ve applied to the first four or five years
of his literary career, there was no ground for it after the unanimously
favourable reception accorded to _For the Term of his Natural Life_ upon
its issue in book form in 1874.

In England and America, as well as in Australia, this one novel gave him
an immediate and distinct reputation. With it he might have speedily
established himself as one of the leading writers of the day, and,
turning from the depressing realism of penal cruelties which can have no
further parallel in British countries to something more within our
sympathies--to the realism of modern Australian life,--have supplied
what is still conspicuously lacking in Australian fiction. Yet, during
the remaining seven years of his life he produced no imaginative work
worthy his name and ability. The ever-ready market of the local
newspaper press absorbed his best efforts, and such intervals as there
were he devoted to an attempt to establish himself as a writer and
adapter for the stage.

In this way the years passed without yielding much beyond a livelihood.
Meantime, Melbourne was his microcosm: he made a systematic study of its
life from the purlieus of Little Bourke and Lonsdale streets to the
palace of his 'model legislator' on Eastern Hill. Like Balzac, one of
his favourite novelists, he made observation a severe and regular
business, but he lacked the energy or the patience to take full
advantage of its results. Balzac employed his accumulated materials in
bursts of creative energy which, if terrible in their intensity and
their drain upon his health, had at least method in them, and effected
their purpose. Poverty did not swerve him, nor prosperity sate him.

That part of genius which consists in natural depth and accuracy of
vision Clarke had in abundance, but he was weak in the lesser gifts of
patience and synthetic power, perhaps also in ambition. Moreover, an
unfortunate extravagance, which led from chronic debt to bankruptcy,
compelled him to continue the class of work which gave the surest and
most regular income.

Repeated requests by the Messrs. Bentley for more fiction were neglected
from year to year, and similar indifference was shown to a flattering
invitation to join the staff of the _Daily Telegraph_ in London, an
opportunity that would have led to the establishment of Clarke in those
literary circles outside of which no purely Australian writer, with the
exception of Rolf Boldrewood, has ev