Title:  Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics

Author:  Various

Release Date:  June 14, 2005 [EBook #16057]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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[Transcriber’s note:  Footnotes moved to end of text]

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A Magazine of literature, art, and politics.

Vol.  XIV.—­August, 1864.—­No.  LXXXII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by Ticknor and fields, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

* * * * *

Charles Reade.

Some one lately took occasion, in passing, to class Charles Reade with the clever writers of the day, sandwiching him between Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins,—­for no other reason, apparently, than that he never, with Chinese accuracy, gives us gossiping drivel that reduces life to the dregs of the commonplace, or snarls us in any inextricable tangle of plots.

Charles Reade is not a clever writer merely, but a great one,—­how great, only a careful resume of his productions can tell us.  We know too well that no one can take the place of him who has just left us, and who touched so truly the chords of every passion; but out of the ranks some one must step now to the leadership so deserted,—­for Dickens reigns in another region,—­and whether or not it shall be Charles Reade depends solely upon his own election:  no one else is so competent, and nothing but wilfulness or vanity need prevent him,—­the wilfulness of persisting in certain errors, or the vanity of assuming that he has no farther to go.  He needs to learn the calmness of a less variable temperature and a truer equilibrium, less positive sharpness and more philosophy; he will be a thorough master, when the subject glows in his forge and he himself remains unheated.

He is about the only writer we have who gives us anything of himself.  Quite unconsciously, every sentence he writes is saturated with his own identity; he is, then, a man of courage, and—­the postulate assumed that we are not speaking of fools—­courage in such case springs only from two sources, carelessness of opinion and possession of power.  Now no one, of course, can be entirely indifferent to the audience he strives to please; and it would seem, then, that that daring which is the first element of success