o'clock, and I will take every care that a serviceable horsewhip shall be in the hall. A generous offer! but you will not come. Ha! madam, I know you! You have one house in Grosvenor Square, and another in Hampshire. The nursery is as far removed from the apartments which you inhabit "as from the centre thrice to the utmost pole." Your children are presided over by women from foreign lands, and the ghost of a squeal never ruffled "your slumbrous shrine's perfumed atmosphere." A powdered flunkey announced to you the first appearance of a "grinder" in the tender gums of your son and heir; and you went to the county ball the night he had bronchitis. Nay! hold thy peace; thou art not alone in thy gen eration. "My dear fellow, yes; this isn't the thing, you know; it isn't the thing. You start with the enunciation of a thesis, a distinct thesis, which you treat in the most discursive manner, and at the end you haven't really discussed your problem or recorded your own views upon the question. Form, my dear fellow, is a primary condition of art." This is the dictum of Savile Brown, most dreaded when anonymous. Perhaps he is right. But I deny the right of any man, except Marwood and his time has not yet come to force me to a conclusion. There is, however, a solution to the problem. Let me whisper it in your ear, reader — but no! the problem solves itself. Listen to those sounds of infant wailing, not so hard to hear. Perchance, though, Unnatural! heartless! egotistical! Yes, you are not a family man; then, doubtless, I fear your accusations are true. Yet your compositions are models of lucid these very qualities, which have earned diction, harmonious proportion, clear me your dislike, may allow of their owner common sense. No housemaid, big with possessing a certain sentiment towards orders from the other department, enters his infant that the charitable would con- your study in your absence, brushes away strue into the gentler attributes of pater- the cobwebs of imagination, and effaces nity. This egotism in me becomes met- the dusty evidences of former toil, which amorphosed, commercially, into a feeling should be the germs of triumph to come of vested interest; humanly, into a con- who sees no order where order is. sciousness of authorship. I ask-impar-"Brutal housemaid! base-minded, dulltially, be it understood is more than headed wench!" you say; but that housethis possible for a rational creature? maid and those sounds of wailing are just "Poor inch of nature," as he is there as much elements of this essay as the asleep, with his little animal passions thesis with which I prefaced it. It was translated to the world of dream-for we not a blind, not a covert device to bribe conjecture, by the movement of his lips, your attention. You may be angry and that he is plunged in visions of boundless disappointed; but remember you are not pap-what prognostications can we dis- a family man, and that others of us are. cern in him of nobility and greatness? "When fools speak, a wise man should Is it not dawn without sunrise? He has be there to hear." I am the fool of the form and semblance of humanity; but course; you are the wise man. But grant what besides? Like a wooden leg in a me this, that I have put before you a state pantaloon, there is a sense of incomplete- of things which cries aloud for reform, ness about him. He is fearfully and won- and for which there appears to be no derfully made. He is constructed so as to practicable remedy. Let me, too, make a wail when he is hungry, to sleep when he suggestion, a suggestion shadowy and is sated. He is a perfect machine, and a delicately implied; for, to tell you the powerful one; for he keeps the whole truth, I have some fears on the score of household in motion-not so unlovely the Hampshire lady, and I feel bound to neither. But, like a model steam-engine keep my word about the horsewhip. It in a glass case, what is the use of him? was a main sociological principle of one Everybody worships him; and why? Not of Swift's mythical peoples, that the child perhaps for what he is, but for what he had no cause of gratitude to its father or will be. Presumptive prescience! I have mother for bringing it into the world, a kitten who compares with him most being a world of misery and strife. This favorably. Firstly, it makes no noise; peculiarity was attended with a peculiarly secondly, it feeds itself with little or no happy result: the child was educated commotion; and, thirdly, Providence has apart from the parental roof. A reversal furnished it with all the essentials of of premisses often leads to a like deducamusement in the shape of a tail. "Look tion. My theory of the relations between on this picture and on that." father and son is diametrically different. A man, when he becomes a father, is born anew—is translated, as it were, to an- | which the new fiction has cut out for it other world. Before this his life was all in the way of widening its scope and joy and peace; it is only now that he improving the instruments by which it makes acquaintance with that "world of endeavors to trace the more subtle affilia misery and strife." He is transmogrified; tions of literature. It may almost be said he descends the scale of creation; he that there is now a branch of criticism becomes an inferior animal. From the specially, if not exclusively, applying to depths of his degradation he beholds his novels; and, perhaps, it may be added servants draining his pockets, and lord- that the critics who cultivate this branch ing it over himself and his belongings; of work do not yet feel themselves quite his home has become a house of bondage. up to their work. In fact, the new ficHis child is his father who brings him tion is a product for which the canons into this world, and society expects that were not ready, and some of the best between it and him there should be a things said about it and what it foretells constant interchange of grateful senti- are little better than self-conscious talk to ment. Bah! if society were not imper- fill up time. sonal, I would kick it. L. T. From The