For My Great Folly
$2.75
BY PUTNAM
THE background of this tale concerns the one-man war in the days of King James, waged in the Mediterranean by John Ward, “the pirate,” against the power of Spain. The Dons claimed that the trade of that sea belonged to them — and to the Venetians; and the cowardly King of England agreed. Not so John Ward and the doughty captains he gathered to him. Among his followers was Roger Blease, a poor young gentleman who was won over by the flamboyant adventurer and embarked on a career of battle and murder. The book is a long, long story of adventure. There is so much adventure, such a variety of hazard — from London’s Alsatia to the scorching villainy of Tunis — that one feels that here is a Henty book for adults. The early impression fades gradually as the story develops, but never is there any sense of reality in the thing. The author has steeped himself in the period but the result is not quite happy.
He is so charmed by the discovery of the thieves’ slang of that day that he makes most of his characters speak like gangsters and hardly ever in the genuine prose and phrase of the time. We meet Francis Bacon and the Queen and all sorts of worthies, and they are stage characters. In spite of its defects, the book is highly readable — another victory for what Stevenson called " the brute, Incident.” R. E. D.