Darnley; or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold
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Darnleyor,The Field of the Cloth of Gold, Vol. 6
Darnley.
_By_
G. P. R. JAMES
LONDONGEORGE ROUTLEDGEAND SONS LIMITEDMDCCCCIII.
_The Introduction is written by_ LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A.: _the Title-pageis designed by_ IVOR I. J. SYMES.
INTRODUCTION.
George Payne Rainsford James, Historiographer Royal to King WilliamIV., was born in London in the first year of the nineteenth century,and died at Venice in 1860. His comparatively short life wasexceptionally full and active. He was historian, politician andtraveller, the reputed author of upwards of a hundred novels, thecompiler and editor of nearly half as many volumes of letters,memoirs, and biographies, a poet and a pamphleteer, and, during thelast ten years of his life, British Consul successively inMassachusetts, Norfolk (Virginia), and Venice. He was on terms offriendship with most of the eminent men of his day. Scott, on whosestyle he founded his own, encouraged him to persevere in his career asa novelist; Washington Irving admired him, and Walter Savage Landorcomposed an epitaph to his memory. He achieved the distinction ofbeing twice burlesqued by Thackeray, and two columns are devoted to anaccount of him in the new "Dictionary of National Biography." Eachgeneration follows its own gods, and G. P. R. James was, perhaps, tooprolific an author to maintain the popularity which made him "in someways the most successful novelist of his time." But his work bearsselection and revival. It possesses the qualities of seriousness andinterest; his best historical novels are faithful in setting and freein movement. His narrative is clear, his history conscientious, andhis plots are well-conceived. English learning and literature areenriched by the work of this writer, who made vivid every epoch in theworld's history by the charm of his romance.
The parodists of G. P. R. James have been quick to remark the samenessof his openings. He has established a kind of 'James-gambit' inhistorical fiction, and the present romance is no exception to therule. Once more the irrepressible horseman is riding along theinevitable road, and once more the first chapter is devoted to acareful description of the traveller's accoutrements--material andmoral. It is not inappropriately, therefore, that James selected ashis motto for this chapter Dryden's conventional lines,
"In this King Arthur's reign, A lusty knight was pricking o'er the plain."
Donne, Cowley, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Shakespeare, these are the authorsto whom James has chiefly gone for his poetical headings to thechapters of this novel. The feature is a rare one in his works, norcan it truthfully be said that the literary flavour thus imparted ismaintained by the text of the book. There is more familiarity, morebanality, in its style than is common in James's writings. It is odd,for instance, to read the first paragraph of Chapter XVII.--"Oh, theman in the moon! the man in the moon! What a prodigious sackfulof good resolutions you must have, all broken through the middle...."--immediately after a solemn quotation from _Macbeth_; and a yetmore flagrant example occurs at the beginning of Chapter XXXIX., wherea couplet from Shakespeare is again used to usher in the followingtriumph of bathos: "And where was Osborne Darnley all this while? Waita little, dearly-beloved, and you shall hear more." It should be addedthat the first sentence is not an intentional pentameter. But, howeverseverely the shortcomings of style may be criticised in a writer who'broke the record' for rapidity of production, James hardly ever failsto tell a good story, with plenty of adventure and accuracy oflearning. "Darnley" does not fall behind the rest in these respects.The date is fixed in the first line, as well as in the sub-title, andthe gorgeous festivities of Midsummer, 1520, as well as the characterof King Henry VIII., are admirably conceived and described. Theoriginal picture of the scene in the Field near Calais, which ispreserved at Hampton Court, should be visited by readers of thisvolume. Those curious in bibliography, by the way, will discover onpage 372 a notable instance of want of skill in the abridgment of"Darnley" by James or his editors.
DARNLEY.