Contemporary Review. Of course the notion that the historian could ever supersede the novelist is absurd. However little short of chaotic our present criticism may be in such matters, there can be no risk in laying it down that. the historic faculty and the poetic faculty are two very different things. So much IT has been more than once remarked to begin with; and it carries us a long that when history came to be properly way. Macaulay had poetic faculty, though. written it would eclipse in attractiveness it was very narrow; but it is certain he all the fiction that could be invented and would have made a grotesque failure of a put into books; and, indeed, there is novel, if he had attempted one. Lord. some such saying to be found either in Brougham did write a novel, but it was the writings or the reported words of rather aborted than produced; and those Macaulay. That distinguished man and who have never seen it may be thankful delightful historian had his own reasons for a mercy not small- there are things for knowing that the biography of nations one would much rather never have known. might be found interesting even by read- What sort of novel would Mr. Grote have ers outside the class of students proper. written? But novelists have written hisBut the day is yet far off when the history, and Mr. Thackeray, who contemtorian shall jostle the novelist out of his place. Within the last twenty years the novel proper has undergone a develop ment which may still be pronounced astonishing even by those who have been accustomed to consider it, and has taken rank side by side at no humiliating distance, though, of course, not close with poetry and philosophy, formally so entitled. It is far otherwise than sarcastically true that "Romola " and " Daniel Deronda" cannot be called light reading; and, passing away from fiction of that graver sort, it is abundantly clear that not even yet has criticism done all the work plated writing it, would possibly have succeeded. We say possibly; because his lectures on the four Georges, and on the humorists of the eighteenth century, do not encourage one to dispense with phrases of conjecture in this matter. That George Eliot could write history is certain, and it would surprise no one if she were to leave some really monumental work of that order behind her. BulwerLytton did write history, and not unsuccessfully. So did the author of "Caleb Williams" and "St. Leon." If Defoe could not have succeeded as an historian, it would only have been because he was such a matter-of-lie man" (to quote Charles Lamb's phrase), that he could never copy straight on. "Is that all?" asked the Scotch advocate, when his client had apparently completed his statement of his case- "Is that all?" And the client replied, "Ou ay, man; that's a' the truth; ye maun put the lees till't yoursel'." It is to be feared that Defoe, while he was telling his true historical story, would, by the necessity of his na ture, have added "lees till't" in abundance. And as this brings us up to a point, we may as well stop in an enumeration which might easily be carried on to an indefinite length. Let a man tell what story he will, he is sure to add "lees till't," though unconsciously. Lord Macaulay did it in his historical and biographical writings, and no man has done it more than Mr. Carlyle. The involuntary false touches come out of a writer's idiosyncrasy. But it is not here that we arrive at the essential difference between the genius of the novelist and that of the historian. Even when the writer is fond of taking an historical basis for his work-like Sir Walter Scott, for example his manner is obviously different. Nor does mere excess of detail or picturesqueness make all the difference. It lies largely in the filling up and in the pervading air of personal intimacy which belongs to the novel, as distinguished from the history. You are supposed to know how the historian came by his knowledge, and when he makes a fancy picture he tells you so, directly or indirectly. Not so the novelist. The novelist tells you with impossible minuteness the most secret soliloquy of a man's mind; has unrestrained access to a lady's boudoir, and will tell you all she did there at a given time, though the door was locked, and the curtains drawn. From end to end of his story he does not give you his authority, and you are not expected to ask for it. On the contrary, that would destroy the illusion. The whole of his work consists of digested and transformed experience presented to you under arrangements new to himself. It is all true, except as to "the way it is put," and you feel that it is true- that is, if the work be good of the kind; but you cannot "condescend upon particulars" as to when and where it all happened. Of course, we are now taking only a general view of the matter - there are plenty of books coming under the category of the novel which are more or less historical; but it is admitted that the task of writing a work of fiction avowedly founded on fact is one of extreme delicacy. It is upon the point of filling up that we easily arrive at perhaps the most obvious difference between novel and history. It is quite certain that Napoleon dined; and that he had many interestingly painful discussions with Josephine before putting her away. In point of fact, our interest in Napoleon was so great that the driest and least expressive VOL. XXIX. 1500 LIVING AGE. of historians gave us a good deal of personal gossip about him, and in proportion, as we come to feel intimate with a personage, we excuse such writing. But to introduce it into history, if the scale of the writing be large, is a difficult task, and we are sure to be sensible of a sort of jolt or jerk in passing from one passage to another, unless the artist be one of consummate skill. If a novelist had conceived a Napoleon, and had introduced the repudiation of Josephine and the marriage to Marie Louise, he would have told the story by fixing on occasions and scenes unimportant in themselves, and filling up till he interested us; at the same time telling the story in the most