R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Novelists of the 'Seventies 33he shows how little the minor melodramatist of the'seventies had changed in eighty years. Might not thispassage from The Clyffards of Clyjfe, one of his betternovels, have issued straight from the romantic heart ofMrs Radcliffe? I would add that the period of the storyis late eighteenth century. Would you have guessed ithad I not told you?Raymond's eyes followed his brother with genuine sympathyuntil the door had closed behind him.'Poor Rue! Poor Rue!' he murmured. 'God grant that thoumayst not bring the curse down on thine own head! It is nowonder that such prophecies work out their own fulfilment, whenthey have minds like thine to deal with. I wish with thec that thouand I could but change places. Rubbish of that sort might be shothere, I fancy,' striking his broad chest a sounding blow, 'withoutmuch damage. I am none of your dreamy ones, thank God! It iseleven o'clock. There are one, two, three good hours of fishingbefore me; and then, ah then! for my sweet Mildred!'The dark face lightened as he spoke, and the eyes, somewhat toostern for boyhood, softened like the black waters of a mountaintarn touched by the moon, as he strode gaily from the sunkenchamber, and through the vaulted passages to the hall, whistlinghis merry tune. So blithe he shone amid the general gloom, itseemed as though the haunting shadows of the place fled at hissprightly step, and gathered together after him more darkly thanbefore, like clouds behind the sun.Is not this exactly Thackeray's parody of Bulwer?But it is at this point that we encounter two personalitieswho show to what remarkable heights of melodramathose novelists of the 'seventies could rise—twofigures who both in their faults and their virtues areproducts only of that period; writers of their kind, oftheir naivete, their force, their absurdities and their gustowill, we may safely say, never appear in the world again.They stand, big symbolic figures of that odd half-realhalf-imagined Victorian world—the close of it—figures atthe gates about to be shut for ever.When one considers the present industry in theB 3