Wise Men and a Fool

by Coulson Kernahan

Overview

This collection of Essays on some literary men and women of our time is extremely agreeable reading for all to whom the subjects thereof are dear. We must deprecate Mr. Kernahan's modesty in assigning to himself the place he does in the title- the origin of which is a saying of Heine, " Wise men think out new thoughts, and fools proclaim them." But, as the author explains in his prefatory apology, he is seeking a title that shall be remembered, and such words as Studies, Essays, Literature, and Criticism are used to exhaustion. His papers -all of which in some form or another have before appeared -are of rather unequal merit. The first, upon Robert Louis Stevenson, adds little that the true lover of Stevenson will find illuminating.

Upon the subject of the second paper, Dr. George MacDonald - "A Child of the Kingdom," as Mr. Kernahan calls him - he utters some sound and useful criticism. Few people, perhaps, now-a-days, read MacDonald's novels, but they have exercised a profound influence in their time as books of pure and poetical religious teaching. "Strictly speaking" says Mr. Kernahan, "he is not a novelist at all. That he has written such successful novels as, for instance that noble book Robert Falconer, proves only his versatility as a man of letters. He can do anything with the point of a pen except keep to the point of a story. Take the plot out of this or that novel of the day, and what is left is scarce worth remembering. Do the same with one of Dr. MacDonald's novels, and, by most of us, the plot will not be greatly missed. He is primarily a poet, a seer, and a preacher; and if he have elected to be a fiction maker for that House of Entertainment over which Mr. Mudie presides, be sure that he will somehow contrive to smuggle in a sermon between the leaves."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663513007
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	06/04/2020
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Coulson Kernahan (1 August 1858 – 17 February 1943) was an English novelist. Critics often said that one of the reasons Kernahan's books were successful was due to his interesting, suspenseful titles such as A Dead Man's Diary or The Face Beyond the Door (1904), which often intrigued readers; their subsequent interest in these sensational works increased Kernahan's appeal as an author] According to Nash's Pall Mall Magazine, reviewing the highly successful God and the Ant (1895), "Mr. Kernahan is at his best in such imaginative exposition of his thoughts on the deep things of life and death...It is a rather bold allegory of the mystery of evil, with God – not his creatures – arraigned at the Judgement Day, and an attempted solution in the touching conception of a suffering Christ, whose agony did not cease with the Crucifixion, but was repeated in every human sorrow.