acknowledged adaptation from Zola's 'L'Assommoir.' But originality is a hard matter to define, and is at best a doubtful virtue. The charge of plagiarism Reade meets in the Preface to 'A Simpleton' in the following characteristic fashion :

He who borrows

"It has lately been objected to me, in studiously courteous terms, of course, that I borrow from other books, and am a Plagiarist. To this I reply that I borrow facts from every accessible source, and am not a Plagiarist. The Plagiarist is one who borrows from a homogeneous work for such a man borrows not ideas only, but their treatment. only from heterogeneous works is not a Plagiarist. All fiction worth a button is founded on facts; and it does not matter one straw whether the facts are taken from personal experience, hearsay, or printed books; only those books must not be works of fiction. To those who have science enough to appreciate the above distinction, I am very willing to admit that in all my tales I use a vast deal of heterogeneous material, which in a life of study I have gathered from men, journals, blue-books, histories, biographies, law reports, &c. I rarely write a novel without milking about two hundred heterogeneous cows into my pail, and A Simpleton' is no exception to my general method: that method is the true method and the best, and if on that method I do not write prime novels, it is the fault of the man, and not of the method."

Then follow the various sources from which the different parts of the novel were derived, the South African incidents alone being indebted to thirteen different authorities. If we remember that this diligence has been bestowed mainly on subjects of deep national importance, Charles Reade must be considered a public benefactor, even if he had not written a line of romance. Only a short time ago the 'Lancet' and the British Medical Journal' were bringing against private lunatic asylums the very accusations which

were urged in 'Hard Cash' and 'A Terrible Temptation," that they did not attempt to cure an insane patient, and that it was very difficult to procure the release of a sane one. "I am a painstaking man," Reade says very truly of himself," and I owe my success to it."

Another sentence of personal criticism is equally just, and serves to illustrate, not only his own nature, but also the merits and defects of his literary style. "I bear an indifferent character," he says to the editor of a Toronto paper, "for temper and moderation." Any one who reads through the correspondence published in the volume entitled 'Readiana' can bear ample testimony to the truth of this assertion. And if stress be laid on the least successful points in his style of narrative, it too will be found wanting in temper and moderation. It is too rapid, too terse, too jerky, but for these very reasons it sometimes is able to call up a picture in a series of lightning flashes. Moreover, it has the merits of constant animation and liveliness, and, though often wanting in polish, it, like the best of Reade's characters, is racy of the soil. Especially when dealing with the sea it gains force, picturesqueness, and variety, and no better sample can be found than the gallant fight with the pirate ships with which Dodd's career opens in Hard Cash.' But for pure, simple pathos, there is nothing truer and finer than the scene in 'Never too Late to Mend,' where the gold-diggers on Sunday morning gather round to listen to the skylark: :

"Like most singers, he kept them waiting a bit. But, at last, just at noon, when the mistress of the house had warranted

him to sing, the little feathered exile began as it were to tune his pipes. The savage men gathered round his cage that moment, and amidst a dead stillness the bird uttered some very uncertain chirps, but after a while he seemed to revive his memories, and call his ancient cadences back to him one by one, and string them sotto voce.

"And then the same sun that had warmed his little heart at home came glowing down on him here, and he gave music back for it more and more, till at last, amidst breathless silence and glistening eyes of the rough diggers hanging on his voice, out burst in that distant land his English song.

"It swelled his little throat and gushed from him with thrilling force and plenty, and every time he checked his song to think of his theme, the green meadows, the quiet stealing streams, the clover he first soared from and the spring he sang so well, a loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a wild and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had held their breath to hear him; and when he swelled with song again, and poured with all his soul the green meadows, the quiet brooks, the honey clover and the English spring, the rugged mouths opened and so stayed, and the shaggy lips trembled, and more than one drop trickled from fierce unbridled hearts down bronzed and rugged cheeks.

"Dulce domum.

"And these shaggy men, full of oaths and strife and cupidity, had once been white-headed boys and had strolled about the English fields with little sisters and little brothers, and seen the lark rise and heard him sing this very song. The little playmates lay in the churchyard, and they were full of oaths and drink and lust and remorses, but no note was changed in this immortal song. And so for a moment or two, years of vice rolled away like a dark cloud from the memory, and the past shone out in the song-shine; they came back, bright as the immortal notes that lighted them, those faded pictures, and those fleeted days; the cottage, the old mother's tears, when he left her without one grain of sorrow; the village church and its simple chimes; the clover-field hard by in which he lay and gambolled, while the lark praised God overhead; the chubby playmates that never grew to be wicked, the sweet hours of youth-and innocenceand home."

A strain of health and manliness runs through all Reade's work: it is not all meat for babes, but it is always

on the side of morality. No more unfair charge was ever uttered than that which denounced Griffith Gaunt' and 'A Terrible Temptation' as indecent books. Reade is never afraid to handle themes which to delicate susceptibilities may savour of indelicacy; but it is only the prurient prude who could condemn his manner of treatment. For his own part, he is an enthusiastic defender of Faith and Religion: the "last words to mankind" which he had placed on his tombstone breathe a spirit of the simplest Christianity. A vigorous writer, a clear-headed thinker, untroubled by metaphysical mirage or philosophic doubt, with a rare eye for picturesque effects and a rare appreciation for the subtler details of character, Charles Reade was almost, if not quite, a genius, and only just failed in being an artist. By the side of his beloved friend, Mrs. Seymour, in Willesden Churchyard, lie his mortal remains. But his name will live long in the memory of Englishspeaking races.

172

A ROYAL BLUE-STOCKING.

DESCARTES AND THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH.

LES femmes ne savent jamais qu'à demi, et le peu qu'elles savent les rend communément fières, dédaigneuses, causeuses, et dégoûtées des choses solides." So wrote Madame de Maintenon to the ladies of the house of St. Cyr, echoing some sentiments which are to be found in the treatise on 'L'Education des Filles.' "Une femme curieuse," says Fénélon, “qui se pique de savoir beaucoup, se flatte d'être un génie supérieur, et méprise les amusements et les vanités des autres femmes. Elle se croit solide en tout et rien ne la guérit de son entêtement." "Retenez," he proceeds, "leur esprit le plus que vous pourrez dans les bornes communes: apprenez-leur qu'il doit y avoir pour leur sexe un pudeur sur la science presque aussi délicate que celle qu'inspire l'horreur du vice." From which it may be gathered that Madame de Maintenon and the pious archbishop of Cambrai were on this point quite in accord with Molière and his 'Précieuses Ridicules' and