te spirit that must form the basis of
these qualities in the production of serious fiction is less certain, if
he may be judged by the tone of such minor pieces as _Civilization
without Delusion_, _Beaconsfield's Novels_, and _Democratic Snobbery_.
There is a certain violence in these which is more offensive than their
undoubted cleverness is admirable or their satire entertaining. They
show that the writer retained some of the impetuosity and prejudices
which were marked features of his youth.

Clarke was an anti-Semite, therefore in the Beaconsfield novels he saw
little beyond an expression of the author's personal exultation as the
successful representative of a maligned race. In the theological
controversy of _Civilization without Delusion_, an even less effective
and becoming performance, the young author revealed a deficiency which,
in any writer, can only be regarded as a misfortune and a cause for
tolerant regret. The spiritual side of his nature was an undeveloped,
almost a barren field. Neglected in boyhood and sapped by early habits
of dissipation, it had no strength to resist the agnostic conclusions
which were the product in later years of a coldly critical examination
of the general grounds of Christian belief.

In dealing with religion, his characteristic independence developed into
a stiff intellectual pride, and from that into a recklessness which
disregarded alike his public reputation and the feelings of others. But
these forays into the preserves of theology were happily rare. Such
questions obtained no permanent place in his thoughts: they were only
the passing expression of an ever-besetting mental restlessness. It is
indeed surprising that a writer with artistic instinct and a sense of
humour should ever have persuaded himself to enter the fruitless field
of religious contention at all.

There are a few facts in the early life of Marcus Clarke which are
sometimes so strongly, and even painfully, reflected in his brief career
that they form a necessary preface to any consideration of his literary
work. Soon after his birth at Kensington (London) in 1846 his mother
died, and thenceforward through all his youth he seems to have received
little advice or attention from relations. His father, a barrister and
literary man of retired and eccentric habits, exercised over him a
merely nominal authority, and so he had liberty to gratify a spirit of
inquiry and curiosity notably beyond his years. At his ow