A FORGOTTEN NOVEL.
THE writer, as an old student of fiction, which he believes to be one of the best guides to the drifting of modern thought, has often been asked whether be knew of any novel which ought to have been a success but was not. The ques- tion has been put usually by those who, in spite of evidence, still believe that some authors are purposely kept down, that novels in particular are often crushed by spiteful reviewers, and that there is sometimes among critics something like a conspiracy of silence. The writer has always answered that be had never seen a worthy book even injured by spiteful reviewing, that the conspiracy of silence was nonsense ex- cept as regards a very few books which no one was com- petent to review—that very curious and instructive book, "An Inglorious Columbus," must perhaps be included in this category—and that he never but once in fifty years read a novel which ought to have succeeded and yet failed. This was "Across the Zodiac" (Triibner), the intellectual history of which is not a little interesting. Its author, Mr. Percy Greg, a son of Mr. William Rathbone Greg, was a journalist of unusual powers both of thought and of imagination, which were of comparatively little use to him, owing partly to a certain mental twist or perversity, and partly to the extreme violence with which he successively took up the most contradictory ideas. The key to his mind was a horror of the smug ideas of the English middle clan, but he recoiled from them, now in the direction of atheism, then in that ot devotion, again in that of absolutism, and by and by in that of a non - existent aristocratic system, with a rapidity, and at the same time a vehemence, which destroyed all confidence in his judgment. Rather late in kis career he wished to write out his views as to the consequences which materialism would produce if it became universal, and planned an account of a country in which that system of thought had become triumphant. As there is no such country, he resolved to transfer his scene of action to the planet Mars, for a reason which, so far as we know, has influenced every writer who has adopted the same device. Any planet would do equally well, but the mind requires a foot:sold, like the body, and refuses as a rule even to dream about a scene of which it knows absolutely nothing. Astronomers know a little about Mars, and Mr. Greg, like Mr. Wells and some half-dozen other novelists, accordingly. located his new personages there. The novel, however, to his intense disappointment and surprise, was a total failure. Unless the author exaggerated in relating the story of the book to us, it never sold at all, and certainly his narration is supported by the fact that, cordially admiring the book, we have spoken of it repeatedly to many men who read most things and never met one who had read it, and only one or two who had ever heard its name.
The cause of the failure was, we suppose, of this kind, though pure accident may have helped. Percy Greg as usual had given himself up to his idea, had read everything relating to Mars, and, besides, "fancied himself" in scien- tific matters rather more than his attainments justified. He wasted his first three chapters, therefore, in proving that the voyage across forty - seven millions of miles of ether was possible to a human being, and became so con- fused and confusing that the few readers who attacked his book gave it up with a sense of irritation. Even those fifty pages are remarkable, for the author had conceived of an absolutely new force in Nature which he denominated " apergy," and which was intended to be the exact opposite of gravitation,—a really original device. It is, however, only from the moment of the explorer's descent upon a hill in Mars that the book becomes really interesting, but from that point the present writer, who confesses to have read it eight times, maintains that, although not absolutely consistent throughout, it is one of the most original and powerful stories ever prtoc.l. duced in English. Mr. Greg's conception was that, as Marts exists under conditions very like those of our own earth, it might be a complete world in which a race physically dis- tinguished from ourselves only by being a little tinier might live amid scenes woiderfully different from, and with ideas radically at variance with, our own. He has succeeded in realising that conception so well that we defy any one to read 4` Across the Zodiac" without believing, possibly for a few minutes, possibly in permanence, that he has obtained a genuine glimpse into Mars ; that it must be just like that, with its red-tinged flora and its completely tamed fauna ; its birds, which do for man the work of the plough ; its lemurs—for the amban are large lemurs—which fetch and carry ; and its thin exhilarating atmosphere. There is nothing on it exactly like earth, yet nothing which excites any sceptical surprise. It is, in fact, an entirely novel world, -and net a new country, which is forced upon the imagination with an impression so definite that it is nearly impossible for any one who has read the book ever again to dissociate the idea of Mars from Percy Greg's description. That seems to us a considerable literary feat, proving in the author who per- formed it a detailing imagination which is not a common gift, and it is surpassed by the description of the people. Possessed of a civilisation which has lasted many thousands of years, the