ABSTRACT
Our prolific novelists are all mannerists, more or less, but no one of them is more of a mannerist than Mr. Wilkie Collins. Were his title-pages suppressed, the least critical of circulating library subscribers might be trusted to pronounce decisively on the authorship of his productions. For his is not mere mannerism of style-although that is marked enough-but a very decided mannerism of mind. He has considerable powers of imagination, but it is plain that his imagination works and schemes with patient deliberation. He plans his stories as a plodding chamber counsel might draw a settlement, elaborating details with the conscientiousness of a man who guards himself against flaws, and realizes his grave responsibilities. The plot must work plausibly, even where it is to be startlingly sensational, and accordingly the wilder its episodes the more realistic are the minutiæ of its every-day life. It isthe art of Defoe adapted to a species of writing which in the days of Defoe was not yet in fashion. There can be no doubt that Mr. Collins has studied the tastes of his public, and in certain instances has pleased them-we will not say pandered to them-with great success. But novels constructed like the Woman in White will less than any others bear indefinite repetition. It is hard to cap a climax of sustained and of intricate interest, and one great success in that particular line makes an author his own most formidable rival. Each successive work becomes more of a strain and an effort, and he has to go further afield to grasp the leading conception which is to produce his latest effect. His conception in itself may do the greatest honour to his ingenuity, and yet because it is farfetched it is likely enough to fail of interesting his readers. We should say this is very much the case with Poor Miss Finch. In Poor Miss Finch we find all the author’s characteristic faults and merits, and each intensified. As his faults are of a sort that irritate, we fear they may be found to outweigh the merits; and yet the merits are unmistakable. The plot is constructed with Mr. Collins’s customary care, and excellent situations are continually rising out of it. The conception of the heroine entitles him to the credit of the originality he claims for it. There is evidence of observation and research in the information which Mr. Collins has collected, and he uses it in a way that surprises without positively shocking us. And yet we find the book wanting in the two primary essentials of a novel; the heroine fails to charm, and the story flags when it begins to interest us.
