It is the fashion to call every story controversial that deals with
times when controversy or a war of religion was raging; but it
should be remembered that there are some which only attempt to
portray human feelings as affected by the events that such warfare
occasioned. 'Old Mortality' and 'Woodstock' are not controversial
tales, and the 'Chaplet of Pearls' is so quite as little. It only
aims at drawing certain scenes and certain characters as the
convulsions of the sixteenth century may have affected them, and
is, in fact, like all historical romance, the shaping of the
conceptions that the imagination must necessarily form when
dwelling upon the records of history.
That faculty which might be
called the passive fancy, and might almost be described in Portia's
song, -'It is engendered in the eyes,
By READING fed - and there it dies,'-that faculty, I say, has learnt to feed upon character and
incident, and to require that the latter should be effective and
exciting. Is it not reasonable to seek for this in the days when
such things were not infrequent, and did not imply exceptional
wickedness or misfortune in those engaged in them? This seems to
me one plea for historical novel, to which I would add the
opportunity that it gives for study of the times and delineation of
characters. Shakespeare's Henry IV. and Henry V., Scott's Louis
XI., Manzoni's Federigo Borromeo, Bulwer's Harold, James's Philip
Augustus, are all real contributions to our comprehension of the
men themselves, by calling the chronicles and memoirs into action.
True, the picture cannot be exact, and is sometimes distorted--nay,
sometimes praiseworthy efforts at correctness in the detail take
away whatever might have been lifelike in the outline. Yet,
acknowledging all this, I must still plead for the tales that
presumptuously deal with days gone by, as enabling the young to
realize history vividly--and, what is still more desirable,
requiring an effort of the mind which to read of modern days does
not.
The details of Millais' Inquisition or of his Huguenot may be
in error in spite of all his study and diligence, but they have
brought before us for ever the horrors of the auto-da-fe, and the
patient, steadfast heroism of the man who can smile aside his
wife's endeavour to make him tacitly betray his faith to save his
life. Surely it is well, by pen as by picture, to go back to the
past for figures that will stir the heart like these, even though
the details be as incorrect as those of the revolt of Liege or of
La Ferrette in 'Quentin Durward' and 'Anne of Geierstein.'