Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided byGoogle Books (the University of Virginia)
Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: https://books.google.com/books?id=3LFEAAAAYAAJ 2. Chapters misnumbered going from III. to V. 3. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
One in a ThousandorThe Days of Henri Quatre
One _in a_ THOUSAND_By_G. P. R. JAMES
LONDON:GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND 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 Man at Arms" tells the story of Jarnac and Moncontour, and endswith the fatal day of St. Bartholomew. "Henry of Guise" takes up thehistory of the Religious Wars, with sympathy chiefly for theCatholics, and closes with the assassination of that great soldier;then "One in a Thousand" resumes the tale just before the murder ofHenry III. and the battle of Ivry. The two former are rather short andremarkably brisk in movement, this one is somewhat longer and muchmore elaborate. It has a complex plot, a large crowd of charactersfrom both factious, and has evidently been worked out with, perhaps,less vivacity but more pains. "Willingly" says the novelist, "we turnonce more from the dull, dry page of history ... to the moreentertaining and instructive accidents and adventures of theindividual characters which, with somewhat less skill than that of aPhilidore, we have been moving about on the little chess-board beforeus." There is an ironical undermeaning here; but so far as Jamessuggests that his flagrant romanticism, mysterious dwarfs, princessesdisguised as pages, and battles prefigured in the thunder-clouds aremore interesting than his retelling of historical events and carefulportraiture of historical people, we must venture to dissent from him.The fiction is simply his favourite story of a wealthy heiress heldout as a bait by the heads of rival factions to attract the allegianceof two powerful nobles. We feel not the slightest anxiety as to theultimate happiness of the fair lady and the blameless lover, or theappropriate fate of their enemies. On the other hand, the intimatepicture of the Leaguers at Paris, of the headquarters of Henry Quatre,and more particularly the speaking likeness of the Duke de Mayenne,the head of the Guises, are keenly interesting and real contributionsto the history of those times. Though the stage effects are well done,this shows far more talent. With all his fierce ambition, his lack ofscruple, and his froward temper, the Duke stands out as a man, and isinfinitely more alive than the purely romantic characters;furthermore, the family likeness between the various members of thatpowerful house, the Guises, is admirably brought out in this series ofromances, and the figure of Henry of Navarre is not less well done,though he is a personage that we meet with less rarely either inJames's novels or in those of other historical raconteurs.
ONE IN A THOUSAND;OR,THE DAYS OF HENRI QUATRE.