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which once imposed itself upon the worst of rowdies. But there is little doubt that the feeling of the community at large is overwhelmingly against us, and it is for this reason that I am dubious as to the success of Dr. Doyle's last literary venture. The makings of romance are in the story, and are well used. There are episodes of excellent excitement in it; notable amongst these being the race on the Godstone Road, which is done with a swing and passion not easy to overpraise. In the narrative of the fight and of the incidents which preceded it the feeling of the time is admirably preserved, and the interest of the reader is held at an unyielding tension. But the prize-ring is a little too near as yet to offer unimpeachable matter for romance; and people who can read of the bloodthirsty Umslopogaas and his semi-comic holocausts with an unshaken stomach, or feel a placid historic pleasure in the chronicles of Nero's eccentricities, will find 'Rodney Stone' objectionable because it chronicles a 'knuckle fight,' and because a 'knuckle fight' is still occasionally brought off in London, and more occasionally suppressed by the police. But a more serious criticism awaits Dr. Conan Doyle's last work. It is offered respectfully, and with every admiration for the high qualities already noticed. In the re-embodiment of a bygone age in fiction, three separate and special faculties are to be exercised. The first is the faculty for research, which must expend its energy not merely on the theme in hand, but on the age at large. The second is the imaginative and sympathetic faculty, which alone can make the dry bones of social history live again. The third is the faculty of self-repression, the power to cast away all which, however laboriously acquired, is dramatically unessential. Two of these powers belong in generous measure to Dr. Conan Doyle. The third, which is as necessary to complete success, he has not yet displayed. In 'Rodney Stone' an attempt has been made to cover up this shortcoming, in the form in which the story has been cast, and in the very choice of its title. But when the book comes to be read it is not the tale of Rodney Stone (who is a mere outsider privileged to narrate), but of his fashionable uncle's combat with Sir Lothian Hume, with the ring in which their separate champions appear as a battle ground. Many pages are crowded with people who are named in passing and forgotten. They have no influence on the n
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