not actually rivalled Poe in the construction and development of any
single story, he has run him close even there, and has beaten him in the
sustained ingenuity of continuous invention; The story of 'The Speckled
Band' has a flavour almost as gruesome and terrible as Poe's 'Black
Cat,' and an unusual faculty for dramatic narrative is displayed
throughout the whole clever series. The Sherlock Holmes stories are
far, indeed, from being Dr. Doyle's best work, but it is to them that
he mainly owes his popularity. They took the imaginative side of the
general reader, and their popular properties are likely to keep them
before the public mind for a long while to come. To estimate Dr. Doyle's
position as a writer one has to meet him in 'The Refugees,' in 'The
White Company,' and in 'Rodney Stone.' In each of these there is evident
a sound and painstaking method of research, as well as a power of
dramatic invention; and in combination with these is a style of
unaffected manliness, simplicity, and strength, which is at once
satisfactory to the student and attractive to the mass of people who are
content to be pleased by such qualities without knowing or asking why.
The labour bestowed on 'The White Company' may very well be compared
to that expended by Charles Reade on 'The Cloister and the H earth.' It
covers a far less extent of ground than that monumental romance, and
it has not (and does not aim at) its universality of mood, but the same
desire of accuracy, the same order of scholarship, the same industry,
the same sense of scrupulous honour in matters of ascertainable fact,
are to be noted, and being noted, are worthy of unstinted admiration.
It is, perhaps, an open question as to whether Dr. Doyle, in his latest
book, has not run a little ahead of the time at which a story on such a
theme could be written with entire safety. 'Rodney Stone' is a story
of the prize-ring, and of the gambling, hard-drinking, and somewhat
brutalised days in which that institution flourished There are many of
us (I have made public confession half a score of times) who regret the
abolition of the ring, on grounds of public policy. We argue that man
is a fighting animal, and that in the days of the ring there was a
recognised code of rules which regulated his conduct at times when
the combative instinct was not to be restrained. We observe that our
commonalty now use the knife in quarrel, and we regret the death of that
rough principle of honour