Growth of the Novel

CRITICISM has not kept pace with the novel in its more recent manifestations. A remarkable indolence prevails, not only with the greater number of novelreaders, but also on the part of too many among those industrious journalists under whose inspection works of this class fall, in regard to the inquiry by what principles the variously modified forms of the novel now extant are to be judged, and relegated each to its proper place. A large proportion of the criticisms upon new novels contain only vague and fragmentary allusions to novelty of incident, verisimilitude of the picture, theories of life involved in the story, or the freshness and “ piquancy ” — terms which these jaded reviewers apparently hold to be synonymous — of the whole, without an attempt to draw comprehensive conclusions; in short, these criticisms present whatever issues from the chance critic’s chance taste, rather than a ray thrown out from the strong, central light of systematic meditation. The impression exists, too, that anybody, without having subjected himself to artistic discipline, can write a novel. We see men turning aside from the course of regular and professed activities, to spin some slight web of fiction that shall attract a few admirers, and something of that spendthrift praise which it apparently becomes every day easier to obtain. Even the most unlikely persons are subject, at any moment, to infection with the prevalent disorder, and the facility with which mediocre and inferior work, in this branch of literature, attains to an exaggerated prominence, makes it necessary that skilled judgment should be more generally applied in such matters than at present; that a thoughtful endeavor should be made to penetrate the significance of the novel, and to determine some of the principles by which its further progress should be guided.

The exigencies of an epoch cause poetical forms to undergo certain modifications; and by watching the influence of these exigencies, we shall discover the relative importance of particular forms at different periods, determining also the rate and direction of their progress. The novel deals perforce most prominently with the surface of life, the appearances of things; yet it has rendered no small service if it succeed in rescuing from nothingness these ephemeral appearances, the beautiful or amusing trivialities through which we dailytake our way. Moreover, the great ideas and great deeds of this world come upon us unawares, whether it be to-day or to-morrow; and for their sake also the processes of each unfolding day are worth observing. But we do not commonly remember, in taking up our volumes of modern every-day romance or comedy, that the hasty stitches at the back are in reality attached to a thread leading into a very remote past, and furnishing a clew to the real, historically accretive nature of these volumes. We forget that the novel comes to us with the marks of a long and laborious culture upon it.

Perhaps the earliest remaining productions which bear any distinguishable likeness to the more complex and more highly inflected novels of our own time are the Greek romances of Heliodorus and his followers, in the opening centuries of the Christian era. The Theagenes and Chariclea may, I suppose, be regarded as the immediate progenitor of that long line of fiction which has held enduring sway over the human mind from the time of Heliodorus’s writing up to the present. But this work is on a very low plane. It is utterly deficient in true dramatic method, and not so much a breathing and speaking image of life, as a tiresome piece of carpentry. For us, it is like an obsolete plaything, and furnishes hardly more delight than may be had in the taking apart of one of those Japanese toys, made to resemble an egg, which is found to consist of a surprising number of thin wooden tissues, revealing, when stripped off, a tiny kernel at the centre. In like manner, the small seed of circumstance from which the Thessalian romancer’s story springs is hidden away under numerous thin shells of implicate adventure, each very similar to all the rest; and the entertainment consists in the leisurely removal of these husks. The whole interest rests upon surprise, and surprise of the cheapest kind. “What have been your adventures?” is the first question one character puts to another, on meeting, all the way through. It is not necessary to pass in review consecutively the gradual advances made in the art of fiction, from the time of this blunt-edged beginning — if, indeed, we may assume that fiction can be traced to a beginning at all—up to that of the brilliant achievements of Fielding and Sir Walter Scott. We have only to look so far into them, as to recognize that the tendency of those advances was distinctly toward the increase of a dramatic spirit and dramatic methods in novel-writing.

The Renaissance breathed a fresh life into the dry works of the Greek romancers, and they put forth new and sprightlier shoots. Boccaccio and Bandello engaged in the composition of short tales so new to the time that they were called simply novels ; and these contained the germ of that intricate organism which we now recognize under the same generic name. But in the hands of Boccaccio and his school, the novel did not get beyond the first pulpy and amorphous stage of its growth. Boccaccio cared little, or not at all, for that subtle differentiation of human character which constitutes the underlying science of our modern novel-art. He was content with a witty anecdote, recounted in a polished style, within the limits of a few folds of paper. Nevertheless, his legacy was an invaluable one. The heirs of his invention laid out their riches to rare advantage. The Elizabethan dramatists caught these stories, and expanded them to a fuller stature of imaginative existence, Shakespeare, above all, rounding the contour, and completing the figures with infinite variety of proportioned power, such as made his plays adequate to the representation of life both entire and particular. In the mean time, Rabelais and Cervantes had introduced a new element into fiction, namely, that of satire and artistically managed symbolism. Of the two, Cervantes exercised the most influence upon the subsequent development of the novel, for he understood the genuine and simple delineation of individual character. In this, though writing a century earlier than Le Sage, he far outstripped the author of Gil Blas. Heading the reaction against those exaggerated romances of chivalry, which had sprung from the metrical romances of the twelfth century, he made a greater advance in Don Quijote than he himself was aware of, perhaps. That he hardly estimated its bearing upon the subsequent history of fiction; regarded it simply as an amusing satire on the abuse of romance-reading, — a romance ridiculing romances, — we are disposed to conclude, from his composing immediately afterward a serious romance modeled on that of Heliodorus. He had previously written a pastoral romance, Galatea, and his Exemplary Novels. As yet, the term novel was restricted to short stories which might be introduced episodically in the course of a ponderous romance, like the novel of The Curious Impertinent, in Don Quijote. It was not surprising that the extent of Cervantes’s advances in the direction of the modern novel should not be at once appreciated, either by his public or himself. But we may safely assign to him a considerable influence in the century which elapsed before the production of Gil Blas.

