No one in his day has done more to popularize the romanticism,now decadent, than Mr. Gilbert Parker; and he made way for it atits worst just because he was so much better than it was at itsworst, because he was a poet of undeniable quality, and becausehe could bring to its intellectual squalor the graces and thepowers which charm, though they could not avail to save it fromfinal contempt.He saves himself in his latest novel, because,though still so largely romanticistic, its prevalent effect ispsychologistic, which is the finer analogue of realistic, andwhich gave realism whatever was vital in it, as now it givesromanticism whatever will survive it.In "The Right of Way" Mr.
Parker is not in a world where mere determinism rules, wherethere is nothing but the happening of things, and where this oneor that one is important or unimportant according as things arehappening to him or not, but has in himself no claim upon thereader's attention.Once more the novel begins to rise to itshigher function, and to teach that men are somehow masters oftheir fate.His Charley Steele is, indeed, as unpromisingmaterial for the experiment, in certain ways, as could well bechosen.One of the few memorable things that Bulwer said, whosaid so many quotable things, was that pure intellectuality isthe devil, and on his plane Charley Steele comes near being pureintellectual. He apprehends all things from the mind, and doesthe effects even of goodness from the pride of mental strength.