complete manner conceivable. You would have been introduced, perhaps, to the lady and the Little Corporal taking coffee together, the most insignificant and domestic scene in the world, and then you would have been told all the conversation: how Napoleon knit his brow at a particular moment; how Josephine panted with suppressed anger and suppressed affection, but put her hand to her left side and kept the tears down; how the coffee got cold; how the bread and butter was left untasted; or how one little slice was eaten as a feint. You would have had as much of the humor and the pathos as the novelist's imagination of what passed (all in the most minute detail) could help you to; and by the time you got to the end of the chapter you would find you had passed a crisis of the story. Anybody who has never done such a thing before, but will upon this hint examine the structure of a modern novel, will be struck, above all things, with the manner in which the main story is left to be gathered from details in themselves commonplace. "Jane was giddy and Alfred was irritable; they had a quarrel and parted last June." That would be in the manner of the historian, and it would be sufficient for his purpose; but, of course, the novelist would fill up that outline, while the historian was off and away to something else with which the quarrel between Jane and Alfred stood, we will suppose, in some large relation. It is a pleasant exercise to analyze a good novel in this way to take the chapters one by one, and note what they are made of; how little "incident" and how much story. We undertake to affirm that the result of such an analysis will invariably be a surprise to the reader it should, of course, be made after he has read the novel, and if it is a familiar one, so much the better. But let us listen to a few sentences | ing of Shagpat" that very delightful from the prelude to Mr. George Mere- book. But it would not be easy to find a dith's last novel, "The Egoist." modern writer of fiction better entitled than he is to express opinions like those we have quoted. At all events, that curious passage concerning the "Book of Earth," which is "full of the world's wisdom," and the dictum that "the realistic method . . . is mainly accountable for our present branfulness" and "the modern malady of sameness," should be considered, though the present paper may be too small in compass to take them in. Deferring that, however, we will glance at the more recent fortunes of the novel, especially with regard to the "religious classes." The world is possessed of a certain big book, the biggest book on earth; that might indeed be called the Book of Earth; whose title is the Book of Egoism, and it is a book full of the world's wisdom. So full of it, and of such dimensions is this book, in which the generations have written ever since they took to writing, that to be profitable to us the book needs a powerful compression. . . . The real istic method of a conscientious transcription of all the visible, and a repetition of all the audible, is mainly accountable for our present branfulness, and that prolongation of the vasty and the noisy, out of which, as from an undrained fen, steams the malady of sameness, our modern malady. . . . We have the Even lately-within a month or two— malady, whatever may be the cure, or the we have had intelligent men condemning cause. We drove in a body to Science the novels as worthless, not to say mischiev other day for an antidote; which was as if ous reading; and it is surely not more tired pedestrians should mount the engine-box than seven or eight years ago since the of headlong trains; and Science introduced us Archbishop of York caused some surprise to our o'er-hoary ancestry them in the Orien- and a little downright wonder by admit tal posture; whereupon we set up a primeval ting in some public address of his, that chattering to rival the Amazon forest nigh there were novels which might be read nightfall, cured, we fancied. And before daybreak our disease was hanging on to us again, without harm, and indeed with both pleaswith the extension of a tail. We had it fore ure and profit. The word "Evangeliand aft. We were the same, and animals into cal" has, like many other words, been the bargain. That is all we got from Science. very much clipped as to its ordinary Art is the specific. . . . In comedy is the meaning, and we do not know whether singular scene of charity issuing out of disdain Dr. Thomson would claim it as a descripunder the stroke of honorable laughter; and tive adjective or not; but it is more than Ariel released by Prospero's wand from the safe to say that among Evangelical people fetters of the damned with Sycorax. And this laughter of reason refreshed is floriferous, like in the old sense the novel has not yet the magical great gale of the shifty spring been naturalized, and never can be withdeciding for summer. You hear it giving the out a breach of logical propriety. Neverdelicate spirit his liberty. Listen, for com-theless, novels go everywhere nowadays, parison, to an unleavened society; a low as of leaving out of consideration a few very the udderful cow past milking-hour! O for a "close" circles. The number of Evantitled ecclesiastic to curse, to excommunica- gelical readers using the word in its tion, that unholy thing! So far an enthusiast old narrow sense is larger than ever; perhaps; but he should have a hearing. but the increase has been chiefly among Concerning pathos, no ship can now set sail the uneducated classes. These, we need without pathos, and we are not totally deficient of pathos. not say, have multiplied enormously, and among them there is no intentional or conscious relaxation of the old straitlaced notions of what is good for "saints" to read. There is a considerable difference in the practice; but the theory is the same; the formal teaching is the same; and when the law is laid down it is laid down in the old terms - exactly, fully, and without abatement. As it happens, the questions thus arising lie at the root of some that strongly interest us in this discussion; and