Wearied with preposterous fables and languid pastorals, a series of reactionary writers took the held, in the seventeenth century, and foremost among them was Le Sage, with his epic of luck and loose living, Gil Blas, — an attempted panorama of life, in which, however, the persons were rather typical than individual, and again figurative, if one may so describe it, rather than typical. A second reaction had come, but this time there was no Cervantes to take the lead. In England, however, the use to which the masters of the Elizabethan stage had put the Italian novels of the fourteenth century, had insured that accelerated dramatic tendency of the novel which here demands our attention. In the century immediately ensuing upon that in which Shakespeare died, Fielding, more than any other before him, threw light upon the course which fiction was thereafter to pursue. Beginning, before his majority, as a writer of plays, he spent a good deal of time in getting out hasty adaptations from the French, as well as numerous comedies of his own; but though these comedies are still extant, they are hardly less entirely forgotten than the poles and canvas of the flimsy booth itself in Smithfield, wherein they first strutted before the world, in the days of Bartholomew Fair. But it is not unreasonable to suppose, that his practice in this kind of writing had its effect upon the romances which at a later period he made the basis of his only real celebrity. In the production of these he declared himself, and with some reason, to be founding “a new province of writ mg.” For, although he in fact only filled out and enlivened a form which had been some hundreds of years constructing for him, the result was something substantially new. Richardson had begun to write novels, chiefly for the sake of his epistolary style. A story indicated in letters always contains something of dramatic management; but, if it be at all extended, it involves more of repetition and improbability. Richardson’s people seem first of all to be concerned that their various troubles and experiences, with the accompanying sentiments, should be transferred in full to note-paper, so as fo make up a good, readable book, afterward. And previously to Richardson’s writing, the stage had usurped the attention of genius; the novels of Lodge and Greene were not progressive. But

when the theatre had lost its masters, and suffered a long decline, Fielding, as if conscious that a lively genius could appear to advantage only in some new guise, threw himself into the novel—or, as he called it, the romance — with all the fervor of his really gifted mind. The artistic impulse which sustained him, as it found expression in his last and perhaps most finished work, Amelia, was this: “ To observe minutely the several incidents which tend to the catastrophe or completion of the whole, and the minute causes whence these incidents are produced.” Here we have the root of dramatic development; and it was the application of this method that brought the novel into a familiar and affectionate relation to life, which no form of imaginative writing had up to that time enjoyed. Looking at his persons in this way, it was necessary that Fielding should pay the closest attention to their utterances and actions, from first to last, and calculate with some nicety the interaction of individuals one upon another. Conversation, instead of being thrown in here and there, as heretofore, simply to delay bringing to a close some little train of incident, or with a view to making the story real enough to be read with comfort, became in his hands a just expression of every participator in it, and a light reflected upon the speakers, as well as a subtle cause of subsequent conduct, in a manner approaching that of its operation in real life. But, although Fielding was dramatic, in so far as conversation and incident led the story on from point to point with a certain degree of system, combined with spontaneity, he did not carry the dramatic movement far enough. When all was over, his tale would remain but a rambling, aimless concatenation, terminating in nothing but an end of the adventures. His great power lay in the observation of manners and natures; but he was content to offer the results of this observation in a crude, digressive form, somewhat lacking — if it may be said—in principle. He was fond of whipping in and out among his characters, in person, and did so with a sufficiently cheery and pleasant defiance of all criticism; but the practice injured his art, nevertheless. In a word, lie seems to have written as much for his own amusement as for that of his reader; and although he sedulously endeavored to identify these two interests, he did not hesitate, when he felt like discharging a little dissertation on love, or classical learning, or what not, to do this at any cost, either of artistic propriety or the reader’s patience. And, worst of all, he frequently dissected his dramatis personæ in full view of the audience, giving an epitome of their characters off-hand, or chatting garrulously about them, when the mood took him. These shortcomings withheld from him the possibility of grouping his keen observations firmly about some centre of steady and assimilative thought. With Fielding, nothing crystallized, but all was put together in a somewhat hastily gathered bundle; and the parts have a semi-detached relation. He hardly dreamed of that suggestive and deeply significant order of novel which our own day has seen almost perfected in the hands of G-eorge Eliot. And yet, what a brilliant retinue has Fielding had! Scott, Dickens, Thackeray — George Eliot herself — and many more besides, have followed in the path which he opened. He had an alert and energetic mind, and heartily and impartially enjoyed life, wherever and whatever it might be found; and this capacity for a healthy participation in the business of the people who surround him remains now, as it then was, an indispensable qualification in the novelist. But the best allegiance to Fielding must move men to further explorations in that province which he, in his day, so despotically governed. His greatest successors in empire have done this; but in what degrees, it will be interesting to consider. If, too, we find their efforts crowned by a constant though gradual progress, we shall perhaps think the conclusion justified, that new avenues to new goals of art remain yet to be adventured on.

