Page:The Spoils of Poynton (London, William Heinemann, 1897).djvu/299



Mr. Gladstone writes:—'I congratulate you upon The Scapegoat as a work of art, and especially upon the noble and skilfully drawn character of Israel.'

Mr. Walter Besant, in 'The Author.'—'Nearly every year there stands out a head and shoulders above its companions one work which promises to make the year memorable. This year a promise of lasting vitality is distinctly made by Mr. Hall Caine's Scapegoat. It is a great book, great in conception and in execution; a strong book, strong in situation and in character; and a human book, human in its pathos, its terror, and its passion.'

The Times.—'In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all the Author's previous efforts. For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a character which any romancist in the world might be proud to have created, and the tale of her parents' despair and hopes, and of her own development, confers upon The Scapegoat a distinction which is matchless of its kind.'

The Guardian.—'Mr. Hall Caine is undoubtedly master of a style which is peculiarly his own. He is in a way a Rembrandt among novelists. His figures, striking and powerful rather than beautiful, stand out, with the ruggedness of their features developed and accentuated, from a background of the deepest gloom. . . . Every sentence contains a thought, and every word of it is balanced and arranged to accumulate the intensity of its force.'

The Athenæum.—'It is a delightful story to read.'

The Academy.—'Israel ben Oliel is the third of a series of the most profoundly conceived characters in modern fiction.'

The Saturday Review.—'This is the best novel which Mr. Caine has yet produced.'

The Literary World.—'The lifelike renderings of the varied situations, the gradual changes in a noble character, hardened and lowered by the world's cruel usage, and returning at last to its original grandeur, can only be fully appreciated by a perusal of the book as a whole.'

The Anti-Jacobin.—'It is, in truth, a romance of fine poetic quality. Israel Ben Oliel, the central figure of the tale, is sculptured rather than drawn: a character of grand outline. A nobler piece of prose than the death of Ruth we have seldom met with.'

The Scotsman.—'The new story will rank with Mr. Hall Caine's previous productions. Nay, it will in some respects rank above them. It will take its place by the side of the Hebrew histories in the Apocrypha. It is nobly and manfully written. It stirs the blood and kindles the imagination.'

The Scottish Leader.—'The Scapegoat is a masterpiece.'

Truth.—'Mr. Hall Caine has been winning his way slowly, but surely, and securely, I think also, to fame. You must by all means read his absorbing Moorish romance, The Scapegoat.'

The Jewish World.—'Only one who had studied Moses could have drawn that grand portrait of Israel ben Oliel.'


 * WILLIAM HEINEMANN,, W.C.