immortality on their principal characters. But Blackmore has no
sense of economy. As Mr. Saintsbury says of Thackeray, he could not
introduce a personage, however subordinate, without making him a living
creature. He does little with a character he has described in such
powerful lines as Stephen Anerley. The fisher village folks, wild and
hardy, with their slow speech and sly sagacity, the men at sea and the
women at home; the maimed and broken-down yet jolly old tars; the
anxious little merchants, and the heavy coast-guardsmen, we learn to
know as we know the rocks and caves, the fishing cobbles in their bright
colors, the slow-tongued gossips pouring out their long-voweled speech.
All these characters, although they have a general resemblance to each
other, have also a peculiar, quaint simplicity and wisdom that is
Blackmoreish, as Thackeray's characters are Thackeraian. The author
steps in and gives his puppets his little twist, the characteristic
obliquity each possesses, his quips and cranks. If he would but confine
the abundant tide of his flowing and leisurely utterances, he would have
more time to bestow on really exciting and dramatic episodes, instead of
going off into a little corner and carefully embellishing it, while the
denouement waits and the interest grows cold. Neither can he write a
page without sending a sly bolt of amused perception through it, in
which he discovers some foible or pricks some bubble of pretension, but
always tenderly, as if he loved his victim. To the fact that Mr.
Blackmore's success came late in life, we have perhaps to be thankful
for the softened and indulgent maturity which finds a hundred excuses,
and knows that nothing is as good or as bad as it seems.

[Illustration: R.D. BLACKMORE.]

The best expression of his genius in the delineation of character is
not--with perhaps the exception of John Ridd--in his heroes and
heroines. The former are drawn with the stronger hand. The maidens are
pretty girls, sweet and good and brave for the sake of their fathers,
and cunning for their lovers. His young men are gallant and true; but as
exemplary love is apt to run smooth, it is not here that the drama finds
the necessary amount of difficulty and pain. The interest centres in
such delicious conceptions as Parson Short, full of muscular energy and
sound doctrine, in Dr. Uperandown, his salt-water parish rival, the
carrier Cripps, Parson Chowne, and the renowned highwayman Tom Faggus,