BRET HART.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3158, 11 August 1881, Page 4

BRET HART.

The London Atlienteum, in reviewing Bret Harte's works says : " As regards tho qualities that have mado Mr Jlarto a popular favorito wherovcr the English language is spoken, they are too eminent and 100 peculiar to be passed over without notice, even in the most casual review of his work. Ho has been called 'a kind of puny and short-winded Dickens,' but tho description, as such descriptions aro apt to be, is not moro true than it is false. Mr Harto, who is far more original in his verso than in his prose, has imitated Dickens in many ways and with considerable success. He has a touch of Dickens in his stylo; ho has trained _ his imagination to walk with a Dickensian eye; and his conclusions are often such as Dickons might have produced, just as his sympathy and his manner of nursing and encouraging it are informed, if not wholly with ickens, then with Dickens chiefly. But Dickens is by no means his only model. Now and then we catch an echo of Thackeray ; and there aro others yet. Mr Harte, in fact, is a writer of exceptional skill who has invented no style for himself, but has it in him to adopt "at will the tricks of style of half-a-dozen greater and more original men. His range is limited and his creations are few. His taste by no means faultless; for ho 13 often •vulgar -where he intends to be vigorous and sprightly. His tact is not at all unerring; for he is not seldom obscure where he wishes

fco be suggestive, and exaggerated and false where it is his aim to be absolutely dramatic and right. And what is worst of all, he here and there gives out a note that rings audibly of insincerity. lie is given to postui'incr over his personages ; he is always playing showman to them, and beating the big drum at their exits and entrances ; lie is seldom or never conlenfc to let :!'i-:n shift for themselves any length of time. In Dickens there is a good deal of.this sort of thing ; but in Dickens I his is natural ; it was part of lib theory of art, and a normal outcome of his peculiar temper and of his not less peculiar morality. With Mr Harte ifc seems to be altogether another matter. Ifc is very often doubtful if he means what he says ; it is very often doubtful if the artist's passion he seams to feel is not a clever attempt of mimicry. Add to all this that he is incapable of combining a large and complete intrigue and of telling a long and intricate story, and that lie is full of mannerisms of method and of style, aud the list of his defects is tolerably complete. Eor his excellences, they are many and respectable. He has plenty of humor, both artificial and real, and plenty of true imaginative wife; lie has a sure eye for character of a certain sort, an excellent faculty of description, both didactic and dramatic, and a very masterly apprehension of effect ;he is capable of drama ; lie has imagination of tho right romantic quality ; he is an adept in certain sorts of passion, and he has abundant knowledge of certain classes oP motive. He is hardly ever faultless, for even when he is at his best and highest ifc is never clear that a touch of unveracity, a trace of the practical stage manager, a blunder in fact, a discord in sentiment, will not spoil all. But he now and then goes straight to the heart; for all that, and within his limits there is no living writer who can improve upon him.''