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

70 Walter de la Mareconscious, the too clever is uncommon, and where it isfound it is, like old rubber, desperately perished inappearance and effect. Even the sentimental seems tooutlast the meretricious; and the rather commonplacelove story, quietly and serenely narrated, or even themildest record of the domesticated may keep enough ofits interestingness to make it still readable by the not toofastidious.In matter many of these novels are singularly substantial;in style, sound, workmanlike, practised, and alittle formal. If anything, their authors appear to be alittle over rather than under-educated; or, rather, toowell-informed. For the fine novelist is in most (that heneeds most) self-schooled, self-taught. As a child withhis hornbook, Nature stood him, not always very kindly,at her knee; for the rest he went, mind and heart, to theworld at large. Its gallery is enormous and open to all.Knowledge, however valuable it may be, may proveimaginatively indigestible.Of the men characters in the 'seventies the paterfamiliasand his generation are usually natural andvigorous enough. The romantic hero, the Lothario, thedaredevil, the man of fashion or about town, the Bohemian,is apt to be less so. These novelists are seldomcompletely at home in their younger men. They aremaking them up; the creative breath is faint that shouldfree them into life. Even a hero, who is 'good, rich,handsome, clever, and kind'—and nowadays these epithetswould appear in a different order—may remain inadequatelyvitalised. We watch him, but remain uneasyand incompletely transformed. It must be remembered,however, that fiction consists solely of words, more or lessevocatory, and that it rests in great part with the readerto decide on the more and the less.There may be artificial hindrances. Richard Harold