Tins book raises the interesting question how far what are
generally known as " literary merits " go to the making of a good novel. By " literary merits " we mean a clear and graceful style, a sense of the picturesque, neatness and pre- cision in dialogue,—in a word, all the minor elegancies of fiction. No novel which possesses these can be called a bad novel, for they imply some degree of craftsmanship ; but a novel may be full of them, and yet fall far short of the best. If we take the converse, we shall find that a great story may be wholly without them. Anna Karenina has none, and " Q's " romances, shall we say, have them all ; but we cannot consider the two authors in the same world of art. Scott has written many great novels without a trace of them, stumbling along in his glorious narrative through quagmires of the awkward and the prosaic. For the primary quality in romance is drama inspired and guided by essential human passions. If the dramatic action of a novel leaves us un- moved, then the book resolves itself into a series of essays, without continuity and sustained purpose. Once in a decade both sets of qualities are united, and we have a, work which is as attractive to the literary virtuoso as to the ordinary reader. Mr. Stevenson's best books have this enviable repu- tation, but the virtuoso cannot away with Dickens, and is beginning to turn up his nose at the Waverley novels. The world, however, decides rightly in the long run, and it has long ago determined the abiding qualities of fiction. No embalm- ing with spices and exquisiteness of ornament will make up for the absence of the vital spirit.
The book before us is a book of many literary merits, but it seems to us to fail conclusively as a novel. Mr. Barrington starts with two valuable assets,—a gift of clear and attractive prose, and an admirable plot. In the most technical sense the book is a romance, for it deals with jongleurs and troubadours, castles among dark hills, abbeys set in flowery meadows, and one of those Courts which belong only to the airy history of the romancer. The boy Yvot is found as a child one wintry night at the gate of the Monastery of Orlac, and is brought up carefully by the abbot, who dies before telling him the secret of his birth. He has to go out into the world to seek his fortune, and on arriving at the Court of King Hubert is made
* The King's Fool: a Romance. By Michael Barrington. London : W. Blackwood and Sons. Os.]
by a Royal whim the Court jester. He falls in love with the King's ward ; and when Hubert falls in love with the same lady, a long struggle begins between his devotion to the King, his master, and his love, while his jester's office compels him to treat life lightly when all the while he is conscious of his capacity for great things. There is another suitor for the lady's hand in a certain Sir Ranulf Fitzurse, who in despair kidnaps the King. Hubert is saved from the dungeons of Montdragon by Yvot, marries the lady, exiles Fitzurse, and keeps Yvot still in motley. Then the disappointed lover begins to work out his revenge, the Queen dies of the shock at a false report sent her of her husband's death, the King sinks into a state of moody discontent, and makes a political marriage which still further embitters the jester's lot. Finally, the secret of his birth becomes known to him, he learns that he is the rightful Fitzurse, and is about to take his place in the world for which be had longed when he dies in saving the King from the attack of Ranulf, and only at his death enters into his kingdom.
The conception of a man of a courageous and delicate nature, compelled to play the part of buffoon while he felt himself competent to do the deeds of a man, and given his chance only when the time is past to use it, affords ample material for a fine romance. The undercurrent of tragic irony might in abler hands have run to a strong and moving climax. The framework is all there, but it is not built upon. The book, in spite of its charm of style and delicacy of feeling, is unsub- stantial. We do not refer merely to the absence of those pictorial details which create atmosphere in fiction, for a closely packed romance such as The Forest Lovers is not the only, or perhaps the most satisfactory, type. We should have been quite content to do without the ordinary padding of the romancer if the proper quality of romance had been present. As a matter of fact, atmosphere is the only endowment which the book possesses in a high degree. The charming scenes at Orlac in the earlier chapters set the true romantic keynote, and with dreams and prophecies and spells the pitch is excellently maintained. But it is a tale of sentiment rather than of passion, and the strong lines of the plot demand passion. Yvot is unsubstantial, the Queen is a phantasm, the King is a pious fiction, even the fierce Sir Ranulf is the bogey of a dream. Yvot's heart-searchings are logical in theory, but they do not convince in narrative; and we are not im- pressed at his death, because we are far from sure that he ever was alive. The author halts a moment over his tomb to moralise on the meaning of his life, but this also leaves us cold, for in all good fiction the reader should draw the moral for himself. The book might well be pleasing as a fairy tale, were it not that in the character of its plot and in certain earlier passages it demands the consideration due to serious fiction.
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