people of Mars have become utter materialists, and after one terrible experiment in Socialism, have delivered themselves up to the pursuit of physical wellbeing and scientific knowledge. In those pursuits they have succeeded. They have extirpated disease, and die when their hour arrives from a gradual cessation of the wish and the energy to live. They have cities which have all the accommo- dations of great towns and all the pleasantness of the countryside. They have utilised all the resources that their planet yields in the most scientific way. They 'travel on earth or in the air at great speed and in perfect safety. They have a profusion of soft artificial ,light, which also provides all they want of heat for every purpose, from the production of soft filtered air in cold weather to the most ordinary operations of cooking. They have established a general language and made it singularly flexible and exact. They have solved the pro- blem of poverty by an industry which, aided by their perfect machinery and the fertility which their science enables them to maintain in their soil, makes ten years' work performed in early manhood sufficient to maintain in comfort the remainder of their lives. Their laws have been slowly perfected till they 'meet all cases and prevent all crimes, and the maintenance of them is therefore left to an absolute and wealthy eleetive Monarch, who does not oppress because he has no revolt to fear and nothing to gain by oppression, and whose main duty and pleasure is to improve the vast public works, and urge on the public departments to ever new applications of scientific discovery. The result of this happy organisation of a world, which is described with a detail that makes it all seem at once as credible and as fascinating as any other account of an unknown people, is that the majority of Martians are miserable from want alike of occupation and excitement, that in their perpetual self-regard they have become helpless cowards, that they can hardly conceive of love or affection or any sort of altruism, and that their women, being absolutely emancipated and free to make any contracts they like, are compelled by their want of physical force and the means of maintenance to become virtually slaves. They have been obliged to accept polygamy because each individual is perfectly free, and with polygamy has come seclusion of a kind which is at least creditable to the author's originality. No woman is shut up except by her own will, but no woman can be noticed by any one not of her own household. She may he standing by her husband's side in all the work of his life, but she is as isolated from all men but him as if she were a disembodied spirit. The only interest of the Martians is the increase of knowledge, usually in a microscopic direction, their only public passion a fierce hatred of all who assert that the unseen can possibly exist.
This is all very dull ? It would be but that in this world of selfish savants and slaves there is one great break. Ages before the explorer reached Mars, a man of lofty character, conscious of the trend that all thought was taking, and certain of the existence of God and of a future state,
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solitui a secret society, the "Order of the Star," to main- because doctrines, and as far as possible a life in accord- inem. The Order has spread, has obtained in ages ck\ead he suL me actual communion with spirits, especially see his .,under, and has acquired one mental power whic. [or strc ta well as the most deadly physical weapon. a It can, it that BI or too gravely oppressed, cause the traitor or the owe,- g aiim.5.7. It willing to become a suicidal maniac' The Igence and the ing it as Frenchmen hate Anarchists, hard; a respectable
: k it, but they always threaten it with extirpation,re the thiA convinced t, convind that the secret a
power of the Order doe-a- ..alitu they conspire for its destruc- tion. The effect of its dogmas on the Order, and on the character of its members, their secret meetings and rites, during which they actually see their founder, their limited intercourse with a spirit-world, and their permanent collision and final victory over the materialistic crowds of selfish and cowardly men around them, give the book its life,—a life which is occasionally of the most intense and vivid interest. The history of the final effort, unsuccessful effort, to over- throw the "Order of the Star" and extirpate its members seems to us more exciting than the narrative of any con- spiracy in earthly history. Of course in the centre of it is the visitor from earth, who has a love-story—which begins with his marriage—and of course there are adventures with- out end—a hunt, for example, of the only dangerous kind of animal the planet possesses—but the real interest and merit of the book is that its author created a world under our con- ditions, yet entirely different, and peopled it with beings who are like ourselves, yet have obtained from their environment and their intellectual powers another set of motives, and therefore live another life. To make such people intensely real—even familiar—seems to us a considerable achievement ; and we shall feel a sensation of pleasure if this notice of his work, belated by nearly twenty years, shall, in however small a degree, dissipate the oblivion into which his very name has fallen.
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