If he can fill a larger canvas, a more animated scene, than the Window, then he should do it; but let him pause and realise critically what such a departure means. Is he properly equipped for it? He cannot afford—no writer can afford—to be in the dark about himself to the extent he was, and probably is, concerning the Minister. Ah, if only he could be forbidden to write anything more for several years, and set upon a course of study of the best modern French fiction! He might learn his limitations. He might even learn to make the failures of his past the successes of his future. What a revelation such a book as the Pêcheur d'lslande should be to any one who wished to handle such a subject as that of which Mr. Barrie had an exiguous conception in the Minister! What an explanation of his own catastrophe! what a course of instruction as to the true lines on which the last infirmity of noble mind should lead (if lead it must) the author of A Window in Thrums!
It is quite different with Mr. Hardy and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The central conception of the book, the main feature, seems right enough, but it has not been seized strongly, and the story, like all Mr. Hardy's stories, alternately hurries or flags. Parts are good enough as renderings of human and natural life to make one more than astonished at the