It was only a dozen years after Fielding had ceased to write, that The Vicar of Wakefield suddenly took its place among those calm perpetuities which from time to time stand forth out of the dissolving cloud of ephemeral fiction. Nothing more exquisite of its kind than this novel of Goldsmith’s has ever been given to us. The objective rendering of good Doctor Primrose is perfect. Goldsmith seems here to have reached an eminence in novel-art hitherto attained by no one, and to which few have since aspired. Only Thackeray’s Henry Esmond presents itself as worthy of comparison with it, and even this perhaps falls short, in point of simple humor and native sweetness. But the sober richness with which Goldsmith’s chief personage is elaborated is not of the showy style calculated to make headway with the many. And it is true that the range of a novel conceived as this is must be somewhat limited; variety of characterization being not so much the aim, as a complete study and full objective presentation of the hero. Nevertheless it is certain that, in this book, Goldsmith secured some of the purest dramatic results attainable through the novel ; and that it will accordingly always remain a source of the most wholesome inspiration.

It was reserved for Scott to enlarge the mechanical apparatus, and extend the sympathies of the novel, beyond all precedent. The brilliancy of his advent into the field of fiction was in great measure due to his wider appreciation of character, as compared with that of the writers who had gone before. He treated all sorts of persons with the same genuine enjoyment of personality, whatever it might be; and if his heroes were sometimes rather colorless, and his women molded too exclusively by generalized conceptions of femininity, he still succeeded in showing that human nature remains fundamentally the same, beneath all the shifting and superimposed conditions of history, and demonstrated the applicability of the novel to life in past periods. As for mechanism, he contrived many clever little devices for moving stories on to an end; he dispensed with those long, introduced narratives which Heliodorus employed, and which Fielding relied upon too willingly —sometimes carrying them on from one chapter to another by means of a pumping question from the listener, not inappropriately followed by a gush of tears from the narrator. In his conversations, Scott sometimes seems, by his nice discriminations, to give the slightest shades of meaning, and the very accent of the voice; though he is as often melodramatic and unreal. But, with all his merits, and overlooking his rather musty antiquarian devotions to costume, Scott remains much too conscious, it strikes me, in his characterization. Frequently, having effected some ingenious stroke of delineation, he is so well pleased that he instantly repeats it in more diffuse terms. This at once dulls the edge of his wit, and makes us aware of an obtrusive presence among the fictitious personages. The author cannot restrain himself from jovial participation in his reader’s amusement; he must ever peep out from behind the sidescenes, to exchange a sly Caledonian wink with us. To avoid this subtle error, a writer should seek always to lose himself more and more, in giving life to his imaginary persons. Dramatic effect of the highest and most sterling quality cannot be obtained without a resolute act of self-renunciation on the part of the author. And iu proportion as the novelist intervenes, visibly, between the reader and the characters of his story, he detracts from the realness of the latter. For example, it is a prominent defect in Dickens that he is antic in the extreme. He appears to have been conscious of the necessity which existed for curbing himself, as in one of his letters he alludes to the “ preposterous sense of the ridiculous” which he was obliged to contend with, in order that he should not write extravagantly.

Not less injurious, in its way, to dramatic perfection is the system of minute and deliberate analysis pursued by George Eliot. It makes us look to her books rather for instances of her re-

markable acumen, and the terse statement of her perceptions, than for a sympathetic rendition of human nature that shall charm and soothe us, at the same time that it instructs or educates. Her writing does not soothe, because she keeps so constantly before us the stern effort she is making, not to swerve from strict analysis. The authoress presides too watchfully over the progress of our acquaintance with the imaginary beings to whom she has introduced us; and we should be more at ease, if she would omit some of the more wordy of her examinations into their mental status at each new turn of the story. There are instances of fine dramatic handling in her books, from which we may cite those culminating scenes between Stephen Guest and Maggie Tulliver, in The Mill on the Floss. But these superior passages only throw forward upon our notice the too frequent consciousness and restraint which disturb her work. The novelist, it is true, must observe a certain economy, holding back the more telling dramatic effects for particular passages. But the difference should be in the degree, rather than in the quality, of dramatic force; a kind of difference well exemplified in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. George Eliot’s open analysis, too, has a tendency to lead her insensibly into partiality, a thing which she is by this very means strenuously trying to avoid. That tendency she has almost wholly overcome in Middlemarch, which is distinguished for a fine impartiality. But it is in this same crowning work that we find, perhaps more strongly exemplified than in any other of her books, the final defect of her system. In a book of this kind all that can be said about the characters is said; but, after all, the result is not so good as if something had been withheld, for our imaginations to reach after. Despite the vigorous bloom, the insistent life of Middlemarch, do we not feel that there is an overwrought completion about it? The persons of the story are elaborated almost to exhaustion; there appears to be a lack of proportion in the prominence so fully accorded to each individual in his or her turn, for minor characters are dwelt upon too much in detail; and there is little or no mystery of distance about any of the figures, at any time. We have struck bottom, with these people, beyond hope of recalling that thought of illimitably profound humanity which indicates the unknown quantity in character, and which gives Shakespeare’s personages their lasting title to our love or consideration. The secret of dramatic effect is simply this, that in real life ultimate truth seldom finds a pure utterance. In drama, therefore, we have a situation presented as nearly as possible (subject to æsthetic laws) in the way in which it would present itself in the fact; the involved truths of the whole proceeding being illustrated by the partial expressions of each individual, on his own behalf or in estimating his fellows; so that the final, lleeting essence of the matter lies within the. scope of inference only. And in proportion as dramatic skill is successful, it stimulates in us the disposition and ability to make such inference. But George Eliot would cut us off from this last spiritual, intangible result, by reducing everything to absolute statement, and endeavoring to fix the final issues in penetrating and permanent phrases. I would not underrate the magnificent obligations which George Eliot has laid upon the race; my admiration of her brave and noble genius is in no way lessened by the opinion that her method restricts the range and power of the novel unnecessarily. As an effort of clear intellectual penetration into life, we could hardly demand anything better than Middlemarch. But it is still too much an effort, and not enough an accomplished insight; it remains, as the author has called it, a study, rather than a finished dramatic representation.

