It has been said of Clarke, by one of his friends, that in his estimate of motives he was invariably cynical. Though the assertion goes too far, it seems to suggest the best explanation of his notable preference for delineating the dark side of human nature. He appeared ever to see vice more clearly, or at any rate to find it more interesting for the purposes of fiction, than the good or the neutral in character. But his cynicism--if it really formed a settled feature of his character--was not of the kind that implies any indifference to injustice or dishonesty. In this particular, both his fiction and essays have no uncertain tone. It is indeed a fault of Clarke that his bad characters are in most cases wholly bad. He makes Frere abandon a life of debauchery under the influence of a pure woman's affection, but the effect is afterwards destroyed by evidences that the attachment on the man's side is sensual and based on vanity. Moreover, Frere the prison tyrant and base denier of Dawes' heroism remains unexcused. Bob Calverley and Miss Ffrench, the only important representatives of the ordinary virtues in _Long Odds_, are little more than dim shadows contrasted with the clearly-marked personalities of half a dozen others in the story who are rogues, or the associates and instruments of rogues. 'The human anguish of every page' of _His Natural Life_ which Lord Rosebery found so compelling to his attention, need not have been so continuous and unqualified. The author seems purposely to have ignored the opportunity afforded by the story for the introduction of a character who, while asserting the claims of Rufus Dawes and the broader interests of humanity, need not have defeated the main motive of the plot. It was a decided error not to gratify in this way the combative instinct of the reader. The Rev. James North--'gentleman, scholar, and Christian priest'--might have been an active opponent of cruelty like Eden, the clergyman in _It's Never Too Late to Mend_, instead of being made a pitiable example of a confirmed and self-accusing drunkard. The strength of _His Natural Life_ lies not so much in the ingenuity and dramatic quality of its plot, as in the number of striking personalities among its leading characters. That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, is distinct only at intervals. It represents, for the most part, a hopeless sufferer passing through a series of punishments which become almost monotonous in their unvaried severity. But what could be more luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the clever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality of an invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? or that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humoured convict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths of criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of all else?