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Updated: June 11, 2025
Of the Bard-of-Avon it is noted that Cooper said: "Shakespeare is my traveling library. To a novel-writer he is invaluable. Publishers will have mottoes for every chapter; I never yet turned over Shakespeare without hitting upon just what I wanted I like to take them, whenever I can, from our own poets. It is a compliment they have a right to, and I am glad when I can pay it."
Thus a novel-writer or a dramatist, in creating a villain of romance and fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other halfway between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is accomplished that Guilt clenches its gripe upon the guilty heart and claims it for his own.
The hero of the Renegade is a Republican politician who turns Bonapartist, and who finally commits suicide something after the fashion of M. Prevost-Paradol, whose career, it is indeed said, suggested the book. But M. Claretie is seen at his best when he lays down the pen of a novel-writer and takes up that of a critic or that of a chronicler of passing events.
For with us this is esteemed, not only by most well-disposed readers, but by almost all our periodical critics great and small, a very essential point in a work of fiction, and it is therefore usual for a novel-writer, who wishes to secure their approbation, to indicate, either in the title or at the conclusion, the branch of morality to which his work is to be referred.
He may be a man of a grave profession, to whom the reputation of being a novel-writer might be prejudicial; or he may be a man of fashion, to whom writing of any kind might appear pedantic. He may be too young to assume the character of an author, or so old as to make it advisable to lay it aside.
To prove that, I must not jiggle with these heads and tails of Time, but I must begin earlier and follow down these eventful years as if I were a real novel-writer with consecutive chapters to set down. Springvale by the Neosho was a favorite point for early settlers. It nestled under the sheltered bluff on the west. There were never-failing springs in the rocky outcrop.
After first strongly picturing the reality of certain sinful impulses in a man's mind, which had never been carried out, "A scheme of guilt," he argues, taking up the other side, "till it be put in execution, greatly resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale.... Thus a novel-writer, or a dramatist, in creating the villain of romance, and fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other half-way between reality and fancy.
The novel-writer in constructing his dialogue must so steer between absolute accuracy of language which would give to his conversation an air of pedantry, and the slovenly inaccuracy of ordinary talkers, which if closely followed would offend by an appearance of grimace as to produce upon the ear of his readers a sense of reality. If he be quite real he will seem to attempt to be funny.
A novel-writer might, perhaps, have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I; my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoundrel factor's insolent, threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears.
His gifts are those of an historian or of a critic, not those of a novel-writer. When in his historical novels, such as Les Muscadins or Le Beau Solignac, he trenches on the firm ground of the Real, his true force displays itself.
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