Cities, an intensely dramatic historical novel of the French Revolution. It is entirely different from anything else Dickens ever wrote, yet the pathetic and sympathetic character-drawing makes it entirely unlike the historical novels of Scott or Dumas.
His short Christmas stories are also among his best work, especially A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth. Either may be read in an hour or two. W. E. Henley considers Barbox Bros., a beautiful and simple story of a lame girl, a little child, and a man running away from his birthday, even better; but it is not found in most complete editions and only recently has been published in separate form.
When the name of Dickens is mentioned that of Thackeray is also always on the tongue, yet there are large numbers even of the most refined people who do not find Thackeray as good reading as Dickens. It takes a quiet person, with a sense for the intellectual, the sarcastic and the ironical as opposed to the sentimental and humorous, a person with gentlemanly or ladylike instincts, to fall quite into sympathy with Thackeray. But those who love him, love him with an intensity surpassing their feeling for any other author. Thackeray penetrates life with his keen shafts. He is strong because of his reserves, Dickens because of his lack of reserve. Thackeray has polish and elegance of style, he is a master of the best English, and handles it with the ease and grace of inborn, hereditary skill. He could not have made such personal confessions as David Copperfield or Little Dorrit, he could not have laid the colour on with the indiscriminate profusion of Pickwick or the scenes describing Little Nell. He was in no sense a great emotional artist, for only now and then does he lose himself. Such passages as the death of Colonel Newcome are few in Thackeray. He is more often ridiculing foibles than gaining our sympathy for admirable sinners. He bites and stings; and unless we have a fine heart to perceive it we never become aware that he is winning too, that under his cynical perception of the truth of things in this world, especially in the aristocratic society which alone he knew and of which alone he wrote, he has a great and loving heart, a heart tender and forgiving, sympathetic even when he ridicules most unmercifully. It is this great loving heart, so hidden that it can be seen only by those who are truly his friends, that makes Thackeray, the belated exponent of a class in itself repulsive to the average democrat of to-day, in some respects the greatest writer of fiction in the English language. He has grave faults: he is always preaching; he is seldom very hopeful; he had no great belief in himself or his mission in the world. But language in his hands is almost a living and breathing entity, a polished, perfect instrument. And Thackeray teaches the great lessons of restraint, of patience and thoughtful study of life, of the little, nameless compensations which after all to most of us alone make life really worth living.
Thackeray was born and brought up as an English gentleman. His parents were married and lived in India, belonging to the great British civil service there. But his father died when he was young, and his mother married again and took him to England. He had his small fortune, and little thought of worrying about money till in middle life he found his substance gone through injudicious speculation, and his pen the principal means by which he could earn a living. He married and had several daughters, but his wife became insane. This was the only cloud on his domestic life.
Thackeray’s early books are not remarkable. Samuel Titmarsh and even Barry Lyndon are not and never have been popular. It was not until 1848, a dozen years after Dickens (a year the younger man) had become famous with Pickwick, that Thackeray really took his place among the great English novelists on the publication of Vanity Fair. Thackeray’s novels never attained the sale that Dickens’s did, and never yielded anything like as much money.
The sub-title of Vanity Fair was “A Novel Without a Hero.” The heroine, Becky Sharpe, however, was hero and heroine in one. It is said that Thackeray’s women are weak; but no finer portrayal of feminine character is to be found in modern literature than that of Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair.
The Newcomes is considered a greater novel by some. It presents much more lovable characters. Colonel Newcome being one of the most lovable in fiction; and Clive Newcome, and Ethel Newcome whom he loves, are of the same stuff as the well bred, educated people we see about us and number as our friends and most cherished companions.
Pendennis is in the same vein as The Newcomes, and involves some of the same characters, but it is not so strong a novel by any means, though perhaps more sentimental.
Henry Esmond is an historical novel, and may perhaps be considered the highest type of historical novel ever written. It never has had the popularity of Scott’s, but its characters are undoubtedly much stronger and more carefully drawn than any of his. Lady Castlewood and Beatrix are as real as if they had lived in the flesh, and yet as interesting as any a romancer ever imagined.
His fifth great novel is The Virginians, a sort of sequel to Esmond.
Only five novels! but they are of a kind to do for Thackeray what Les Miserables did for Victor Hugo as compared with the popular and productive Dumas. Thackeray and Hugo are both most admired, and rank highest in the literary firmament, in spite of the perennial popularity of Dickens and Dumas.
