Character
to the boy is a sealed book; for him, a pirate is a beard, a pair
of wide trousers and a liberal complement of pistols. The author,
for the sake of circumstantiation and because he was himself more
or less grown up, admitted character, within certain limits, into
his design; but only within certain limits. Had the same puppets
figured in a scheme of another sort, they had been drawn to very
different purpose; for in this elementary novel of adventure, the
characters need to be presented with but one class of qualities -
the warlike and formidable. So as they appear insidious in deceit
and fatal in the combat, they have served their end. Danger is the
matter with which this class of novel deals; fear, the passion with
which it idly trifles; and the characters are portrayed only so far
as they realise the sense of danger and provoke the sympathy of
fear. To add more traits, to be too clever, to start the hare of
moral or intellectual interest while we are running the fox of
material interest, is not to enrich but to stultify your tale. The
stupid reader will only be offended, and the clever reader lose the
scent.
The novel of character has this difference from all others: that it
requires no coherency of plot, and for this reason, as in the case
of GIL BLAS, it is sometimes called the novel of adventure.
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