From Lytton's "Paul Clifford," and
Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," down to "Merciless Ben, the Hair-Lifter,"
criminal narrative has been occupied with endowing burglars and
murderers with the graces of gentlemen and the moral worth of Christian
missionaries. In its celebration of successful crime, and its
representation under a heroic aspect of villains and blacklegs, no
species of fiction is more false to nature or more injurious to
youthful readers.
To such writers as George A. Lawrence and "Ouida" the world is indebted
for the "Muscular Novel," which combines all the worst elements of both
fashionable and criminal narrative. In "Guy Livingstone," "Strathmore,"
and a hundred similar fictions, the reader is introduced to men of
extraordinary physical development, whose strength is proof against
the wildest dissipation; to women of extraordinary beauty, whose charms
are enhanced in proportion to their coarseness and lack of modesty.
Jack Sheppard, reposing on a velvet couch, smoking a perfumed
cigarette, and worshipped by two or three ornaments of the demi-monde,
is the type most admired by the muscular novelist. Lawrence and "Ouida"
have brought to their work a literary power which has given them
considerable notoriety; and has placed them at the head of their
particular school; but it is a school whose distinctive characteristics
consist in extravagance, unhealthiness of tone, and falseness to
nature.
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