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