We have now considered the great romantic artists, who cared for point of view, Gothic castles, and the events of history; and likewise the great domestic story tellers, who, like Dickens, have sacrificed plot and scene to character portrayal.
We have reserved until the present a novelist of France who may ultimately be counted the greatest master of modern fiction. He was a contemporary of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, but he took no part in the romantic movement. Indeed, the critics of his own day would have nothing to do with him. His works, far more numerous than Scott’s and almost as bulky, sold in sufficient numbers to enable him to pay the debts his lack of business experience caused him to contract in various speculations; but even his own fellow citizens of Tours snubbed him so unmercifully that in sorrow he decided not to give to that town his large and valuable library, as he had intended to do. Only recently have his books been adequately translated into English, and now only a portion are accessible. He is the last great classic to come upon the stage; and the most thoughtful young writers of to-day whisper among themselves that the Master is Balzac.
Victor Hugo, Dumas, George Sand, the representatives of the romantic movement, are fascinating story-tellers, but they are not true to human nature. Their works abound in glaring faults in the grammar of human life. They were so wrapped up in the thrills their tales were to excite that they had small time to think seriously about the minuter facts. They have never analysed the principles of life. What observation chanced to bring them they used in the most effective way; and as we read Les Miserables and Consuelo we are shocked at every point by the inconsistency of the characters, the false ring of the speeches they make and the acts they perform. The colour has been laid on thick and hot, and flames with overpowering brilliancy; but the drawing will not bear close inspection.
In Scott we find no such inaccuracies of characterization, however many faults of grammar there may be. The Englishman is a master at characterization, and in no great English novelists do we find the inaccuracies of thought and feeling which characterized the French romancers. But in all Scott’s pageantry, with his hundreds of figures, we find but relatively few types, and even they are not very profound or wonderful. They are the common, everyday men Scott knew, dressed up in the clothes of history and romance. And though they are all true enough as far as they go, the same type appears again and again with a different feather in his cap and a fresh name to be hailed by. And Dickens and Thackeray have drawn but a few types, those they themselves had come personally in contact with and known by habit and instinct. These they have immortalized, and repeated often enough for us to understand them in all their phases. The types in their books are drawn unconsciously. They were no deep students of the varieties of human nature, nor of the underlying principles of life. Their time and effort were devoted to the art of representation, in which, each in his own peculiar line, they excelled all other men.
But Balzac essayed to write the whole Comedy of Humanity (he called his books the Comedie Humaine). He takes his characters one after the other, beginning with Parisian life, and then taking up the life of the provinces, political life, military life, and in each presenting a series of characters that accurately represent the historical types of his own age in France. He is a Frenchman, his characters and his ideals are French, and he omits the innocent lovely rose of English purity: he writes no idylls. But a person with broad mind and catholic tastes cannot help feeling the masterly touch.
His personal history is that of a worker. Before he was thirty he had published a dozen novels to which he did not attach his name. They were for practice. Then he came out with The Chouans, which attracted some attention. In the next few years he wrote and gave to the world some ninety compositions long and short, mostly full-fledged books.
His friends had told him he had no talent, and his native town never honoured him; but by industry alone he overcame all difficulties, and by sheer force of character took his place among the great novelists of his age. Most of the money he earned was devoted to paying off his debts; and when that was accomplished and he had married the lady he loved, he died.
Not all of Balzac’s novels will be liked by the English reader, and they differ immensely in subject, character, and interest.
The most popular of his stories, perhaps, because it treats of the rotten though dramatic life of Paris, is Père Goriot, the story of a simple old man whose daughters become fashionable, and to whose passions he is made to minister, while his own comforts in life are heartlessly sacrificed.
Rivaling Père Goriot as Balzac’s masterpiece is Eugenie Grandet, a story of country life utterly devoid of the excitement with which the Parisian story abounds. Eugenie is the daughter of a rich miser, who deprives her and her mother almost of the necessities of life. She meets and learns to love her cousin, Charles Grandet. He goes to the West Indies where he begins to build his fortunes with the savings Eugenie has given him. But the girl’s mother dies, and then her father, and she is left a rich heiress. Not knowing this, Charles writes asking her to release him that he may marry an heiress. Eugenie never thinks of her own sacrifice, but gives him his liberty, and even secretly pays his father’s debts lest they hamper him in his career. She ends her life in works of philanthropy.
