SOURCE: "The Stature of Baring-Gould as a Novelist," in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 1, June, 1960, pp. 1-16.

In the following excerpt, Hyde compares Baring-Gould's pastoral novels to Thomas Hardy's Devonshire novels, and determines that Baring-Gould is to be commended for his largely unsuccessful attempts to create great art rather than popular romances.

When another anonymous novel was added to the burgeoning lists of publishers' releases on October 15, 1880, there was scarcely occasion for sighting a literary landmark amid the welter of so many of its kind. Nor can one claim, looking back, more than that Mehalah, undoubtedly the ablest, most highly concentrated of the many novels of Sabine Baring-Gould, before the year was out was hailed by some of its reviewers as the work of a writer of great promise. By December, Smith, Elder was inflating its advertisements with resounding quotations from the reviews: "one of the best amongst this...