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HISTORICAL NOVELS
Are They Losing Favour?
Is the "historical novel" passing out
of fashion? The Nation says that it
sees in the death of Stanley Weyman
"the end of a pleasant and generous
chapter in English fiction and the dis
appearance of. a set of healthy novel-'
ists who entertained and respected
and refreshed the taste of the public."
They will presently, with luck, fild
a historian who will not be unroward
ed for his inquiry into the fame not
only of Weyman, with his fictions in
something like Dumas' field, but of
Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins in Restorn
tion masters anld Puritanialn escapes
and entanglements; of Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle in the "Rodney Stone,"
"Brigadier Gerard," or "White Com
pany" mood; of "Q," with his cavaliers,
sea captains and molnarclhs.
These and other elegant writers
and ingenious literary strategists cer
tainly gave us a library of historical
fiction on which the air blows free
and fine with the sound of the trunm
pets of old fortune and chivalry. Ox
ford played a conspicuous part in the.
shaping of this school of worthies.
Weylnan was reading history at Christ
Church for a few years before "An
thony Hope" arrivedl at Balliol, a clas
sical scholar; "Q"- was of the .same
period and university.
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