Turning from George Eliot to Dickens again, we observe that his faults of undue personal prominence range themselves on a far lower intellectual plane. He is not troubled by analysis, because he hardly enters upon that function, even in the deliberations which have preceded his writing; if we are to judge

from the character of that writing, and from what has been made public as to his state of mind during composition, and the confidences which lie imparted in the mid-fervor of creation. But, on the other hand, he is not truly dramatic. Indeed, this follows from his want of analysis. Without having analyzed, he could have nothing to unfold by the dramatic method. His imagination was strong in the grotesque, but it never seems to have taken the direction of clearly outlined truth of character. His characters may be true to nature, but for all that he does not imagine them for the sake of truth, but for the sake of their grotesque or other effect. And there is a wide difference between truth and effect. That it is effect he aims for is proved by the conclusions of his books, which are never profound or sublime, but unimportant and commonplace. His results are not results in a satisfactory sense, because they consist merely in a settlement and pensioning for life of the characters, as it were; everything is “ wound up,” but we are left at the end without any vital impulse from that winding. He does not carry our eyes above the level of a very superficial justice. Ah, it was his wit that charmed us, and not the human nature with which he dealt! This human nature was to him only a sort of indispensable stage-property; and he was the actor whom it served to set off. Dickens possessed, in addition to his nimble fancy (which was often exquisitely graceful), a surprisingly rapid and multifarious observation; but he contented himself with only a flying shot at the truth. He had a fertile genius, and perhaps he felt that he could afford to take at a discount the riches with which nature had supplied him; for the rapidity of his labors necessitated constant advances; but he lost unspeakably by this system. He was confused and carried away by the idiosyncrasies which took his fancy, and so lost sight of the true artistic aim; seldom, if ever, taking the pains to abstract himself from himself, and enter again into the life of others, so that he might faithfully reproduce it,—the good and the bad alike, —leaving us to draw our conclusions somewhere near the truth. In Martin Chuzzlewit, he complained that the American people would never tolerate a satirist. But the essence of good satire lies in the strictest and most sensitive adherence to truth. Irony should be so mingled with an unprejudiced veracity of representation, as to make the reader half uncertain whether that which he is reading be a mere unwitting record of laughable fact, or a piece of conscious, though guarded, ridicule. Exaggeration is by no means the chief nor the most powerful element of satire. If we ridicule a man by calling him worse than he is, we may wound and anger him, but we shall not cut so to the quick, as if we pierce with our ridicule some really vulnerable point in his constitution. But Dickens seems to have trusted wholly to first impressions and strong feelings. There is a curious, and, if true, a sad story extant, as to the unmerited injury which his Nicholas Nickleby inflicted upon an innocent Yorkshire schoolmaster. But, wholly apart from any consideration of practical injustice of this kind, is it not alarming, to say the least, that the eminent novelist should take sides, as he does, with the characters in his stories? It is pitiable to see the cases in which those creature of his imagination stand, who have had the misfortune to fall under his displeasure. He has them at his mercy, and he at once abandons them, body and soul; will not even let them be funny; and leaves them standing in the field, as Ralph Nickleby, or Jonas Chuzzlewit, or Merdle, or Chadband, or Heep, mere grinning or frowning or insanely smiling scarecrows, who are to be pelted and maligned on every convenient occasion. This kind of writing merely strengthens prejudice; and however well founded the prejudice may be which it is intended to confirm, it does not aid people in ascertaining subtle truths, or in attaining anything like serenity or justness of view. It is very different from the witty or gentle hitting off of foibles, and the quiet, sympathetic, but inflexibly just penetration of sin and weakness, which always distinguish the genuine, nature-loving truth-seeker and teacher. Taine has rightly defined Dickens as a lyrical-minded genius. Lyrically, we describe people and things by a record of the impressions they leave upon us personally; dramatically, we endeavor to render them both as they exist to their own appreciation and that of others, — using our own impressions, of course, but trying also to imagine the impressions of other observers. Dickens, not being hampered by these endeavors, has no hesitation in labeling his characters “good” or “bad” at the outset. But he is then forced to fall back upon melodramatic incident, which gradually, as his book advances, usurps our attention,—the amusing or grotesque peculiarities of the persons soon losing their novelty, — and carries us to the close in a blinding whirl of excitement; so that we shall not dwell upon the frequently glaring crudity of the work and its deficiency in real character-study. The most bepraised feature of Dickens’s genius, and that behind which its artistic short-comings are most frequently sheltered, is but a pyrotechnic sort of humanitarianism, wanting as it does the element of a painstaking and long-suffering charity. If we discuss Dickens’s spirit, we must confess him to be altogether too knowing. He goes about picking up characters as curiosities; then holding them up, he makes fun of them, and expects us to laugh in company with him. This does well enough, in a burlesque like Pickwick; but as an abiding principle in art it is heartless, and can lead to no real elevation in either writer or reader. If the novel is to advance, we must look for something finer and more earnest than this.

