Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/57

Rh "St. Oran" was published in 1881. Some of the intervening period had been occupied in the composition of Mathilde Blind's one romance, "Tarantella," which was not published until some years afterwards. The fate of this remarkable book is one of the injustices of literature. It met with but little success, and although republished, has never obtained any popularity. Yet it has an exciting story, interesting characters, ease and naturalness of dialogue, charming descriptions, and is the receptacle of much of the writer's most serious thought and intense personal feeling. The unfamiliar foreign medium possibly told against it; it also must be confessed that here and there the authoress's vigour and anuuation degenerate into verbosity, as will happen to people speaking under excitement. The principal reason, however, may well have been the preference which then obtained for minute analysis of character in fiction and the growing taste for realism. Both these requisites of success were disregarded by "Tarantella," which is very romantic, very idealistic, very eloquent, and not in the least concerned with minutiae, whether of description or of mental anatomy. Now that the taste for romance has revived, "Tarantella" ought to have another chance of taking its rightful place: for there does not appear, as there undoubtedly does in the case of some other works of genius, any conclusive reason why it should remain the property of the few.

"The Heather on Fire" followed in 1886. The interval, so far as devoted to literature, was mainly occupied by two prose works, undertaken con amore, but which cost the authoress an amount of labour disproportionate to their extent. It was a passion with her to celebrate illustrious women, which the publication of the