ABSTRACT
The chief fault of the book is the unnaturalness which pervades it, and which is met with in plot, situations, and people alike. Many novels seem, as it were, to enlarge our circle of friends when an author shows us persons whom he has really known; and his work is often a vehicle of introducing us to himself, at all events, because he is very apt to take his knowledge of the human race from that member of it with whom he is most intimately acquainted, and to put somewhat of his own identity into the various individuals whom he depicts. But Mr. Wilkie Collins has not chosen to do this, and, consequently, his book lacks human nature. His characters come and go, and he is clever enough to keep the reader amused in following their progress; but, with one exception [the housekeeper Miss Notman], they do not give the idea of studies from life….