It is a simple story, but told with the hard exactness of fate and truth, and it is this profound truth that makes it appeal to us so powerfully.
Many are very fond of The Country Doctor. The first half of the book tells the simple life and good works of this remarkable man; but the intense interest of the story is in the recital of the romantic early life of this strange man—his own story of himself which fills the second half of the book.
Cousin Pons tells the story of a collector of curios, for whose property various relatives are intriguing. Cousine Bette teaches us the lengths to which a Parisian middle-class family will go to get the money to maintain their respectability, and the catastrophes which are likely to follow when character is rotten at the bottom. Madame de Langeais is one of the shorter and more exciting stories of Parisian love. César Birroteau portrays the typical life of a Parisian lawyer, and The House of Nucingen that of a Parisian banker, while in The Illustrious Gaudissart we have the French drummer or travelling salesman.
In still another series of novels, much less generally read, Balzac goes into philosophy and even the mysticism of Swedenborg. The most philosophic of these novels is Louis Lambert, the most mystical and Swedenborgian is Seraphita, the story of an angel, so to speak. The Magic Skin is symbolistic, and The Search for the Absolute gives us most realistically the mystic and self-sacrificing life of an inventor.
Zola has attempted to do for his time what Balzac did for his, and in stories of the Rougon-Macquart family tells us the life histories of as varied a series of characters. The thing that made Balzac great, however, is his profound knowledge of human nature and the laws of human life, while Zola is bent on telling the thrilling stories he has found in different classes of society which, as a journalist, he has investigated.
Balzac and Zola handle contemporary life in much the same spirit that the romantic novelists handle the life of a past age; but Balzac is also a realistic student of character, and the interest in his characters predominates over the interest in his subjects and scenes. He is as much a master of description, however, as Scott or Victor Hugo. But much of Balzac’s and Zola’s realism is distasteful to the English or American reader. To be appreciated they must be read intellectually and not emotionally.
Among the great realists, or novelists of character and domestic life, we must include the women who have written fiction. Of these the greatest is George Eliot, whose novels rank below those of Dickens and Thackeray only because they are lacking in humour and fun. They are very serious, but they give us women as they really are in heart and soul and emotion. The best of George Eliot’s novels is Middlemarch, the story of an English country village and especially of an interesting educated young woman, Dorothea Casaubon. But there are other and almost equally interesting quiet English characterizations. More dramatic in its plot is Adam Bede, which tells the story of a girl who had an illegitimate child which she destroyed. The Mill on the Floss begins by realistically describing the everyday life of two children, a boy and a girl, and many will find the first half of the book very dull and commonplace. The last half is dramatic enough, however, to make up for the dullness of the first part. Daniel Deronda is considered less successful, though Silas Marner is a classic. It is a shorter story, of a certain phase of English country life. These are practically all of George Eliot’s works, the two or three other books being hardly fascinating enough to hold the modern reader.
To many Jane Austen is greater even than George Eliot. She wrote in the early part of the century, even before the appearance of the Waverley novels; but her stories are read as much to-day as they ever were. They are fine and exceedingly true portrayals of the uneventful but interesting heart life of a number of different young women in English country villages. Some consider Emma her greatest story; but it is less interesting than Sense and Sensibility (a study of two girls, one representing sense and the other sensibility) and Pride and Prejudice (the story of the marrying off of five daughters, one of whom is especially interesting and is the heroine). Jane Austen is notable in that she has a lively though quiet sense of humour that runs through all her work.
Another charming, simple, and rather amusing study of English village life is Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford, a book well worth reading if one is interested in the unheroic struggles and devotions of women.
Of modern writers in this style, Mary Wilkins is probably the best, her short stories being superior to her novels.
There are two women’s novels entirely different from any that had gone before or that have come after. They are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
The lives of these girls was sad and unfortunate. They belonged to a respectable family, and throughout maintained their respectability shut in by conventionality and suffering from poverty. Jane Eyre is a girl whose mind and not her face was her fortune. The story is in reality the autobiography of the inner tempestuous life of Charlotte Bronte herself. Jane is governess in the family of an eccentric man named Rochester, who was at one time the hero of half the women of England. He loved Jane and asked her to marry him, but at the altar it is discovered that he has a wife living, whom he had looked on as dead because she was insane. So the lovers are parted to be united only in a tragedy.
