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Art. VIII.THE NOVELS OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

Collected Edition. Smith, Elder: London, 1903.

IF this country's education were conducted on truly scientific principles, we ought to have statistics of the great Novel industry. It is not enough to know how many copies of popular novels are sold; on that point the publishers often give us ample information. From 80,000 to 150,000 copies of a novel that really reaches the heart of the English people are promptly disposed of; and, allowing only ten readers for each copy, the millions are plainly being influenced by our authors of genius. This is a grave thought for conscientious novelists; the making of the spiritual life of England is in their hands. They feel it, and are all but overborne by the too vast orb of their responsibilities. In their photographs, which accompany the reports of interviews with them, we mark with sympathy the ponderous brow, supported by the finger so deft on the type-writing machine; and, as we read the interview, we listen to the voice that has whispered so many thousands of words into the phonograph.

The popular novelists of England and of America are serious men; they occupy, at least in their own opinion, a position which, since the days of the great Hebrew prophets, has been held by few sons of earth. Now and again they descend, as it were, from the mountain and wearily tell the world the story of their aims, their methods, and their early struggles, before they were discovered by enterprising publishers, before their books provided the text of many a sermon, just as did Mr Richardson's 'Pamela,'

These men and women are our social, spiritual, religious, and political teachers. This is an important fact, for their readers take fiction seriously; their lives are being directed, their characters are being framed, by authors such as Mr Hall Caine, Miss Marie Corelli, Mr Anthony Hope, Mr Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unluckily we have, for lack of statistics, no means of knowing the nature and limits of the moulding of character and direction of life exercised by these energetic authors. Can it be possible that they

sometimes neutralise each other's effects, and that the earnest reader of Mr Wells finds the seeds of his doctrine blown away on the winds of the mighty message of Mr Hall Caine? Does the inquirer who sets out to follow the star of Miss Marie Corelli become bewildered and 'pixy-led,' as they say in Devonshire, by the will-o'-thewisps of Mr Kipling?

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The serious writers on the Novel,' in the Press, like the late Mr Norris, author of The Octopus,' assure us that all is well, that the Novel is, or ought to be, everything; that the novelist is our inspired teacher in matters theological, social, political, and perhaps (when we think of Mr H. G. Wells) scientific; not to mention that the historical novelist writes the only sort of history which should be, and which is, read by the world. But the pity of it is that novelists, like other teachers, differ vastly in doctrine among themselves; so that, if we read all the popular authors, we come out,' like Omar Khayyám, 'no wiser than we went,' but rather perplexed in our intellects.

The owners of the stores in America which gave away a celebrated British novel as a bounty on soap, are said to have expressed themselves thus :

'Our hands were never half so clean,

Our customers agree;

And our beliefs have never been

So utterly at sea.'

The beliefs of the public may, of course, be brought back to dry land by some more orthodox novelist, but the whole process is unsettling. Yet it may be that the populace, in various sections, cleaves to one teacher, neglecting others. Do the devotees of Miss Marie Corelli read the discourses of Mr Hall Caine; and do the faithful of Mrs Ward peruse either, or both, of the other two spiritual guides? Lacking the light of statistics we can only guess that they do not; that the circles of these authors never intersect each other, but keep apart; just as a pious Mussulman does not study Hymns Ancient and Modern,' while a devotee of Mr Swinburne seldom declines upon 'The Christian Year.' Meanwhile the mere critic fails to extract a concrete body of doctrine from the discourses of any of our teachers.

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Concerning Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is, we trust, nearly as popular as any teacher, it may be said with gratitude that he aims at entertaining rather than at instructing his generation. We venture to think that the contemplative and speculative elements in his nature are subordinate to the old-fashioned notion that a novelist should tell a plain tale. A handsome and uniform edition of his works lies before us, with manly, brief, and modest prefaces by the author. The volumes are fair to see; the type and paper are good, though the printing is not incapable of correction, and the spelling is sporadically American.

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There are authors whom we like best in stately 'library editions,' others whom we prefer in first editions -of such are Keats and Charles Lamb; and, handsome as is the format of Sir Arthur's collected works, there are a few of them which please us most 'in the native pewter.' Now the native pewter of Sherlock Holmes is a sixpenny magazine, with plenty of clever illustrations; he takes better in these conditions than in a sumptuous text with only one or two pictures. Sir Arthur is an unaffected writer. His style is not a separate ecstasy,' as in the case of Mr R. L. Stevenson's writings; his is a simple narrative manner. He does not pass hours in hunting for le mot propre; and a phrase is apparently none the worse in his eyes because it is an old favourite of the public, and familiar to the press and the platform. However, like Aucassin in the cantefable, we love a plain tale even better than none,' and love anything better than the dull and tormented matter of the prigs who, having nothing that deserves to be said, say it in a style which standeth in an utterly false following of Mr George Meredith. The Author's Edition' is a delightful set for a smoking room in a club or in a country house.

