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This touched in him a responsive chord. He was familiar with the period and the character. He was a friend of Shorthouse whose novel, John Inglesant was a widely-read book of those days. He had helped Shorthouse in his researches for the book, and knew well the story of Charles I., and his friends and foes.
Inglesant is a mere courtly mirror, the prey of his moods and his surroundings, in which beautiful tones of religious feeling are engagingly reflected.
To a company of enthusiastic Wordsworthians who were deploring their master's confession that he got drunk at Cambridge, I heard Mr. Shorthouse, the accomplished author of John Inglesant, soothingly remark that in all probability "Wordsworth's standard of intoxication was miserably low."
His conviction of the reality and nearness of the spiritual world gave him a singular ease and "access" in intercessory prayer, and his love of humanity responded to that ideal of public worship which is set forth in John Inglesant: "The English Church, as established by the law of England, offers the Supernatural to all who choose to come.
So far as I remember, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and John Inglesant came out somewhat about the same time, and there were those of us who read them both; but while we thought the Hansom Cab a very ingenious plot which helped us to forget the tedium of a railway journey, I do not know that there is a copy on our shelves.
It is much more easy to predict whether a novel will pay or not than to prophecy about a drama. He should not, if he has decently sound reasons for self-confidence, be disheartened by two or three refusals. One man's taste might be averse to "John Inglesant," another's might turn against Ouida, a third might fail to see the merit of "Vice Versa."
In English we have only John Inglesant and Robert Elsmere to compare it with; but such a comparison, though obviously imperfect, proves at once how easily The Saint surpasses them both, not merely by the greater significance of its central theme, but by its subtler psychology, its wider horizon, its more various contacts with life.
For my own part I am grateful to anyone who has the power to take me out of this world and make me feel something realise something beyond. The dash of the supernatural, for instance, in 'John Inglesant, 'Mr. Isaacs, 'The Wizard's Son, and 'The Little Pilgrim' has the effect of rest upon my mind, and gives me greater pleasure than the most perfect picture of real life ever presented.
John Inglesant himself could not have been less like that victorious rascal, Tom Jones. Colonel Jack, on the other hand, "used no great ceremony." But Colonel Jack, like the woman of Samaria in the Scotch minister's sermon, "had enjoyed a large and rich matrimonial experience," and went straight to the point, being married the very day of his successful wooing. Some one in a story of Mr.
Novelist, b. at Birmingham, where he was a chemical manufacturer. Originally a Quaker, he joined the Church of England. His first, and by far his best book, John Inglesant, appeared in 1881, and at once made him famous.
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