do more
than touch upon a few books that may illustrate the prominent
characteristics, and the general place in light literature, of Indian
novels. This must explain why we have omitted several other works, of
which _Transgression_[15] is the latest. In this tale we have a sketch
of life on the North-West Frontier at the present day, with some
well-known incidents of the Afridi War of 1897-98 introduced, and so
coloured from the writer's own point of view as to convey, under a
thin varnish of fiction, some sharp and sarcastic criticism on the
management of affairs, the politics of the Government, and the
personal behaviour of certain officials, who can be at once
identified. Although the book is not without interest as a true
account of hazardous and stirring frontier duties, we are bound to
repeat our warning that this abuse of the novel for controversial
purposes is not only unfair, but profoundly inartistic. No literary
success, but failure and the confusion of styles, lies that way.

What, then, are the conclusions which we may draw from this brief
survey of the more prominent and typical Indian novels? To the
repertory of English fiction, which is perhaps the largest and most
varied that any national literature contains, they have undoubtedly
made a not unworthy contribution; for we may agree that fiction has
some, if not the highest, value when it produces an animated
representation of life and manners, even upon a limited and distant
field. In the present instance the narrow range of plot and character
that may be observed in the pure Anglo-Indian novel reflects the
uniformity of a society which consists almost entirely, outside the
Presidency capitals on the sea-coast, of civil and military
officials--a society that is also upon one level of class and of age,
for among the English in India there are neither old men nor boys and
girls; the men and women are in the prime of life, with a number of
small children. This age-limit lops off from both ends of human
existence a certain proportion of the characters that are available
for filling up the canvas of the social novelist at home. And it is in
truth a peculiar feature, not only of Anglo-Indian society, but of the
Anglo-Indian administration, because the enforced retirement of almost
every officer after the age of fifty-five years greatly diminishes the
influence of weighty and mature experience exercised by the senior men
in the services and government of most