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By a laudable arrangement, Sir Arthur has confined his speculative and contemplative exercises to a pair of books, The Stark Munro Letters' and 'A Duet.' In the former, a young man has his 'first fight' (not at all in the style of the author's Rodney Stone') 'with the spiritual and material difficulties which confront him at the outset of life. There is no claim that his outlook is either profound or original.' Indeed his outlook is not remarkable for subtlety or distinction. Sir Arthur is not

a Pascal; and, if he were, his 'Pensées,' presented in a work of fiction, would fail to exhilarate. As he says, Tom Jones and Arthur Pendennis and Richard Feverel 'do not indicate their relation to those eternal problems which are really the touchstone and centre of all character.' Thank heaven they do not!

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An eternal problem can hardly be the centre of a character'; and, if it were, we do not always pine to read a novel about an eternal problem. A little of Obermann' goes a long way. If a problem is eternal it has obviously never been solved; and what chance had Thomas Jones, a foundling, of solving eternal problems? As for Pen, he frankly abandoned the attempt. The narrator in the Stark Munro Letters' ends his speculation by deciding that 'something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast.' Having arrived at this acceptable solution, we do not care to follow the mental processes by which the young thinker reaches the result. We have ever been of his mature opinion, which, moreover, has the sanction of the Church, and of the best heathen and Christian philosophers.

There is no speculation and no preaching of doctrines, no nonsense about a 'message' or a 'mission,' in the rest of Sir Arthur's books, where the good people are plucky, kind, and honourable, while the bad people are usually foiled in their villainous machinations. The quality which recommends Sir Arthur's stories to his readers, and to ourselves, is a quality which cannot be taught or learned; which no research, or study, or industry can compass; which is born with a man; which can hold its own without the aid of an exquisite style; and which is essential. Sir Arthur can tell a story so that you read it with ease and pleasure. He does not shine as a creator of character. Perhaps Micah Clarke, an honest English Porthos, is the best of his quite serious creations; while Sherlock Holmes, not so seriously intended, has become a proverb, like Monsieur Lecoq. But Brigadier Gerard is Sir Arthur's masterpiece; we never weary of that brave, stupid, vain, chivalrous being, who hovers between General Marbot and Thackeray's Major Geoghegan, with all the merits of both, and with others of his own.

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The ladies who pass through the novels play their parts, and are excellent young women in their rôles, but they are not to be very distinctly remembered, or very fondly adored. There is not a Sophia Western, an Amelia, a Diana Vernon, a Becky Sharpe, an Anne Elliot, a Beatrix Esmond, or a Barbara Grant, in their ranks; and indeed such characters are scarce in all fiction. The greatest masters but seldom succeed in creating immortal women; only Shakespeare has his quiver full of such children as these. In short, we read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the story, and are very glad that we have such stories to read; rapid, varied, kindly, and honest narratives. As Mr Arthur Pendennis remarked about his ancestral claret, 'there is not a headache in a hogshead" of them.

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We shall first glance at Sir Arthur's historical novels, 'Micah Clarke,' The White Company,' 'The Refugees,' and Rodney Stone.' The public is very far from sharing the opinion professed by James II in exile, that history is much more instructive than novels, and quite as amusing.' For ourselves we deem his Majesty's own historical work vastly more entertaining than any novel written during his lifetime; but, in the opinion of the public, history only exists as material for historical romances, just as the engineer said that rivers exist for the purpose of feeding navigable canals.

Sir Arthur's earlier historical novels are influenced, more than he probably suspects, by those of Sir Walter Scott. 'Micah Clarke,' like Mr Blackmore's 'Lorna Doone,' is a tale of the last romantic rebellion with a base in England-the futile attempt of Monmouth. The big Porthos-like hero is, in some ways akin to John Ridd; but he occupies, as regards politics and religion, the juste milieu that Sir Walter favoured when he wrote history, and assigned to such romantic heroes of his own as Henry Morton, and even Roland Graeme. Though ‘a simple-hearted unlettered yeoman,' Micah Clarke is really wise with the wisdom of the later Victorian time, and, in one remark, speaks as if he had read Mr Herbert Spencer with approval, so far as the problems of religion are concerned. He takes a calm view of history, and is no fanatic of the Protestantism of his period-that of Titus Oates.

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