In Edgar Fawcett's novels you are sure to find artistic workmanship, careful studies of character, and the nameless charm of style. "The Confessions of Claud" (Ticknor & Co.) is no exception. It is a powerful sketch of the influence of heredity upon character. The hero's father is mastered by an insane jealousy which makes him maltreat his family, and ends in his being hung for his wife's murder. The hero, partly through jealousy and partly through revenge for a series of insults and injuries, murders his unsuccessful rival in love, and just escapes the gallows because the only witness against him, his adopted brother, goes mad at an opportune moment. It will be seen that the story is a grim one. The hero, though well drawn and though he sometimes extorts sympathy in his desperate struggles and strivings with the doom that overhangs him, fails to win the liking of the reader, who rather resents his not being hung. The main reason for hanging is not to punish the victim, certainly not to reform him (except on the same line of reasoning as that which proclaims that the only good Indians is them that's dead), but to remove a dangerous element from society, and especially to prevent the transmission of evil qualities to posterity. Mr. Fawcett seems to feel this when he makes his hero, though he married the heroine after his acquittal, remain childless.
Reading a novel by the author who calls herself "The Duchess" is somewhat like the kissing of which her characters are so fond. It is pleasant while it lasts, and one is always ready to do it again, but somehow one is a little ashamed to be caught in the act. Yet why should one be ashamed of reading a novel by "The Duchess"? To be a popular author, to write books that go to the heart of the masses, even though they gain their popularity by appealing to an ephemeral taste, is not an achievement to be despised. Success in literature requires rarer abilities than success in any other department of human exertion, as the field of competition is so immeasurably wider. A lawyer or a doctor, at the outset of his career, at least, is brought into competition with local talent only. If he prove himself the equal or the superior of Jones and Smith, who may be his next-door neighbors, he plants his foot securely on a comfortable rung of the ladder. But an author from the start has to compete not only with all the professionals of his own country and of other countries which speak the same language, or who are susceptible of translation, but also with the amateurs who occasionally dabble in literature, and not only with the men of the present but in a measure those of the past as well. He is judged by the standards applied to the great masters of all times and countries, and if he fails in the test the critics and more thoughtful readers speak contemptuously of his work as trash. Yet even the failure in literature may be cleverer than his readers or his critics, and the same amount of ability put into some calling with a more restricted field of action might win him a distinguished position in his own locality. And a fortiori the successful author, no matter how ephemeral his success, is as one man picked out of many thousands. A sliding scale of merit should be recognized in literature. The author who fails to satisfy the higher intelligence of his age may yet be a purveyor not only of agreeable entertainment to thousands of his fellows, but of instruction also. The progress of civilization is a slow and gradual evolution. At certain stages of development men may be helped immensely by books that may be worse than useless to those who are but one remove above them. A man derives pleasure from a book because it brings him in contact with a higher intelligence, a nimbler wit, a riper judgment, than his