Thackeray, whose, books form a sort of irreproachable gossip about life (except for the superfluous sneer), is far more dramatic, in the truest sense, than Dickens. He brings before us a variety of people nearly as great as that which Dickens handles, and all of them more profoundly individual than the persons of the latter, though less strikingly marked on the surface. And his crowds of individuals illustrate and explain each other remarkably. Thackeray has been called by a recent magazine critic eminently subjective, but this dictum will mislead, if accepted without question. His personal utterances are, on the whole, much the weakest portion of his work, and they are often quite unimportant, — the result of a lax habit of garrulity. It is a mistake to suppose, because he made these utterances to satiety, that they indicate the vital and distinguishing quality of his genius. With a style so easy and refined as his, it is not surprising that he could give to his short interspersed dissertations a charm which we sometimes find it difficult to believe was not his chief attraction. And even when we are forced to see that they are often mistimed, we can bear with them, in recognizing that they furnished an escape for the tendency to personal expression, which he so rigorously repressed when his actors had come upon the stage and were fairly about their business. The custom of digression was one which he rather unwisely borrowed from Fielding; but it will not do to let his indulgence in this particular blind us to the masterly exhibitions of his skill in bringing characters before us with the least possible interference, when he chooses to do so. More than one scene might be cited, in which his personages conduct themselves through various complications aided by hardly a word of explanation from the writer to the reader, and yet with such an admirable choice of what should be told of action and gesture and expression, that it is impossible not to receive the detailed and delicate impression of their mutual countermining operations which the author intended to convey. But the most complete and convincing instance of his objective power is supplied by his History of Henry Esmond. In this book, he throws himself with entire success into the position of a man living in the reign of Queen Anne, who relates the circumstances of his personal history;

and in such a manner, that not only everything takes shape just as it presented itself to the mind of this man (aside from what we are led to see is its intrinsic character), but that the way in which he brings forward the other persons of his tale throws light upon himself, also. Here is no superfluous dissertation; but the author is at the acme of his power. The characterization is nice, completed with a bold and correct hand, masterly; the slow unfolding of their natures in Beatrix and Esmond, and Lady Castlewood and her son, as well as the episodical introduction of other persons, is dramatic in the last degree. It is true, Thackeray did not reach after all attainable sources of sensation, as Dickens did; he confesses, in the preface to Pendennis, that he could not successfully draw a rascal such as it had been intended to introduce into that novel. “ I found that I failed,” he says, “ from want of experience of my subject. Never having been intimate with any convict in my life, and the manners of ruffians and jail-birds being quite unfamiliar to me .... the idea was abandoned.” But this is only saying that he was content to limit his gallery of pictures to subjects which came easily in his way, and which suited his disposition to kindly and wholesome satire. He has done enough to show that, had he chosen, he could have exercised his versatile power upon matters such as that for which he here announced his incapacity. But he preferred to carry his empire only into those regions with which experience had made him familiar. “To describe a real rascal,” he continues, “you must make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to show; and unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold he has no right to show him at all.” And here he was in great part right. It is a proof of the fineness of his spirit, that he shrunk from exhibitions which, like the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist, cannot escape the taint of the merely horrible. Dickens had two ways of dealing with the human dregs which lie at the bottom of most of his intoxicating draughts. One was, to make them objects of fun; and the other was, to treat them with melodramatic appliances, which, in almost every instance, betrayed him into scenes that were baldly horrible, and that sinned against the highest laws of art. In either case, the sort of familiarity he gave us with the lowest and most vicious of human beings was hardly beneficial. Even by the melodramatic treatment, which he no doubt designed to be beneficial, he only succeeds in exciting the reader’s instinctive repugnance for uncovered vice and crime to a pitch of unhealthy and ecstatic activity; but he could never arouse in this way a deep, clear, and purifying moral perception, It is possible that Thackeray felt himself so strongly inclined to the literal and unsparing style of representation, as to make it unsafe for him to venture among murders and vagabondage with the same freedom Dickens used. But at least we may be thankful that he saw his limitations in this respect, and that he accordingly avoided falling into the errors which his more popular contemporary so rashly courted.

