l one of these days, and meanwhile we had
better hold our judgment upon Mr. Moore's capacity open to revision.

What, then, is to be said of _Esther Waters_, this volume of a modest
377 pages, upon which Mr. Moore has been at work for at least two
years?

"Esther" and Mr. Hardy's "Tess."

Well, in the first place, I say, without hesitation, that _Esther
Waters_ is the most important novel published in England during these
two years. We have been suffering from the Amateur during that period,
and no doubt (though it seems hard) every nation has the Amateur it
deserves. To find a book to compare with _Esther Waters_ we must go
back to December, 1891, and to Mr. Hardy's _Tess of the
D'Urbervilles_. It happens that a certain similarity in the motives of
these two stories makes comparison easy. Each starts with the
seduction of a young girl; and each is mainly concerned with her
subsequent adventures. From the beginning the advantage of probability
is with the younger novelist. Mr. Moore's "William Latch" is a
thoroughly natural figure, and remains a natural figure to the end of
the book: an uneducated man and full of failings, but a man always,
and therefore to be forgiven by the reader only a little less readily
than Esther herself forgives him. Mr. Hardy's "Alec D'Urberville" is a
grotesque and violent lay figure, a wholly incredible cad. Mr. Hardy,
by killing Tess's child, takes away the one means by which his heroine
could have been led to return to D'Urberville without any loss of the
reader's sympathy. Mr. Moore allows Esther's child to live, and thus
has at hand the material for one of the most beautiful stories of
maternal love ever imagined by a writer. I dislike extravagance of
speech, and would run my pen through these words could I remember, in
any novel I have read, a more heroic story than this of Esther Waters,
a poor maid-of-all-work, without money, friends, or character,
fighting for her child against the world, and in the end dragging
victory out of the struggle. In spite of the AEschylean gloom in which
Mr. Hardy wraps the story of Tess, I contend that Esther's fight is,
from end to end, the more heroic.

Also Esther's story seems to me informed with a saner philosophy of
life. There is gloom in her story; and many of the circumstances are
sordid enough; but throughout I see the recognition that man and woman
can at least improve and dignify their lot in this world. Many people
believe _Tess_ to be