Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 Excerpt:...has never condescended to those humble gifts of distinctness and plain story-telling which find a novelist access to the crowd. Were his books subjected to a process of compression, and his sentences unwound from the extraordinary convolutions of words in which he shows an increasing inclination to wrap up his meaning, the ordinary public would be in a better condition to understand and appreciate the high qualities with which the leaders of literary opinion have always accredited this remarkable writer. This defect is by no means so great, however, in his earlier romances, in the "Ordeal of Richard Feverel " for example, which is full of beautiful and powerful scenes, than in his later work. Mr. George MacDonald is also a novelist who has missed the very widest circle of readers rather from the visionary beauty of his characters and the quite unworldly strain of his writing and too lofty theory of life, than from any want either of truth or strength in his work, especially the earlier part of it. His "David Elginbrod," the first of his novels, brought out from the very lowest level of Scottish country folk, a father and daughter who were worthy to be ranked with the saints and poets, and whose beautiful apprehension of everything fine and great startled the reader, accustomed indeed to find much peasant wit and wisdom in the favourite subjects of Scotch novels, but not a strain so lofty as this. Throughout his works, the same peculiarity, a strain too elevated, and a visionary character almost too beautiful, which made the poor little Sir Gibbie of the garret, and the gillie Malcolm, at once fit for the highest positions, and higher than these positions, whatever they might be, has made him miss a little that necessary foundation upon t...