It will have been observed that, of the three writers just discussed, the strongest praise for dramatic qualities has been given to that one who is most distinguished among them for the personal relation which springs up between him and his readers. But we may venture to believe that if all the interspersed essays were extracted from all his books, this personal relation would remain as strong as ever. And, indeed, this is the case in Thackeray’s Philip, where the rambling tendency is almost wholly checked. The sensation of personal intercourse arises simply from the unaffected method of narrating, as if all that he tells were matter of personal observation. Though honestly renouncing himself, in the action of his story, he survives personally, as the best novelists should and do survive, in his style. Nothing can be more disastrous than the indifference to style so commonly manifested in the novels of the day. It would be a mistake to suppose that the cultivation of impersonality by the novelist, in his interpretation of character, need in any way lead to the neglect of style. All fine art is the interpretation of nature by the individual, and must, therefore, bear some trace of individual workmanship. We may accept, theoretically, Herbert Spencer’s conclusion, that “ To have a specific style is to be poor in speech;” but we must observe, nevertheless, that even Shakespeare, with all the variety of utterance which he commands, retains throughout a nameless but abiding quality of style, that unites the components of this variety under the dominion of his sovereign spirit. Style, to be sure, is an outgrowth of the author’s personality. But impersonality — the universality of Shakespeare — springs naturally out of personality, also, and can be derived only thence. However impersonal the creative writer may become, he may, as has been said, survive still in his style, this being something of which neither he himself nor any one else can rob him. He sacrifices his own individuality, for the time being, in the creation; but when the work is finished, it has become, through his intervention, —

“ Prime nature with an added artistry,”

This retiring attitude of the story-mover does not imply total invisibility, as we have just seen in the case of Thackeray, but only inofficiousness. The standpoint of entire impartiality, by taking nature out of the hands of the man, so to speak, and putting it under the calm, indicative finger of the novelist, necessitates a constantly renewed study of surrounding life, and study of the most sincere and sympathetic kind. When the leading interest lies in the unfolding of incident, or when too much of the book is made up of ruminations aloud on the motives and traits of the actors in it, it becomes dangerously easy for a writer to invent a different succession of incidents, with different scenery, and characters similar to those he had already used, or even precisely the same ones under new names, imagining all the while that he is composing a fresh work.

But if an author feels himself compelled constantly to institute the most vigorous investigations into life and character, he is apt always to find himself humbly brought back to nature; and that is the best of all attitudes in which he can find himself. It is, however, only a higher standard of popular taste and of criticism that can make him feel the constant spur to more careful study. We are not, in general, ready to take a hint from our novelist, unless we be told outright what it is intended to convey by that hint; or to enjoy a nice stroke of delineation, unless we be reminded in some way that it is a nice stroke. Let us here compare two passages, one of them taken from a popular living English novelist, the other from Ivan Turgénieff’s Smoke. This is the first: —

“ She bowed to the stranger, with studious politeness, but without uttering a word. ‘ I am obliged to listen to this person,’ thought the old lady; ‘ but I am not obliged to speak to herd ‘ ”

Here the whole italicized statement is absolutely superfluous, and simply blunts the fine point with which the sentence preceding it, had it been allowed to stand alone, might have scored its due effect. Now take the passage from the Russian writer. Ratmirof has been questioning his wife as to her interest in Litvinof, the hero of the book. Without answering him, —

“ Irene raised her hand, until the light shone full in her husband’s face; then she looked him in the eyes attentively and curiously, and began to laugh aloud. ‘ What do you mean? ’ asked Ratmirof, with a frown. ‘ What do you mean? ’ he repeated, stamping his foot. He felt that he had been insulted and humiliated, but the beauty of this woman, standing before him with such an easy confidence, dazzled, while it pained him. Not one of her charms escaped his observation; even to the rosy reflection of her finger-tips in the dark bronze of the lamp which she held .... and the insult sank deeper in his breast. Irene continued to laugh. ‘ What! You! You are jealous? ’ she cried at last, and turning her back on her husband, she left the room. L He is jealous! ’ he heard her say again, after the door had closed, with a fresh burstof mocking laughter.”

Although the emotional crisis in this scene is very great, it will he observed that the writer allows himself only a single reference to Ratmirof’s feeling; the effect is chiefly obtained by a studiously simple record of what the two persons said and did. A comparison of detached passages, in this way, is inadequate and unsatisfactory. But it is easy to observe what unnecessary importance the English writer has given to a point which the Russian artist would have passed without wasting a word. And if the reader should carry on comparisons of this kind for himself, he would speedily discover that the reckless expenditure of words on the part of novelists of the common stamp, and the consequent loss of time and of vigorous impressions, which falls to their audiences, is enormous.

