CHARLES READE.
THE death of Mr. Charles Reade will not "eclipse the gaiety of nations," but it is a distinct and sensible loss to all who enjoy reading English fiction ; that is, to at least a million.
of fairly cultivated human beings. They would have subscribed to keep him alive, and many of them would have expressed the measure of their regret at his departure in unusually large figures. We cannot concede to Mr. Buchanan, who places his friend above George Eliot—which is like placing Barham above
Tennyson, because both wrote verse—that he was a man of genius, for he had neither creative nor revealing power in the necessary degree; but he was the brightest writer of fiction in English who ever failed to pass the dividing-line. Indeed, he did pass it for moments, and in single and short efforts. No criticism was ever so absurd as that which decries his shorter books. If we were contending that he was a genius, we should point to "Love Me Little, Love Me Long," with its wonderful pictures of feminine "ways," good and bad, and its concep- tion, in David Dodd, of what an ideal sailor might be ; to "Christie Johnstone," with its terribly idealised, but most attractive heroine, and its pictures of life on Newhaven Pier ; and to "Sunshine and Shade," with that blurred, half-finished, consciously restrained portrait of Rose Mayfield, the woman with the good heart and the dangerous tern perament,—as in- comparably our best justifications. There are single chapters, too, in his books, which, as we recall them, almost compel us to reconsider our opinion, and to place Mr. Reade on a level yet higher than the one which undoubtedly belongs to him. Nothing in marine fiction, nothing even in the "Cruise of the 'Midge,'" to our mind, comes near to the description, in "Hard Cash," of David Dodd's engagement with the two Portuguese pirates, and its dramatic end ; while the description of mediaival Rome in the "Cloister and the Hearth "approaches Scott's higher efforts; and Charles Kingsley, at his very best, could not have written the Australian chapters in "Never Too Late To Mend." But a man must be judged by his whole work, and to any one who, ike this writer, has read all Mr. Reade's work, some of it very fre- quently, it is clear that the indefinable something was wanting. And the reason why it was wanting is clear, too. We shall out- rage Mr. Buchanan, and probably many another admirer, by saying it ; but Mr. Reade lacked fire in his imagination. What- ever he knew, be could see; and he not only knew a great deal, but he could make himself know by study, in a way that was perfectly marvellous. He could acquire from books a perceptive and realising knowledge of anything, from Australian scenery to physiology. He Could read about Australian gold-fields, till his description of them seemed living. He could study sea-fights, till his account of one makes any one not a sailor thrill with emotion. He could digest Blue-books on prison-life, till his sketch of the kind of hbrrors they indicate became too vigorous to be read,—made the reader feel as if he were assisting at a vivisection, and was a criminal merely by looking on. But he never once, in all his wealth of portraiture, gave us a human being, unless it was Rose Mayfield, who was really alive; while some of hi fi portraits—that of the Jew Levi, for instance—are total failures, and others—David Dodd, for example, on which he expended great pains—are hopelessly incomplete, figures with no insides to them. Lucy Fountain, in" Love Me Little, Love Me Long," was one of his prime favourites, and reappears in a second story ; but Lucy Dodd, the suave and loving, managing innther of "Hard Cash," is essentially other than the Lucy Fountain, the "innocent fox" of the shorter tale. Everything he could see in a character he saw, from the smallest detail of appearance to the deepest wile or strongest emotion ; but the whole living being he did not see, and could not paint. We have an impression, in reading, of his extreme cleverness, close observation, keen insight,. but not of his personages, as people who henceforward will be familiar acquaintances, additions, great additions to our own circle. Let any one, except Mr. Buchanan, compare his own recollection of David Dodd, his view of him as a personal friend, and his recollection and view of Caleb Garth, and he will per- ceive not only precisely what we mean, but where the differ- ence lay. Reade studied, George Eliot created. Or, com- pare the Lynch-law scene in "Never Too Late To Mend,"— which is a bit of Mr. Reade's best work, full of his most realistic humour as well as grimness,—with the account of. the attack on the Tolbooth in the "Heart of Midlothian," and note the difference in the impression of every stroke. Mr. Reade was an artist, and a true one, often even a great one ; but his art was that of the brilliant story-teller, who has read till- he is saturated with local colour, and nearly knows the subjects of his narrative,—not the art of the man of genius dependent on himself .alone, and half-unconscious of the effect be, never- theless, cannot help producing. It was, as we believe, this defect of imagination which produced Mr. Reade's failures. He could not realise the effect on others of the monotonous horrors of his prison scenes in "Never Too Late To Mend ;" of the long-drawn essays on the relation between cleverness and insanity, which stop the action of" Hard Cash ;" or of the suggestion which, perhaps unconsciously to the author, almost corrupts the "Terrible Temptation," a book which nothing short of a message from the spirit-world would ever make us believe that Mr. Reade wrote upon its original lines. It is the only book we should exclude from a collection of his works, not only as thoroughly disagreeable, but as lacking, much more than any other work of his, in his peculiar power, which does not appear to us to have decayed with age. He never wrote anythitig more powerful in his life than the scene in the ruined church in "Put Yourself in His Place," a scene worthy of a great painter, or more rushingly vigorous than the destruction of the reservoir ; while the female characters in the " Woman-Hater," thin as the colouring is, are among the most life-like he ever drew. We may underrate his position in letters, but it is certainly from 'no lack of appreciation.
