genius were not of sufficient importance to attract attention from
folk with clear memories, and I believe that he escaped detection in a
miraculous way. His untitled country gentleman became a baronet, the
injured heroine was similarly moved up on the social scale, and the
noble effort came forth with a fresh name, while the knowing old
impostor chuckled in his garret and pouched his pittance. I believe
the funny soul has passed away; but really there are many very
pretentious persons who do little more than vary his methods
unconsciously. Poor James Grant delighted many a schoolboy, and
perhaps his best work was never quite so much appreciated as it ought
to have been. "The Black Dragoons," "The Queen's Own," and "The
Romance of War" all contained good work, and many gallant lads
delighted their hearts with them; I know that one youth at least
learned "The Black Dragoons" by heart, and amused the people in a
lonely farm-house by reciting whole chapters on winter nights, and I
have some reason to believe that the book gave the boy a taste for
literature which ended in his becoming a novelist. But, as Grant went
on with machine-like regularity, how curiously similar to each other
his books became! Narvaez Cifuentes, in "The Romance of War," is the
type of all the villains; the young dragoons were all alike; the
wooden heroines might have been chopped out by a literary carpenter
from one model; the charges, the escapes, the perils of the hero never
varied very much from volume to volume; and the fact was obvious that
the brain had ceased to develop any strikingly original ideas and only
the busy hand worked on. A very sarcastic personage once observed that
"it is better for literary men to read a little occasionally." To
outsiders the advice may seem like a piece of grotesque fun; but those
who know much of literary work are well aware that a writer may very
easily become possessed by a sick disgust of books which never leaves
him. He will look at volumes of extracts, he will skim poetry, he will