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Mr. Haggard's Romances.

Some of the current criticism of Mr. Haggard's books recalls the whimsical criticism Cervantes made of himself: "This Cervantes has long been my friend. His book does indeed, display a little power of invention; it aims at something but it reaches nothing." One reviewer says that Mr. Haggard "has but a rudimentary ability to delineate character, which is the chief function of the novelist," yet concedes just "Jess" "is certainly interesting." If, in the surfeit of books palling all tastes now, any story is interesting, must it need be that before we grant a grace to the character as some other writers do who are tiresome enough? Another critic notes that in "King Solomon's Mines" the crescent moon in full bow rises over Kukuanaland from the east a little after sunset; the next evening it has suddenly become full; and the following day after it has become full it totally eclipses the sun. The critic justly doubts whether even in Kukuanaland moon and sun should play such hocus-pocus arts with astronomy. And even the least exacting reader will be more than once annoyed by the crudeness of many of Mr. Haggard's sentences. But it takes more and greater faults than these to damn a writer if his work is vital and strong. The world of readers are used to good writing. Never in the world were there so many good writers and so much good writing as now. That Mr. Haggard could be so much read and seem to so many readers to be worth their attention and commendation makes a strong presumption that he has distinctive and marked merits despite any and all shortcomings in his performance. But the history of literature shows that novelty alone may secure many readers and a wider and transient reputation. The history of criticism teaches its professors to make a modest and doubtful estimate of their forecasts. They are not prophets or children of prophets and their judgments are not likely to be prescient. For our own part we shall make a very moderate and misgiving estimate of Mr. Haggard as he seems to us.

He has shown the old distinction between the novel and the romance. In the former the imagination pictures what is: in the latter it invents what is not. The novel dealing with the actual but slightly transposed has come in these latter days to an almost unmixed realism. In the degree it has become realistic we were all outgrowing romance. While we are all in this mood Mr. Haggard surprises us with romances as fantastic as those that Cervantes caricatured to immortal death. He chose his line with deliberation. Here is a scene from one of his first stores: " 'Well, Ernest,' she said, ' what are you thinking about? You sare as dull as - as the dullest thing in the world, whatever that may be. What is the dullest thing in the world?' 'I don't know,' he answered, awakening; 'yes I think I do: an American novel.' 'Yes, that is a good definition. You are as dull as an American novel' And in the outset of "King Solomon's Mines" Allan Quartermain promises: "This history won't be dull whatever else it may be." Thus Mr. Haggard has entered the lists against the dulness of the American fashion in novels, and resolute to keep you awake as one of his prime purposes. He writes both novels and romances. The second story he published, "The Witch's Head," is a novel with the witch's head introduced unexpectedly to entertain the company with a by-play of parlor magic. It is a deus ex machina fabricated outright to scare the reader into wakefulness and differentiate Mr. Haggard's story from those American novels whose dulness is to his thought a pleonastic euphemism for a good honest yawn in the presence of one's lady-love. Mr. Haggard is secure in his invention: there is not witch's head nor anything like it in the American novels that we read. Lest we be too much humiliated by such contrasted pov-