CHARLES READE'S WORKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1840, 25 February 1887, Page 30

CHARLES READE'S WORKS.

Perhaps the most powerfully written of Charles Keade's works are those in which he fights against some great public evil. " Never too Late to Mend" being a fine example of this, in which, he boldly, bravely, and manfully exposes some of the horrors of the old prison systems, such as the silent system, by which prisoners were driven to the verge of madness, craving for the sound of a fellowcreature's'voice. In glowing and eloquent language the humane author takes up the cause of the oppressed, and in tho character of " Piobinson" shows the hardening, tantalising effect of cruelty,, and- in.' fche,per^m.Gf"'Ecten 11 the chaplain teaches hW kaitos

and humanity will, falling , softly, like the gentle, due, bring healing and refreshment to the parched heart. It would be hard to find among our authors of the present day a more touching and sublime illustration of this than in theprison scene, where Robinson is shut up to all the awful-horrors of the "black hole," and just at the moment when the thick blackness of darkness and intense silence had wrought by their tortures, their overmastering in fluence ; the poor victim to the point of de gpair and madn as ; the gentle manly tones of the Christ-like chaplain, fall upon his ear from outside the wall — " Brother." The scene that follows is a masterpiece. The voluntary watch on the free side of the wall by the chaplain to keep company with the criminal within, and so to save his reason. His confession during that watch of having been by his own desire locked up in that awful place, the better to test its horror, and •50 more perfectly to suffer with his stray sheep by sympathy. All this is a lesson of perfect humanity, perfectly taught. Reade's -works are studded with gems, though here and there the setting of them is not pure gold. The baneful effects of jealousy, the degrading influence of drink are portrayed in - realistic domestic histories, in which you seem to see and hear and know the characters. The grand power of love, the might of patience, the terrible outcomes of everyday ills and mistakes, the agony of swallowing, a little doubt and suspicion, and its tragic end Reade sketches with artistic skill. He is beautiful in his belief and adoration of Nature; the mighty leveller of all men. He makes a woman proud to be a mother, so beautiful does he paint the workings of that motherhood. But Reade's conception of a woman is not the highest. His women are self -sacri • firing* patient, enduring, but all have the trait he has correctly observed so prominent in many women — viz, that of hiding from those they love, all that would displease or wound, from instinctive love of pleasing, mingled with the instinctive fear of censure. While it is true that many women will hide away in their own breasts their real convictions, and apparently espouse those of surrounding friends, from an inborn desire to please, while it is true that many women will act — when they must act in opposition, in secret — and so from a desire to avoid giving pain, bring about a complication of ills and direful results. While all this is true in many cases, Reade seema to overlook the fact that this aimiable weakness is not the ruling characteristic of all women. Does not everyone 1 know among women of his or her acquaintance, at least one or two, so remarkably cm- ■ phatic in the expression of their convictions, so energetic in the expression of their disapproval as to leave no doubt whatever in the minds of friends as to the course of action they would persue under certain circumstances 1 So well can he count upon the actions of some women that we anticipate those actions on many occasions, and say, " When she knows she will do so and so." Impulse and tact Reade seems to believe, and not reason prompts a woman's actions. This he lays down as an absolute rule, which is an error of judgment, for while the world owes many of its sunglints to those quick sympathetic impulses of women, it also owes many of its graver, grander triumphs to her earnestness of purpose and far reaching forsight, which will with firm hand probe the quivering flesh to extract the thorn, so to prevent a future festering sore. He lashes his own sex right soundly for that tyrann % y which demands and coolly appropriates a woman's life and soul, and seeks to hold it so tightly in the hollow of his hand that the yearning, throbbing spirit scarce can breathe, and well he tells that if a man will not soar with his wing of her soul, and sing her full mellow song of confidence and sympathy in the blue heaven of firm reliance and sweet repose in his faith in her ; but instead, fastens her in bird, will not allow her to spread the free a cage of narrow restrictions, how she will stay there in the body, but with the eye of her spirit wandering into limitless space, sing, not a song of gratitude and adoring to him, as though he had kept wing with her in the free air, but to the imaginations of her own heart which no bars can confine. Many are the sorrows that come to his heroes through the checking of confidence which is the natural accompaniment of a woman's love. In "Peg Woffingfcon" Reade gives us a beautiful illustration of the fact that the attributing of the power to accomplish great good, is to some natures (instinctively noble), but the incentive needed for the attainment of high virtues—the achievement of great things. The good humour and grace with •which Peg submits to be regarded in public and private, but as the talented actress, to be caressed or sighted as the occasion wills, is only excelled by the impulsive outbursts of the pent-up good within her, and all the grand conflict between prido and meekness, greatness and littleness in the crowning crisis of her life, where the woman who had so long swept everything before her according to her capricious will, lays by her wounded prido — aye, and wounded heart— folds up the plan of vengeance, so easy for her to accomplish, and puts it quietly aside, because a simple loving wife kneels at her feet, and prays for mercy, and with touching faith in Peg's nobility of heart, attributes to her the power of rising to a height of unselfishness and reaching down to a depth of " self-forgetfulness and lowliness" which results at length in a life of grandeur and holiness. Christie Johnston is a protest against that spurious sentimentality, which in its search after heroes into the middle ages, overlooks those who are living and dying in our own day in our own street, and in our own home. In every work a lesson is taught, and if sometimes our delusions are torn down somewhat coarsely and roughly, it is to show that the idol they enveloped was clay.