The excess of subjectivity in the average contemporary novel is not distinctly enough recognized. But it is perhaps not more due to the character of the time than to inheritance. By a curious process of genius, Rousseau, drawing his inspiration from Richardson, transformed the type which the latter had founded, and which was to a great extent dramatic, into a vehicle of personality. In the Nouvelle Heloïse, he charged it with his own excess of morbid sentimentality, and in Émile converted it into a polemical agent for the dissemination of ideas supporting or connected with his attack upon existing civilization. And it was from Rousseau that Goethe derived his style of novel, although the Frenchman was a tyro, and the German a master. Goethe’s deep critical insight enabled him to construct with great nicety, even though his objective power was somewhat coldly systematic. Nevertheless, he really followed Rousseau’s lead, and was more or less influenced always by the source of this original impulse; although in the short tale entitled simply Novelle he seems to have gone to the opposite extreme of depending on an almost invisible raison d'être. But I Werther, published sixteen years after the Nouvelle Héloïse, was unmistakably an outgrowth of the latter. Afterwards, in The Elective Affinities, he advanced a theory in the form of an illustrative story, conducted with great skill, it must be confessed; and finally, in Wilhelm Meister, he embodied the results of life-long meditations, after a fashion which quite diverts the novel from its normal and predisposed direction of growth. This crowning structure he has so enriched, as to make it a treasury of inexhaustible suggestion; and yet, considered as a novel pure and simple, we cannot place the depth and variety of the author’s abstract thought altogether to its credit. The peculiar efficacy of a novel, indeed, lies in its gradual, concrete, and insensible instillations of wisdom. Here and there, indeed, the author may give us a few golden grains of formulated wisdom; but in general the abstract truths which he has laboriously eliminated should pass through the substance of his book like some chemic which leaves no trace in the liquid that absorbs it, beyond an increased brilliancy and clearness. But with Goethe the mental discoveries are so wholly the subject of attention, in and for themselves, that he has no warmth of enjoyment left for the reproduction of those surface-appearances, forming a common ground on which the novel may unite readers of the most diverse tendencies and varying calibre. It is true, Wilhelm Meister gives evidence of much observation of these appearances, but they have really received the author’s attention only as a matter ol form; he does not love individualities. What do we care for Jarno, Laertes, Lothario, Mariana, Aurelia, Theresa, and Natalia? Even Wilhelm draws from us but a cold regard; and Mignon is almost the only person in the book calculated to establish anything like a relation founded upon affection, with the reader. On the whole, the figures float before us like the creatures of a phantasm, merely, —

resembling colored shapes thrown on the screen before a magic lantern; thin, diaphanous, remote from the sphere of tangible entities within which the novel, as distinguished from allegory, should remain confined. We demand, first of all, that the novelist should preserve a sturdy delight in all visible forms and transient appearances, as well for themselves as for what may underlie them. But Goethe does not take hold of these with real gusto; scenes, persons, and incidents are with him always too exclusively viewed as inferior parts of the great allegorical mosaic he is putting together. Life is here presented as seen from his serene summit of universal culture, without sufficient regard for the stand-point of the ordinary observer. The highest beauties of all poems remain veiled to all but a few, who learn how to detect their presence beneath the drapery; but in Wilhelm Meister the veiled beauties are all in all, and be who is slow of appreciation for them must turn from the book hungry. Its external aspect is not only dry beyond endurance to the ordinary reader, but, in addition, a little repulsive, owing to the presence of a slight, contented sensuality which may disgust some and injure others, and which will only become inoperative with the charitable and mature reader, who looks by habit for the best, in preference to the less good. Of course, Goethe addresses himself by design to a limited audience. He has altogether the air of a man discoursing at ease, after dinner; and he has accordingly invited only a chosen circle; he wishes for none but good listeners. No one can dispute the depth of perception and the invigorating wisdom in this novel; but in our present inquiry, we have chiefly to consider the book as related to the development of the novel in its character of poetic form. So considered, it seems an erratic though splendid effort; it stands aside from that line of advance upon which the novel approaches its perfection, as a thing enjoyable for its own artistic perfection and the solid results of cause and effect in real life which it presents, not less than for its power of imparting the subtlest and most ideal thoughts. But Goethe did not appreciate the inherent dramatic and realistic tendency of the novel; he had purposes of his own to be subserved by it, and even attempted to arrest its progress and fix it where he had left it, by a careful definition of the difference between it and the drama, which he set down to the absolute predominance of subjectivity in the novel.

Traces of the artistic practice of Rousseau and Goethe are to be found in some of the works of George Sand, and certain absurdities which appear in Victor Hugo’s novels may perhaps be connected with their principles. But even among writers in our own language, who cannot be so directly associated with those eminent champions of the subjective novel, there is frequently an entirely mistaken notion as to the quality and range of this form of composition, which must be partially attributed to prevailing modes of thought. The scientific motive is the dominant one; our fiction-writers become minute and sectional investigators. They are in search of specimens; and when they have found them, they are very apt to set them before us, connected by some slight story, and laugh or sneer at them a little, as if this were the extent of their obligation, both to the persons of their fiction and to the reader. We need a more reverent view of human nature, for without this nothing constructive can be done in art; nothing great or beautiful. Now and then some one appears who can strike some chord of character with precision, and with harmonious results; but for the most part we are content with cynicism or buffoonery, or melodramatic effect, or argumentative haranguing. It is time that we should draw clear distinctions, and, to begin with, recognize a broad classification of all those novels worthy to be considered at all as works of art; placing in the first division such as more or less partake of the anecdotical style, —familiar narratives, —and those which are finished studies, like Middlemarch; while the second division should be reserved to those which achieve a consummate and ideal reproduction of characters and events—“a totality of forms, sounds, and incidents, in short elements and details, so closely united among themselves by inward dependencies, that their organization constitutes a living thing, surpassing in the imaginary world the profound harmony of the actual world.”

