Wilkes Booth In Fiction

[Froiu th; New York KveninR Pont.] It is reported that Mr. W. D. Trammel, the authorof " Ca Ira," is engaged in writing a novel in rhich Wilkes Booth will be a prominent figure, and the newspaper that arnounces the {act adds that Mr. Trainmel "willweave a pleasaut romance into the life of J. Wilkeg Booth, culminating in the assassination of President Liucoln." If tho assertions here made are trae, Mr. Trammel is on the point of committing a blunder in art which will go far to contradict any pretensión he may have to rank as a dramatic writer of fiction. Wilkes Booth was a romantic young man, when he was young, and if ho hftd never assassinated Mr. Lincoln it would have been easy, no doubt, to find enough material in hiö life to furnish tho ground-, work of a romance. His habits were eccentric and well adapted to the uses of a romance writer. A good chapter might have been made out of a scène which tho writer of this article saw in the actor's room one moruing before the war. Invited to breakfast with Booth, the writer called at his room about 10 o'clock and found him lying in bed, yhooting at a picture on tho wall with a pair of dueling pistols which a young negro by the bedside was loading for him. Upon his guest's entranco he hastily arose and apologized for his forgetfulness, explaining that tho man whose picture he had been firing at was an enemy who had injured him, and ading: " I was taking a sort of weak-tea gatisfuction out of liis photograph." A man who could be guilty of snch a freak must have done many things to delight the heart of a romauce-writer who is out of a subject, and, as we have said, Wilkes Booth would have been' au admirable hero of romance but for his great crime; but that crime - notbecanse it was a crime, but because it is history - made him peculiarly unfit for the novelist's use. The assassination was a dramatic affair, certainly, and even melodramatic in somo of its circumstances, but it was an event of so much and so terrible moment that it became present matter of fact to every English-speaking person of this generation. lts facte were the current news of the day; its details were reported m all of the newspapers; it became fact, hard, prosaic fact, to everybody, and, until time shall have softèned its outlines, it caunot bo made romance, any moro than a photograph of the New York postoffice can be mado a work of art. To write of it in a novel will be to turn the novel into an old newspaper. But this terrible fact overshadows everything else in Wilkes Booth's life, and to mention his nam is to bring the assassination and only the assassination to every mind. Al), else that he did in life is rendered insignificant by comparison, and any romaneo founded upon bis life beforo the assassination must make as vague an impression as a half-remembered dream does. Wilkes Booth is, therefore, a wholly impracticable subject of romance. Something might be made out of his career, perhaps, in the way of a Bowery melodrama, or a wildly " sensationaF' drama of the lowest order, but any attempt to make legitiniatf use of the man, or his life, or his character, oranything pertaining tohim, must bo a disastrous failure.