k had been his
first I should have found in it the charm which caught me years ago.
But it is in the nature of things that an individual writer like Clark
Russell should be his own most dangerous rival.

Clark Russell is captain on his own deck, whether he sail a coffin or a
princely Indiaman of the old time. Sir Walter Besant is lord of his
own East End, and of that innocent seraglio of delightful and eccentric
young ladies to which he has been adding for years past Sir Walter
Besant is chiefly remarkable as an example of what may be done by a
steadfast cheerfulness in style. His creed has always been that fiction
is a recreative art, and we have no better sample of a manly and
stout-hearted optimist than he. He is optimistic of set purpose,
and sometimes his cheerfulness costs him a struggle, for he is
tender-hearted and clear-sighted, and he is the Columbus of 'the great
joyless city' of the East. He has had a double aim--to keep his work
recreative and to make it useful. In one respect he has been curiously
happy, for he once dreamt aloud a beautiful dream, and has lived to
find it a reality. It was his own bright hope which built the People's
Palace, and a man might rest on that with ample satisfaction.

He has given us many well-studied types of character, but he excels in
the portraiture of the manly young man and the lovable young woman.
In this regard I find him at his apogee with Phyllis Fleming and Jack
Dunquerque, who are both frankly alive and charming. He is good, too, at
the portraiture of a humbug, and finds a humorous delight in him,
very much as Dickens did. There is more than a touch of Dickens in
his method, and in his way of seeing people, and, most of all, in the
warm-hearted cheer he keeps.

It is outside the purpose of this series to dwell on anything but
the literary value of the works of the people dealt with; but little
apology, after all, is needed for a side-glance at the work which Sir
Walter Besant has done for men of letters. He has worked hard at the
vexed and difficult question of copyright; he has founded an Authors'
Club and an authors' newspaper; and he has devoted with marked
unselfishness much valuable time and effort to the general well-being
of the craft. He has stood out stoutly for the State recognition of
authorship, and in his own person he has received it. _Esprit de corps_
is a capital thing in its way. Whether it is well to have too much of
it in a body of men who hold