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172 sermon, but sæva indignatio is generally a respectable quality. I am not trying to prove that Ouida's novels are very strict works of art: I am trying to express what from any point of view may be praised in them. In this instance I take Ouida to be an effective preacher. She is enraged with these women because of men, worth better things, who are ruined by them, or because of better women for them discarded. It would have been more philosophical to rail against the folly of the men, and were Ouida a man, the abuse of the women might be contemptible—I have never been able to admire the attitude of the honest yeoman towards Lady Clara Vere de Vere; but she is a woman, and "those whom the world loved well, putting silver and gold on them," one need not pity for her scourging. It is effective. She is concerned to show you the baseness and meanness possible to a type of woman: at her best she shows you them naturally, analysing them in action; often her method is, in essentials, simple denunciation, a preacher's rather than a novelist's; but the impression is nearly always distinct. You may be incredulous of details in speech or action, but you have to admit that, given the medium, and the convention, a fact of life is brought home with vigour to your sympathies and antipathies. You must allow the convention—the convention between you and the temperament of your author. As when in parts of Byron a theatrical bent in his nature, joined with a mode of his time, gives you expressions that on first appearance are not real, not sincere, you may prove a fine taste by your dislike, but you prove a narrow range of feeling and a poor imagination if you get beyond it; so I venture to think in this matter of Ouida's guardsman and her wicked women, the magnificence, the high key, the glaring colours may offend or amuse you, but they should not render you blind to the humanity that is below the first appearance.

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