though we cannot here push them to their limits, we cannot pos sibly omit them. Mr. George Meredith is an original writer of fiction, who has never quite fallen into the ranks of the order; indeed, he is perhaps more of a poet, specifically, than of a novelist, and above all things capable of being a humorist of the Shandean school. If that novel of his with which, for convenience, we have headed our list, had been written as a series of sketches or "magic lantern slides," to use Coleridge's phrase concerning Goethe's "Faust," it would have been more successful; but he was bound down to the forms of the novel proper, and the need of continuity of narration has strained the genius of the author of "The Shav It is not more than thirty years it is not twenty years-since the condemnation of the novel, in what were known as the "religious circles," was absolute and unreserved. How the change in practice and sentiment (we are careful not to use the word opinion) came about is another matter; one that will fall to be considered by us almost immediately. But we might almost say that it was brought about surreptitiously that the new fiction, so different from the old, made good its footing in the teeth of reasons which remained the same, and were felt to remain the same. In plain words, the majority of the strictly-so-defined religious public have, in admitting the novel, "sinned against light and knowledge" (as they would say). We have, in truth, one more episode of a very old story. Wrong opinions (we are, of course, assuming that the old religious judgment against novels was wrong) rarely give way, so far as the multitude are concerned, before right reason; they are gradually weakened by the force of circumstance; then a new tone of sentiment grows up by degrees, rises "like an exhalation," and influences conduct; but it is long before it consolidates or takes decided shape, so that the new opinion may adopt it as a garment or a shell. The subject is so curious as well to deserve treatment in some detail, however brief. despicable trash, such as we are now going to abbreviate. The general topic of the author is poetry and fiction. "What shall be said of such works as those of Byron? Can we not learn things from him which cannot be learned elsewhere?" I reply, yes, just as you would learn, while treading the burning lava, what could not be learned elsewhere. . . . Would you thank a man for fitting up your study, and adorning it with much that is beautiful; and if, at the same time, he filled it with images and ghosts of the most disgusting and awful description, which were to abide there, and be continually dancing around you all your life? Is he a benefactor to his species, who, here and there, throws out a beautiful thought, or a poetic image; but as you stoop to pick it up, chains upon you a putrid carcase, which you can never throw off? I believe a single page may be selected from Lord Byron's works, which has done more hurt to the mind and the heart of the young than all his writings have ever done good; but he will quickly pass the libraries of all virtuous men. It is a bless from notice, and is doomed to be exiled from ing to the world that what is putrid must soon pass away. The carcase hung in chains will be gazed at for a short time in horror; but men will soon turn their eyes away, and remove even the gallows on which it swung. Now, it must not for one moment be imagined that this verdict concerning Byron is one that would be considered out of date in circles which are the immediate successors, at this moment, of such circles as those which welcomed invective like the above. And the same might be said of the verdict concerning the novel proper (as distinguished from stories in verse like Byron's). Let it be noticed that Scott is inculpated: There is a well-known work for students, written by an American divine, which had an immense circulation in this country a generation ago, and is still largely read. It contains some admirably wise counsel, and not a little really powerful writing. Thirty years ago this work was edited by no less respectable an authority than "the Rev. Thomas Dale, M.A., Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's, "But," say you, "has my author ever read and Vicar of St. Pancras," a writer who Byron and Moore, Hume and Paine, Scott, had, in his day, some repute as a poet Bulwer, and Cooper?" Yes, he has read them among readers who were not exacting in all with too much care. He knows every rock the matter of verse: some of his poems, and every quicksand; and he solemnly declares such as "A Father's Grief," "A Daugh- to you that the only good which he is conter's Grief," are still prized for the pur-deep impression that men who possess talents scious of ever having received from them, is a poses of the popular selections in use of such compass and power, and so perverted among mildly serious readers. We men- in their application, must meet the day of tion this for an obvious reason: Mr. Dale judgment under a responsibility which would was a man of taste; he was supposed, be cheaply removed by the price of a world. like Mr. Melvill (for example), to have a ... When you have read and digested all peculiarly intellectual class of hearers, that is really valuable — and that is comprised and his readers were of about the same in what describes the history of man in all order and rank as those of Dr. Croly and circumstances in which he has actually been L. E. L. He might, therefore, have been placed then betake yourself to works of imexpected to append a foot-note if he felt agination. "But can you not, in works of that what the American divine said about fiction, have the powers of the imagination enlarged, and the mind taught to soar?" Perworks of fiction was absurd, or even very haps so-but the "Lectures of Chalmers on wide of the mark. But he does nothing Astronomy" will do this to a degree far beyond of the kind, and the young English stu- all that the pen of fiction can do. "Will they dent is left to make the best he can of not give you a command of words and of lan |