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

34 Hugh Walpolereinvestigation of minor and forgotten Victorians it israther astonishing I think that these two men have foundneither critics nor biographers of merit.This paper will be justified should it lead an investigator—sucha one as Mr Michael Sadleir for example—to a detailed thorough study of the work and personalityof either.The men of whom I speak are Charles Reade andHenry Kingsley.Charles Reade is crying out for his biography, for hisnovels are both curious and perplexing in their combinationof quite opposite qualities, and his personality in itsodd violences, generosities, impetuosities both provokingand endearing.He was a melodramatist of the theatre and in that hefollowed both Dickens and Wilkie Collins. There was inhim a great deal of that odd mixture of sawdust, variegatedwaistcoats and amateur theatricals that belongs toMr Crummies at one end and The Frozen Deep at theother.But it was not merely amateur theatricals that heldhim; he had a very real traffic with the real theatre andit was unquestionably this real theatre—felt at a timewhen the English drama was at its lowest ebb—that wasresponsible for the gravest faults in his tempestuousnovels. His fame also has been hampered by the excessivepopularity of his most famous novel. Had henever written The Cloister and the Hearth there is no doubtbut that Griffith Gaunt, Put Yourself in His Place andFoul Play would be awarded a higher critical positionthan they are. In many ways indeed Griffith Gaunt is thebest novel that he ever wrote; it has less of his melodrama—althoughthere is plenty—and more real tragedyhaving its source in character rather than in event, thanany of the others. And it is strangely typical of its period.