I dare
say there are many who would give "Esmond" the first place, and I
can quite understand their position, although it is not my own.
I recognize the beauty of the style, the consistency of the
character-drawing, the absolutely perfect Queen Anne atmosphere.
There was never an historical novel written by a man who knew his
period so thoroughly. But, great as these virtues are, they are not
the essential in a novel. The essential in a novel is interest,
though Addison unkindly remarked that the real essential was that
the pastrycooks should never run short of paper. Now "Esmond" is,
in my opinion, exceedingly interesting during the campaigns in the
Lowlands, and when our Machiavelian hero, the Duke, comes in, and
also whenever Lord Mohun shows his ill-omened face; but there are
long stretches of the story which are heavy reading. A pre-eminently
good novel must always advance and never mark time. "Ivanhoe" never
halts for an instant, and that just makes its superiority as a novel
over "Esmond," though as a piece of literature I think the latter is
the more perfect.
No, if I had three votes, I should plump them all for "The Cloister
and the Hearth," as being our greatest historical novel, and,
indeed, as being our greatest novel of any sort. I think I may claim
to have read most of the more famous foreign novels of last century,
and (speaking only for myself and within the limits of my reading)
I have been more impressed by that book of Reade's and by Tolstoi's
"Peace and War" than by any others.
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