THREE NEW STORY-WRITERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2008, 18 August 1892, Page 39

THREE NEW STORY-WRITERS.

The complaint is often made that it is much more difficult for a writer of average ability to gain a name tc-day than it was 50 years ago. This complaint is just, in a measure, because of the remarkable increase in the nu'i.ber of persons who are able to write good English and who seem to have a passion for seeing themselves in print. This number grows every year in all Englishspeaking countries with the growth of newspaper and periodical literature. It has probably reached its maximum in this country, where the itch for scribbling seems universal. The magazine editors occasionally lift the veil, and give some idea of this mass of manuscript that descends upon them at all seasons. Neither midsummer heat nor mid» winter cold appears to have any effect in checking this output of manuscript. The same tale is told by the publishers of books and the long-suffering editors of newspapers. Ingenious devices are adopted to guard the editor from the personal visitation of ambitious amateur writßrs, but this is all that can be done in self-defense. Meanwhile, is it more difficult now to get literary recognition than a half a oentury ago ? We think not,

but it is imperative to-day that one have something to say, which was not the case in the time of our grandfathers. The working over of historical and literary anecdotes furni&hed employment for a large number of people in the first half of this century. There was then a conspicuous absence in the manuals of every department of history, literature, and science, which are among the most noteworthj features of the book market of the period. In this country the situation was even worse than in England. Fancy in these days a man of Hawthorne's gifts, who had already produced come of the best short tales in the language, spending himself on the preparation of Peter Parley's books for children and cyclopedias of universal history. Now, every enterpiising publisher keeps a force of clever writers in his pay, and these men turn out handbooks at short nctice in

the best style. The whole field of useful knowledge has been exploited by what may be called the tribe of revampers, so that not one bit of undiscovered country remains. Under these conditions, it goes without saying that a man to secure a hearing nowadays must either devise some new thing or else he must put bis old wine in bottles or in such novel design ttat they will attract the fancy.

Zoia is right when he says that the novel is the great vehicle of the modern reformer. There is unconscious humour in the moral attitude of the author of " Nana " and " L'Argent," but it is a plain fact that the man or woman who wishes to reach the largest audience must appeal to it through a work of fiction. Most of the circulating libraries show that fiction is more widely read even than religious literature. The demand of the age is for amusement, as life is hard, and the pace is so much faster than that of 50 years ago that the great majoiity of people have neither the leisure nor the taste for the moral essays and the novels with a purpose which were once so popular. Hence the writer who can make one lose sight of the toil and worry of life is the favourite of the reader of the period.

In England several new writers of this class have come up within the past few years. First shcuLl be placed Hall Came, whose works are few, but cash is a masterpiece of sustained interest. " The Daemster "is probably his strongest work. We rebel against many things in it, but no reader can fail to be drawn powerfully toward this vivid picture of strange life on the I^le of Man, with its play of passion, its pathos, and its tragedy. Almost equally strong are "The Bondmpn " and " The Scapegoat " — one a remarkable picture of the working out of the moral law in the frozen North ; the other, a romance of Moorish life, in which the Jewish hero woiks out his moral salvation in a way that recalls the early prophets. No words can adequately describe the power of these stories. They are transcripts from a life that is utterly foreign to the reader, yet they hold the interest and appeal to the sympathy as though they were the reproductions of familiar experience.

Another writer who has much of Hall Caine's power of realism, though he works in an entirely different field, is A. Conan Doyle. His " Micah Clarke " first made him known to American readers. That stirring historical romance, however, cannot compare in interest and variety of character with " The White Company," recently published. It is an effort to reconstruct the Fourteenth Century, and it is not going too far to say that no man since Scott has so thoroughly brought out the character and the feeling of another age as Doyle. The gentle knight, his squire, his favourite archer, and all the other characters that move around him, are thoroughly in keeping with their time, and the reader may get a better idea from this story of the spirit of chivalry, than from any of the histories. This story as well deserves a place in the reading of any student of English history as Scott 'a "Ivanhoe" or " Kenilworth." Radically distinct from Doyle in his methods, but his equal as an artist, is the youngest of these three writers of romance — Arthur Quiller Couch, who until recently disguised his identity under the pseudonym of " Q." Of only one of his stories have we room here to speak, that superb romance "The Splendid Spur." It would be difficult to imagine anything more dramatic than the adventures of the young hero of this historical skeieb. The light of a vivid imagination plays upen the scene, and stamps every incident upon the memory, while in detail, plot, dress, manners, and speech it reflects a past age as faithfully as Thackeray's •• Esmond." In a time that is filled with hard realism, it is a pleasnre to turn to such romances as those of Came, Dojle, and Couch, for they rest the mind. In reading fiction, it is a good rule to get as far as possible from one's own environment, and any one who dips into the works of these three men will get that mental recreation which is a sovereign cure for depression — that enemy which lies in wait for the man who crcwds too much work into one brief day. — American paper.