B.
May learn like you an' me!"
* * * * *
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_The Cloister and the Hearth; or, Maid, Wife, and Widow_. A
Matter-of-Fact Romance. By CHARLES READE, Author of "Never too Late to
Mend," etc., etc. New York: Rudd & Carleton. 8vo.
The novels of Charles Reade are generally marked not only by
individuality of genius, but by individualisms of egotism and caprice.
The latter provoke the reader almost as much as the former gives him
delight. It disturbs the least critical mind to find the keenest insight
in company with the loudest bravado, and the statement of a wise or
beautiful thought followed up by a dogmatic assertion of infallibility
as harsh as a slap on the face. The indisposition to recognize such a
genius comes from the fact that he irritates as well as stimulates the
minds he addresses. Everybody reads him, but the fooling he inspires is
made up of admiration and exasperation. The public is both delighted and
insulted. He not only does not attempt to conceal his contemptuous sense
of superiority to common men, but he absolutely screeches and bawls it
out. Fearful that the dull Anglo-Saxon mind cannot appreciate his finest
strokes, he emphasizes his inspirations not merely by Italics, but by
capitals, thus conveying his brightest wit and deepest contrivances by
a kind of typographic yell. Were there not a solid foundation of
observation, learning, genius, and conscience to his work, his egotistic
eccentricities would awake a tempest of hisses.
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