edly the best that has
ever been written since.[C] "The Invasion," "The Rivals," "The Duke of
Monmouth," and others which he wrote subsequently, are all far inferior
when placed side by side with this great master-piece of fiction. In it
may be seen to best advantage the wonderful power and versatility of
Griffin's genius as a great novelist, for within its single compass he
has touched with a master hand the whole gamut of human passion and
human affections. As a literary artist of the "dark and touching mode of
painting," which Carleton has set down as the chief characteristic of
his brother novelist, Griffin has few equals and no superior. To depict
the more sombre tints of human nature, to trace the unbroken events
linked together in a career of crime, from the first commission of evil
till its last expiation in the felon ship, or on the gallows, he
especially delights. He does not delay the progress of the plot to
impress upon his reader the exact frame of mind in which his hero felt
at certain trying conjunctures. This suggests itself unconsciously, in
occasional snatches of vague and emotional distraction, in half uttered
replies, in the joke that mechanically escapes the lips, in the
capricious laugh that best discovers the anguish preying on the mind and
the despair eating at the heart. But it is in the ingenuity with which
he makes local surroundings play such an important part in the drama of
human destiny, that Griffin excels to a remarkable extent. What reader
of the "Collegians" has not realized all the perils of the windy night
and the stormy sea with trepidation and horror scarcely surpassed by the
occupants of the little craft tossing amid the boiling breakers--Eily,
the hapless runaway, Danny, the elfin hunchback, and Hardress, the
conscience-stricken victim of conflicting thoughts and passionate
impulses? How much more tragic the finding of the dead body of Eily, the
"pride of Garryowen," since it occurs on the hunting field, surrounded
by the half maudlin squires, and before the bloodless face of the
horrified murderer? But Griffin deserves mention other than as a
dramatist and novelist. It is saddening to know that in an age where so
much weak sentiment, scarcely discernible in its wealth of verbose
ornamentation, is so easily imposed upon the public under the name of
poetry, that so much really good poetry should be forgotten and unread.
One is often provoked to regret that the scalping knife has bec