A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales | Page 6

"mildly entertaining") out of the Rev. J. M. Neale's many historical tales I have selected only one--"Theodora Phranza," which, besides being well written, has the merit of dealing with a somewhat neglected period. Stories possessing a background of History are to be found in "Tales from Blackwood," as also in "Wilson's Tales of the Borders," but their extremely slight character seemed scarcely to justify insertion; while not even the high literary position attained by him on other grounds reconciled me to either of Allan Cunningham's novels--"Sir Michael Scott" and "Paul Jones."
Of the Foreign novelists appearing in my list, several have been already named, but Marchese D'Azeglio, F. D. Guerrazzi, Cesare Cantu, "W. Alexis" (G. Haring), H. Laube, Louise Mulbach (Klara M. Mundt), Nicolas Josika, Viktor Rydberg, Hendrik Conscience, Xavier B. Saintine, Amedee Achard, and "Erckmann-Chatrian" here call for notice as not coming under strictly Contemporary classification. I would forestall the criticism that two writers have been passed over whose fame is greater than any of those just mentioned, viz.: "Stendhal" (Henri Beyle) and Alphonse Daudet. Beyle's "La Chartreuse de Parme," though containing the oft-praised account of Waterloo, is far more Psychological than Historical; and Daudet's "Robert Helmont," while it depicts (under Diary form) certain aspects of the Franco-German War, has hardly any plot running through it. As the Waterloo and Franco-German War periods were amply illustrated in numerous other novels of more assured suitability, I had the less hesitation in deciding against the two works just named. In the selections from Foreign Historical Fiction nothing more has been attempted than to include the leading examples; most of these, it will be found, have been translated into English.
Before leaving the subject of older writers, it may be mentioned that not a few of the works chosen to represent them are, at the moment, out of print. To anyone objecting that something ought to have been done to indicate this in each separate case, I would urge that the "out of print" line can never be drawn with precision in view of constant reprints as well as of further extinctions.
Perhaps this introduction may be most fitly concluded by something in the nature of apology for Historical Romance itself. Not only has fault been found with the deficiencies of unskilled authors in that department, but the question has been asked by one or two critics of standing--What right has the Historical Novel to exist at all? More often than not, it is pointed out, the Romancist gives us a mass of inaccuracies, which, while they mislead the ignorant (i.e., the majority?), are an unpardonable offence to the historically-minded reader. Moreover, the writer of such Fiction, though he be a Thackeray or a Scott, cannot surmount barriers which are not merely hard to scale, but absolutely impassable. The spirit of a period is like the selfhood of a human being--something that cannot be handed on; try as we may, it is impossible for us to breathe the atmosphere of a bygone time, since all those thousand- and-one details which went to the building up of both individual and general experience, can never be reproduced. We consider (say) the Eighteenth Century from the purely Historical standpoint, and, while we do so, are under no delusion as to our limitations; we know that a few of the leading personages and events have been brought before us in a more or less disjointed fashion, and are perfectly aware that there is room for much discrepancy between the pictures so presented to us (be it with immense skill) and the actual facts as they took place in such and such a year. But, goes on the objector, in the case of a Historical Romance we allow ourselves to be hoodwinked, for, under the influence of a pseudo- historic security, we seem to watch the real sequence of events in so far as these affect the characters in whom we are interested. How we seem to live in those early years of the Eighteenth Century, as we follow Henry Esmond from point to point, and yet, in truth, we are breathing not the atmosphere of Addison and Steele, but the atmosphere created by the brilliant Nineteenth Century Novelist, partly out of his erudite conception of a former period, and partly out of the emotions and thoughts engendered by that very environment which was his own, and from which he could not escape!
Well, to all such criticisms it seems to me there are ample rejoinders. In the first place it must be remembered that History itself possesses interest for us more as the unfolding of certain moral and mental developments than as the mere enumeration of facts. Of course, I am aware that the ideal of the Historian is Truth utterly regardless of prejudice and inclination, but, as with all