Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/331

 attended the old transportation system, and the episodes are merely dramatised versions of facts. I have taken much trouble to collect materials for the story, and to read up and collate the almost-forgotten records of early colonial prisons, &c. I want to show that in many instances the law makes the criminal.

"I should be very grateful for a criticism from you on the story—if you can find time to look over it—as I hope to publish it in England as soon as it is completed in monthly numbers.—I am, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, "."

I examined the story carefully and answered his inquiries with the frankness due to a man of judgment and discretion. The narrative was, in my opinion, a singularly powerful and original one, marred by serious faults. For example, it was intensely painful—a sentiment which would become tragic if it concerned persons whom we respected; but whom did he intend us to respect? The hero was an unhappy creature, suffering innocently a life-long martyrdom, without any adequate or almost any intelligible motive. Unless the motive justified such a sacrifice, the reader would not sympathise with him, and the story would necessarily want interest—a fatal want. The narrative was long and it was unduly protracted, as it seemed to me, by introducing the Ballarat riots under a leader caricatured as Peter Brawler; all this in my judgment ought to be mercilessly expunged. And the song in French argot, with a translation into English slang, would be taken for his own if it was not specifically disowned; but it could not possibly be his own, as I had read it in Blackwood's Magazine before he was born. The translation was probably by Dr. Maginn. The novelist had precipitated a douche-bath of criticism on his head, but he bore it manfully. In his reply he took the objections in good part, and set to work forthwith to amend the original plot.

", July 22, 1870. ",—I have to thank you very much for your kindly criticism. Such observations as those which you have