As yet, the partial and critical, rather than the unifying and creative view, is the most popular. And this, partly owing to confused or mistaken views of the moral obligations of novel-art. Moral truth, however, is not best advanced in works of fiction by direct criticism, or by the opening of a strict debit and credit account, which shall leave the deserving and the undeserving characters at quits, before the finis is written; though a certain moral effect may sometimes appear by these means. Profound moral influence is wholly indirect, in art. When Richardson breaks the bones of one offender by an accidental fall, and makes another sinner swear reform out of hand, he has taught us nothing, added nothing to our wisdom or morality; because, though his intentions are excellent, the device is so clumsy and transparent as to excite our amusement. We smile at his endeavor to impose a mechanical morality upon us. The reformation of rakes in this fashion seems only a change of activity on the same plane with their previous misdeeds: it does not proceed from any deeper source. It is only through clear perceptions into the true quality of our common nature, excited by the artistically recounted history of certain beings possessed of that nature, that the foundations of morality are deepened and secured. When the artist succeeds in carrying us sympathetically through the history of these beings, so that we feel points of similarity between ourselves and them, and recognize how great are the possibilities of error and crime in us, as in them, he has quickened our morality by rousing a keener insight into ourselves; and, by questioning indirectly the stability of our virtue, he summons our reserve forces to their support. But in the beginning, he must renounce the purpose of actually reforming anybody for good and all, by what he writes. It is only traits of very limited import that can be changed by this direct effort. Let him look well to his art. If he understands that, and thoroughly, conscientiously possesses himself of his theme, it will be strange indeed if his representation of life, like life itself, should not involve in every fold and turning some real moral enlightenment. Great must be the humility of the worthy novelist; and the greater the genius, often, the greater will be the humility in essential points of art, confessed to himself even though not placarded to the public. He must forget his personal likes and dislikes, in his writings, even cultivating a warm and sensitive charity. Distinctions of high life and low life, as such, should be forgotten by him; distinctions of good men and bad men cautiously used. He must regard each human being as an undetermined quantity, which it is his business to consider in all possible lights. And if he can approximate to a simple, unprejudiced presentation of his persons, he will be fortunate; without taking on himself the vast responsibility of judging them beyond possibility of reprieve. Of course, the degree in which he will exercise this impartiality will vary with varying artistic purposes. But, having imagined an ideal standard for him, we shall be better able to assign to each production its true relative position; and by studying nice distinctions, we shall do him all the more justice, in the end.

The impartiality which is here alluded to, however, must not be confounded with those weak condonations and palliations of error which find a somewhat too ready acceptance in these days. A popular novelist has recently exemplified, in a work to which he has given the forms of both novel and drama, that false and vicious charity which undiscerning readers will be apt to confound with the sincere and unvitiated impartiality of genius which is morally sound. Such performances can only be deplored, and left to the corrective treatment of wise critics, and the gradual growth of a public taste which can be liberal, without becoming tainted by the crime it pities and forgives. Meantime, they should not be allowed to throw discredit upon the endeavors of genuine artistic openness and charity. Those phases of existence which are the less happy, and those characters which are the less eminently good, are the more susceptible of poetical enhancement. The terrors and mistakes and tragedies of life call on the artist to redress them: he alone can give to them the unity of beauty — awe-striking, pity-inspiring beauty. Where passion enters in, there a path has been opened to the poet. He has little to do with people who are perfectly comfortable, who go about their business, and to whom nothing noteworthy happens. Nor are native nobility and self-sacrifice at their purest the most suitable subjects, always; being too good for speech, and rather fit for the completer recognition of heaven than the momentary catch-breath praise of earth. At all events, he cannot rest his chief light on these. The supremest good comes to him in the slenderest rays, falling like starlight upon the tragic life of his mimic humanity. Thus dramatic art deals with the victims of passion, of circumstance, of defeated aspiration, lifting them into a pure and sweet æsthetic atmosphere. To the dramatic artist, the tempests of life seem only to be clearing the air.

Keeping in mind the steady advance of the novel, through many centuries, with its distinct dramatic tendency, and combining with this the ideal standard we are at present able to apprehend, we shall learn how to estimate with some approach to justness the new achievements of new writers. We are proud of the modern love for reading, and flatter ourselves that the average taste in art and literature is advancing. But it can never really advance, unless based on genuine perceptions. People recognize and admire a good book, and are just as ready to admire a bad one, afterward, because they have appreciated only emotionally; it is necessary to have intellectual perceptions, in order to build up a serviceable observatory for the taste. At present, the world swears by Shakespeare; and reads too much trash, because its allegiance to him is mainly perfunctory. Fashions change, and we fancy we have progressed. But this is not enough.

Still, in the lapse of some hundreds of years, the average merit of fiction has been increased. As we have seen, the worst came first, — the egg-shell romances; next, the polished anecdotes of the Italians intervened, followed by all sorts of fabulous adventures, and the affectation of long, simpering pastorals, in France. Then satire came; and the drama emptied its ebbing tide into the novel-form; and now we have seen the days of Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, Balzac, and Hawthorne. For something like a century, we have been feeling earnestly after real life. The era of conscientious and artistic novel-writing has been fairly and fully inaugurated. But do not many of the highest summits of possible achievement in this region still remain unscaled? The few dry husks of knowledge here stripped off from that central life of artistic truth, which never will be shown in words, may avail to feed a public interest that is prophetic, in the interval through which we are now passing. But it remains for the masters whom the future may bring us, feeling the press of history behind them, and, within, the inextinguishable impulse to create, — it remains for these still further to expand and ennoble, in their own style, this vital and speaking form which we call the novel.

G. P. Lathrop.