ABSTRACT
The awkward sound of Heart and Science, the title of Mr. Wilkie Collins’s new book, will perhaps help to make people remember it; but though it is better than some of the author’s later works it is not equal to his best. He has hampered himself by trying to write with a purpose. Novel-readers as a rule are supposed to omit prefaces. It will be well if they do so in this case, for they will learn from the two prefaces to Heart and Science that the author’s purpose is to help the cause of the anti-vivisectionists; that there is a good deal of science in the book; and that the physiological part of it is quite correct, the manuscript having been submitted to an eminent London surgeon. All this sounds depressing enough; but fortunately Mr. Wilkie Collins is far too experienced and too skilful a novelist to be able to allow himself to be dull. The reader who has read the prefaces soon forgets them and the threatened anti-vivisection and science when he finds himself quickly launched into the midst of a story which opens in the author’s best manner. In the first preface, which is addressed ‘to readers in general,’ it is stated that the novel is one of character and humour rather than of incident and dramatic situation. Mr. Wilkie Collins seems to have misjudged his own work. The merits of it really are those which are the merits of so many of the author’s books: that the plot is well contrived at starting; that coincidences are cleverly managed; that the reader’s interest is seized at the outset and constantly roused again; that there is an air of mystery about the principal characters, and an uncertainty about what will happen which makes one guess for a solution as one goes along, and change one’s mind over and over again; that the details are accurate;and that the dramatic effects are excellent. It may be readily admitted that Mr. Wilkie Collins is justified in saying that he has borne in mind the value of temperate advocacy, but the truth is that he is so much more an artist than an advocate that, on the whole, his novel is good enough to make one almost fail to notice that it was written against vivisection. Unfortunately the story has a weak ending. After imagining all sorts of strange possibilities the reader finds out at last that in truth there was very little plot at all. The second preface, ‘to readers in particular,’ points out the care that has been taken to have the science accurate. It is almost painful to think of the trouble that has been thrown away. Prof. Ferrier on the Localization of Cerebral Disease, Chambers’s Encyclopædia, and a long list of books have been consulted, to say nothing of newspapers and magazines; but all that has teen got from them is a phrase here and there to round off a sentence and raise a laugh at a learned lady. It seems almost a pity that a lawyer was not consulted too. One of the characters is a solicitor, and if accuracy in legal matters is as important as correctness in science, it would have been well to have avoided the mistake of sending a person to look for a will at Doctors’ Commons instead of Somerset House. A lawyer could also have given some useful information on the subject of the guardianship of infants, a department of the law with which Mr. Wilkie Collins seems not to be familiar.