Wuthering Heights is a story of love and revenge within the conventionalities of English higher-class life, and extends over two generations. As a study of love and the far-reaching effects of its disappointment, it is a powerful though gloomy story, and by no means so finely artistic as Jane Eyre.
Another woman’s work in a class by itself is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which to this day is found in the list of half dozen best selling books, equaling the sales of the latest current novel. It is a wonderfully humorous, pathetic, and sympathetic picture of Southern life before the war, and probably as exact as most historical fiction, though many Southerners violently resent its claim to truthfulness.
As we have seen, the original form of modern fiction was that of the short story—the tavern tale rendered in classic language by Boccaccio in The Decameron and by the unknown author of The Arabian Nights.
All the great novelists wrote more or less short stories. Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are classics. Balzac was a master of the short story, and in “A Passion in the Desert” and “La Grande Bretèche” we have two of the most powerful stories ever written. Dickens and Thackeray are also short story tellers of rare accomplishments. “A Christmas Carol,” “The Chimes,” and “The Cricket on the Hearth” are among Dickens’s best work; and scattered through his novels we will find such complete narratives as “The Five Sisters of York” in Nicholas Nickleby. “The Princess’s Tragedy” is a chapter in Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon.
But Edgar Allan Poe is the father of the modern short story, the short story as a refined work of art rather than merely a simple short narrative.
There is an impression that all of Poe’s stories are gruesome, but this is not true. The most famous of his narratives are his three great detective stories, “The Gold-Bug,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Purloined Letter.” Only the second has the elements of terror in it. “The Gold-Bug” is the original treasure-finding and cipher-reading story. “The Purloined Letter” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” introduce Dupin, the French amateur detective, father of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (who by the way is an excellent son). That Poe was a real and not a sham detective he demonstrated in his analysis of the real case of Marie Roget, in which he used the newspaper reports of a New York mystery and came to conclusions that were afterward verified.
Another kind of story which Poe originated was the tale of imaginary science. His stories of this kind are none of them gruesome, with the single exception of “The Case of M. Valdemar.” The first story he wrote of this kind was “Ms. Found in a Bottle.” This was followed by “Hans Pfaal’s Voyage to the Moon,” “A Descent into the Maëlstrom,” “Mellonta Tauta,” and “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade.”
A still different type of story is his prose poems such as the beautiful “Eleonora,” and his studies in landscape such as “The Island of the Fay,” “The Domain of Arnheim,” and “Landor’s Cottage.”
His terrible and thrilling stories, by which he is best known, have never been surpassed. The best is “William Wilson,” the story of a double; but still more gruesome are “The Black Cat,” “Berenice,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Less horrible and unnatural, but curious and interesting, are “The Man of the Crowd,” “Hop-Frog,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” His “Fall of the House of Usher” is unique.
Poe’s life was one of hardship and unhappiness, and he was terribly libelled by his biographer Griswold, who hated him for the scathing reviews Poe had written of his books. So the great poet and story-writer has been painted in the popular mind much blacker than he really is, according to the latest and most authentic evidence. But he was certainly the most original genius America has produced. When he had made a success in one kind of story he did not care to go on writing more stories of that kind, but originated another type.
Hawthorne is better known as a novelist, the author of The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, Blithedale Romance, and Marble Faun, than as a short-story writer; but he alone among Americans has approached Poe as a teller of tales. His reputation was first made by two volumes of short stories called Twice-Told Tales, among which are the deeply interesting “Gray Champion,” “The Great Carbuncle,” “David Swan,” “Howe’s Masquerade,” “The Ambitious Guest,” and “The Three-fold Destiny.” Many like the Mosses from an Old Manse better, considering “The Birthmark” his masterpiece. “Drowne’s Wooden Image” is a remarkable tale, and “Rapaccini’s Daughter” (the girl who was brought up on poisons and whose kiss was poison) is most weird. The most popular story for children is “The Snow Image,” and “The Great Stone Face” (which I like best of all) appeals alike to young and old. “Ethan Brand” is another good story in this volume, and children will be fascinated by “Little Daffydowndilly.”
Hawthorne’s stories are all more or less fantastic allegories, written in unexceptionably beautiful and perfect English. The author was a recluse, and his stories are stories of loneliness in one form or another. Those who like solitude will be very fond of him; those who like gaiety, liveliness, and society, will find him depressing.
