He walks on safe ground, eluding many of the perils that beset
the story-teller who ventures to stray beyond the bounds of the
make-believe. One peril he cannot escape--that of misrepresenting human
nature.
The anachronisms of the average historical novel, pretending to
reflect history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether
wonderfully and fearfully made--the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron
characters, the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory
rhetoric forever at charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so
unreal. Here art has broken into smithereens the mirror which she is
supposed to hold up to nature.
In this romance-world somebody is always somebody's unsuspected father,
mother, or child, deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usually
the anonymous person is the hero, to whom it is mere recreation to hold
twenty swordsmen at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of them
before he escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly
behind him.
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