growth and culmination. Sometimes he lets us see the effort
this prodigious task imposes upon him, but in his later work more and
more rarely. The natural temptation is towards a resonant and insistent
eloquence, and he occasionally still forgets that he might, with ease to
himself, profitably leave the catastrophe he has created to make its
own impression. The artistic demand in the form of work to which his
instinct draws him is heavier than in any other. It is simply to be
white-hot in purpose and stone-cold in self-criticism at the same
instant of time.

Bar Meredith, who is quite _sui generis_, and Rudyard Kipling, whose
characteristics will be dealt with later on, Hall Caine has less of the
mark of his predecessors upon him than any of his contemporaries. His
work has grown out of himself. He has had a word to speak, and he has
spoken it So far he has increased in strength with every book, has grown
more master of his own conceptions and himself. In 'A Son of Hagar' he
forced his story upon his reader in defiance of possibility; but no such
blot on construction as the continued presence of a London cad in the
person of a Cumberland man in the latter's native village has been seen
in his more recent work. It is worth notice that even in this portion of
his story the narrator shows no remotest sign of a disposition to crane
at any of the numerous fences which lie before him. He takes them all
in his stride, and the reader goes with him, willy-nilly, protesting
perhaps, but helplessly whirled along in the author's grip. This faculty
of daring is sometimes an essential to the story-teller's art, and
Hall Caine has it in abundance, not merely in the occasional facing of
improbabilities, but in that much loftier and more admirable form where
it enables him to confront the cataclysmic emotions of the mind, and to
carry to a legitimate conclusion scenes of tremendous conception and
of no less tremendous difficulty. In the minds of vulgar and careless
readers the defects which are hardest to separate from this form of art
are so many added beauties, just as the over-emphasis of a tragic actor
is the very thing which best appeals to the gallery. But Hall Caine does
not address himself to the vulgar and the careless. He is eager to
leave his reputation to his peers and to posterity. With every year of
ripening power his capacity for self-restraint has grown. When it has
come of age in him, there will be nothing but fair and w