ABSTRACT

One of the penalties which the voracious novel-reader suffers lies in the too intimate knowledge he acquires of the novelist’s method and mechanism. The Castle of Udolpho is no longer enchanting, and instead of being stored with the arcana of romance, is compacted of the dry devices of the modern stage, with its sliding doors and traps and wooden ingenuities. The novels of Mr. Wilkie Collins attract chiefly by their ingenious construction, and, if not always conceived in the spirit of an artist, are almost invariably excellent displays of invention and artifice. In all of them the mystery is the thing. It is veiled by a finely-spun tissue of diverse webs that are ever shifting under the magician’s charm, and a very pretty dance it leads the easily-persuaded intelligence. It is sometimes almost divulged at the outset, and passes through more or less transparent eclipse until revealed, when, it must be owned, the revelation is not always imposing or surprising. In I Say No it is assuredly a very ridiculous mouse creeping timid and ashamed from one of the innumerable crannies of the labouring mountain. Early in the story it is seen that the mystery is no mystery, and should never have greatly exercised the minds of any of the characters. No one but the inexperienced reader, whom we frankly envy, could be deluded by the sundry false scents which the novelist trails across the true and obvious track. The reader who cannot forget the excitement of The Moonstone or The Woman in White is not likely to be drawn like a young hound from the pursuit of a mystery so early scented as in I Say No. This is his, and our, misfortune and the penalty of experience. The disappointment must notbe altogether charged to Mr. Wilkie Collins. His story is told with the old force and dramatic skill. The plot is a genuine construction, a matter to be gratefully acknowledged in these days. The story is eminently readable, as is to be expected, and the attention is fixed in the first chapter and sustained to the last….