Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/113

 opposite of a mediaeval woman; 2, the soft egotist, an excellent type; 3, an innocent little girl; 4, Savonarola emasculated. The other characters talk nineteen to the dozen, but they are little more than voluble shadows.

'The Cloister and the Hearth' fixes on the mind: 1, the true lover, hermit and priest, Gerard; 2, the true lover, medieval and northern, Margaret of Sevenbergen; 3, Dame Catherine, economist, gossip, and mother; the dwarf with his big voice; 5, the angelic cripple, little Kate; 6, the Burgomaster; 7, the Burgundian soldier, a character hewn out of mediæval rock; 8, the gaunt Dominican, hard, but holy; 9, the patrician monk, in love with heathenism, but safe from fiery fagots because he believed in the Pope; 10, the patrician Pope, in love with Plutarch, and sated with controversy; 11, the Princess Clælia, a true medieval; 12, the bravo's wife, a link between ancient and mediaeval Rome.

Philip of Burgundy does but cross the scene; yet he leaves his mark. Margaret Van Eyck is but flung upon the broad canvas; yet that single figure so drawn has suggested three volumes to another writer.

You can find a thousand Romolas in London, because she is drawn from observation, and is quite out of place in a medieval tale. But you cannot find the characters of 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' because they are creations.

When 'The Cloister and the Hearth' was first published, the 'Saturday Review,' staggered by the contents of the book, yet bound by the sacred tie of habit to say something against it, summed it up as inferior on the whole to Walter Scott. But nobody has ever compared 'Romola' to Walter Scott. Adulation, however fulsome, has evaded this comparison, because it would have provoked derision; and no reviewer, until this article was written, ever had the courage to compare 'Romola' with 'The Cloister and the Hearth.' Yet any one who has not made that comparison honestly and fairly knows little of Charles Reade, and cannot possibly assign him his true place amongst living writers of fiction.

Of 'The Cloister and the Hearth' it is impossible to speak too well. The author's perfect knowledge of mediaeval life, just before the time of Erasmus, is wonderful. The plot is full of incident of the newest and most striking, yet most probable and natural sort: the characters live, and seem