They are- all passing away, the fiction-writers who, from child-- hood to middle-age, made leisure-hours enjoyable, and as yet we see none to replace them. Dickens and Tha,ckeray, George Eliot and Trollope, the Kingsleys aid Charles Reade are gone ; and if we omit, as we suppose we ought to do, Americans from the list, there is only Mrs. Oliphant left, who can make us com- pletely forget the pressure of the real, yet leave us with no larking sense of time wasted or misspent. Why is this P Is the change in ourselves, and only the natural consequence of belonging to a generation which has grown middle-aged, and can no longer enjoy ? That will be said, and of course there is truth in it, but not much ; for, after all, the men of our generation are as sensitive to poetry as ever ; read grave literature, if it is only original, with appe- tite—witness the demand at Mudie'a for Mr. Maurice's Life— and crave for original fiction with even an undue desire. The lull in the production of first-class fiction, and, indeed, of good literature generally, is very striking. There are books coming out without end, some of them good books, scores of them reaching a fair average of originality, and adding their quota of knowledge or of enjoyment to the general store ; but nobody gives us enchaining books,—above all, enchaining fictions. There never were very many, but the supply never ran out so completely as it has done recently, when we have been driven to think a naturalist's slightly tedious account of the Indians of Guiana—most insignificant folk, hardly 20,000 in all— the most nutritive book of a year. It is partly accident, we dare say, the reading world standing by to watch one of those intervals which divide literary periods, and give second- rate men their long-hoped-for chance ; and we know that a year, or even a decade, is as short a time in the history of literature as in the history of a people or of a timber tree. But suppose it should prove otherwise ! There have been long lulls in English literary history,—and the Americans are English, and for a cen- tury and a half produced in literature next to nothing. The English world is growing American, reading newspapers in- satiably, learning to watch foreign politics as Americans do, as if they were operas performed for their amusement, or, worse still, fights in the arena, and listening to the whole world with a, thirsty curiosity which is not ennobling, or, at all events, is not conducive to any such concentration of thought as new production requires. The news, too, is chiefly distracting. There is no great cause about which men grow passionate, no immense event that has hap- pened, even if it be true that immense events necessarily pro- duce fine literature,—which, after the experience of America since the Civil War, and of Germany since she attained unity; we should seriously doubt. The religions movement, though most marked and interesting, tends to dissolve old faiths, not produce new ones, and has not shown the vivifying power witnessed three hundred years ago, when the old Paganism struck its lad blow, and—miracle of miracles—to a world that seemed dying of sterility the Renaissance arrived. The signs of another Renaissance are not visible yet either in literature or art,. and it may be that none will arrive in time for the middle-aged, who henceforth must put up till death with work poor in itself, and which seems to minds once fed upon the strongest meat, and naturally a little unsusceptible to the new, poorer than it is. Suppose that for thirty years pub- lishers must be content with studies of the old, with reprints such as now deluge the world—to the rage of the lovers of thought, who hate these costly heavy octavos and editions de ltize,—and. with suchbooks of observation as travel and physical inquiry, and political watchfulness, may yield ! It is a dreary thought, but it is a possibly true one ; and if it proves true, there will be to the lovers of literature sad compensation for all our triumphs in science and in mastering such secrets of nature as yield money. What consolation is Bessemer, or even Josiah Mason—who did at least make pens, and so was of some use to the thoughtful—if the men now fifty are never again till they are eighty, or dead, to be taken out of themselves by a book ?
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