The other great American short story writers include Bret Harte, author of “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”; Edward Everett Hale, author of “The Man Without a Country”; Frank Stockton, author of “The Lady or the Tiger?” and Mary E. Wilkins. With these may be included Thomas Hardy’s “Life’s Little Ironies,” which are full of fun.
More perfect in his art than either Poe or Hawthorne is the modern writer Guy de Maupassant. His stories are most of them very short; but not a word is wasted, and they tell as much as stories much longer. His most perfect tales are not accessible in English because they are slightly improper. The two best are said to be “Boule de Suif” (Butter-Ball) and “La Maison Tellier” (Madame Tellier’s Girls, or The Tellier Establishment). The thirteen tales translated by Jonathan Sturgis in “The Odd Number” are unexceptionable, however, and intensely interesting.
The French have perfected the artistic short story or conte as they call it, and there are many good tales in that language. One of the most famous is the old-fashioned “Paul and Virginia,” a simple rustic love story, and Prosper Mérimée, the contemporary of Balzac, wrote some excellent tales. One might mention also Daudet with his “Pope’s Mule,” Gauthier, and Zola’s “Attack on the Mill.”
But far stronger stories than those just mentioned are the great Russian tales of Tolstoi and Turgenev. Tolstoi is better known by his great novels, “The Cossacks,” “War and Peace,” and “Anna Karénina.” But “The Long Exile,” “What Men Live By,” and other short tales are unsurpassed for dramatic force. Turgenev’s “First Love” is a rather long short story, but an intensely interesting one. “A Lear of the Steppes” is regarded as his classic. But there are others equally good.
Of modern writers of short stories Kipling is doubtless the greatest; but his early books such as “Plain Tales from the Hills,” “Soldiers Three,” “Phantom Rickshaw,” “Wee Willie Winkie,” etc., are probably better than the later ones, though in the later books a strong story will be found here and there.
No greater short story has been published in modern times than Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and Gilbert Parker has published some excellent short stories in “Pierre and His People.”
NOTE.—Many of the stories here referred to may be found in “A Selection from the World’s Greatest Short Stories,” edited by Sherwin Cody.
The boy or girl who has grown up without reading Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights and Gulliver’s Travels is to be pitied; but it is to be presumed that there are few such. These books are good alike for young and old.
For young children fairy tales are usually considered the first to become familiar with, and of these the best are Grimm’s and Hans Christian Andersen’s. There are many volumes variously edited, and all are fairly good. A modern fairy tale that is also a classic is Kingsley’s Water Babies, and even better are Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Kipling’s Jungle Book.
There are also Æsop’s Fables.
But when boys and girls get a little older they want to find what is to them a really good book. I know none better than Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women. It is the story of four girls and a boy; but boys will like it almost as well as the girls will.
Boys will be especially interested in the lives of great men, and of these none is better than Franklin’s Autobiography. He tells just how he worked, and what he did, and how he succeeded, and tells it in simple, natural English. And next to this one will like a good life of Washington or Lincoln, of which there are many.
Hawthorne wrote many good stories for young people, and of these the simplest are his Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales from the ancient Greek, and his Biographical Stories of Great Men. But readers a little older will like even better such stories as “The Snow-Image,” “The Great Stone Face,” etc.
There is a remarkable book not very much known, entitled Moby-Dick, or the Great White Whale, by Herman Melville. It is not all as interesting as the last part, in which this giant whale named Moby-Dick is hunted down and killed, though not until he has sunk the ship and boats of the men who have pursued him and taken his life.
For adventure there are no more classic books than Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake, and Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and David Balfour, and some will wish to read his beautiful Child’s Garden of Verse. Not quite so literary but equally interesting are The Boys of Seventy-Six, Green Mountain Boys, Scottish Chiefs, Thaddeus of Warsaw, Dana’s Two Years before the Mast, and The Swiss Family Robinson.
Last of all we must mention Tom Brown’s Schooldays, which, though very English, is very interesting. John Halifax, Gentleman, by Miss Mulock, is also a fine English story.
Though not stories precisely, Lamb’s Tales from Shakspere and Dickens’s Child’s History of England are quite as fascinating as if they were genuine stories.
In these days the Bible seems to be neglected somewhat, and not all children are familiar with the fine stories for young people with which the Old Testament is filled. There are, to be sure, uninteresting genealogies and other things mixed in with the stories; but there is nothing in Grimm or Andersen to equal the stories of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel, of Noah and the Flood, of David and Goliath, of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, and of Jonah and the Whale.