When the gypsies are found, they are found in the New Forest; and any one who reads this yarn immediately after _Sunny Australia_, will see that these distant scenes are correctly described. IV It was in the year 1906, and in the novel _Richard Baldock_, that he revealed his power. This book, which will make its first American appearance in the autumn of 1918, contains a story so absorbing that it is only in the retrospect that one realizes the vitality of its characters and the delicacy of its art. There are no heroes and no villains. Every person has the taint that we all inherited from Adam, and every person has some reflection of the grace of God. There is no one who does not say something foolish or ill-considered; and there is no one who does not say something wise. In other words there are no types, like "heavies," "juveniles," and "ingenues." As is the case in nearly all the novels by its author, we are constantly revising our opinions of the characters; and we revise them, not because the characters are untrue, but because we learn to know them better. Human nature is consistent only in its inconsistency. It is forever fluid and dynamic; and although no individual has ever understood another, and least of all himself, increasing knowledge helps to make us certain of our uncertainty. No man will play the part his friends have written for him. One reason why Shakespeare was a first-rate and Jonson a second-rate dramatist is because Jonson created humours and Shakespeare created individuals. Among all Shakespeare's personages, Hamlet is the most interesting to readers and the most baffling to commentators; because the latter try to adjust him to a theory of madness, weak will, or what not. Is not the fact that he has never been understood by any one and never will be, the strongest proof of his reality? Some think he lacked backbone; others insist he was all backbone; some think he was mad; others that he only pretended to be mad; while America's greatest Shakespearean scholar said he was neither mad nor pretended to be. A young gentleman of Hamlet's copious temperament, placed as he was amid natural and supernatural forces, might easily at times seem to illustrate any one of the above appraisals. Indeed I suppose the sanest and most resolute among us seem at times to lack either resolution or sanity or both. The more complex a character, the less dependable he is. And everybody has some complexity. Even quiet Horatio, beloved of Hamlet for his steady self-control, tried to commit suicide.