1892, when we still have Mr. Gladstone and the critically poverty-stricken with us, this sort of thing still takes!
Let us have samples of Mr. Caine's actual work. Here is a glimpse of the heroine of a book which, as he declares, 'is less novel than romance and less romance than poem':
'After that night, Naomi's shyness of speech dropped away from her, and what was left was only a sweet, maidenly unconsciousness of all faults and failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran in and out among the simple words that fell from her lips, like a young squirrel among the fallen leaves of autumn.'
The more one reads and reflects on this passage and on the hundred similar gems of description which can be found in any of his novels, the more wonderful and absolute appears his mastery over that unctuous, fatuous, idiotic, pseudo-poetic 'high-falutin' which is the despair of his rivals in popular bathetical pathos.
Now let us see how Mr. Caine's men and women live and move and have their being in the enchanted realms of his art. Almost any passage taken at random will do. Here is one:
'That same day the poor black boy bade farewell to Israel and Naomi. He was leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted. Israel was his father, Naomi was his sister, and never again should he set his eyes on either. But in the pride of his perilous mission he bore himself bravely.
