CHAPTER VIII.

I.--THE NOVEL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

II.--THE NOVEL OF LIFE AND MANNERS.

III.--OF SCOTCH LIFE.

IV.--OF IRISH LIFE.

V.--OF ENGLISH LIFE.

VI.--OF AMERICAN LIFE.

VII.--THE HISTORICAL NOVEL.

VIII.--THE NOVEL OF PURPOSE.

IX.--THE NOVEL OF FANCY.

X.--USE AND ABUSE OF FICTION.

I.

Fiction has absorbed so much of the literary talent of the present

century, and has attained so important a place in the lives and

thoughts of the reading public, that, in this chapter, we will attempt

a description of its varied forms, and an inquiry into its uses and

abuses, rather than an extended criticism of individual writers.

Allibone's "Dictionary of Authors" contains two thousand two hundred

and fifty-seven names of writers of fiction, by far the greater number

of which belong to the nineteenth century, and every year adds to the

list.

There is no better example of the closeness of the connection between

society and its literature than is supplied by the novel. Every change

in the public taste has been followed by a corresponding variety of

fiction, until it is difficult to enumerate all the schools into which

novelists have divided themselves. During the present century, life has

become far more complex and the reading public far more exacting,

varied, and extended than ever before. Steam and electricity have

brought distant countries into close communion, and have awakened a

feeling of fellowship among the different nations of the civilised

world which has greatly widened the horizon of human interests. The

spread of education, the increase and distribution of wealth, together

with the cheapness of printing, have largely increased the number and

variety of those who seek entertainment from works of fiction. The

novel-reader is no longer content with the description of scenes and

characters among which his own life is passed. He wishes to be

introduced to foreign countries, to past ages, and to societies and

ranks apart from his own. He wishes also to find in fiction the

reflection of his own tastes and the discussion of his own interests.

He seeks psychology, or study of character, or the excitement of a

complicated plot, or the details and events of sea-faring, criminal, or

fashionable life. All of these different tastes the novelist has

undertaken to gratify.

Under the extensive head of the novel of life and manners, the habits,

modes of thought, and peculiarities of language of Scotland, Ireland,

England, and the United States, with many sub-divisions of provinces

and cities, have been studied and described. The novelist has extended

his investigations into Eastern countries, and has portrayed the

customs and institutions of Oriental life. He has taken his characters

from historic times, and has recommended the past for the instruction

or amusement of the present. The experience of the soldier and the

sailor have taken their place among the incidents of fiction; the

adventures and crimes of blacklegs and convicts have been drawn upon to

gratify palates sated with the weak _pabulum_ of the fashionable novel.

Fiction has not been confined to the study of manners and character,

but has been extensively used to propagate opinions and to argue

causes. Novels have been written in support of religious views,

Catholic, High-Church, and Low-Church; political novels have supported

the interests of Tory, Whig, anti-slavery, and civil service;

philosophical novels have exposed the evils of society as at present

constituted, and have built up impossible utopias. Besides the novel of

purpose, there has been the novel of fancy, in which the imagination

has been allowed to soar unchecked in the regions of the unreal and the

supernatural.

With so great a variety of works of fiction, it is not surprising to

find a corresponding variety of authorship. Lords and ladies, generals

and colonels have entered the lists against police court reporters and

female adventurers. The novel is no longer the exclusive work of a

professional author. Amateurs have attempted it to pass the time which

hung heavily on their hands; to put into form their dreams or

experiences; to gratify a mere literary vanity. The needy nobleman has

made profitable use of his name on the title-page of a novel purporting

to give information concerning fashionable life. But the most

remarkable characteristic of novel-writing has been the important part

taken by women. They have adopted fiction as their special department

of literature, and have shown their capacity for it by the production

of novels which fully equal in number and almost equal in merit the

works of their masculine rivals. On her own ground, George Eliot has no

superior, while the writings of Miss Austen, of Miss Edgeworth, of Miss

Ferrier, of Mrs. Stowe, not to mention many others, are to be ranked

among the best works of fiction in any language. But while women have

contributed their full share of novels, both as regards quantity and

merit, they have also contributed much more than what we think their

full share of worthless and immoral writing. Bad women will have

literary capacity as well as bad men, but it is doubly shocking to find

that the prurient thoughts, the indecent allusions, and immoral

opinions which are often met with in the novels of the day proceed from

that sex which ought to be the stronghold of modesty and virtue.

And this matter becomes very important when we consider the position

which works of fiction have attained in the present century. In the

days of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Heywood, Fielding, or Smollett, coarseness of

thought and language was so general that it naturally had a prominent

place in novels. All persons who objected to licentious scenes and

gross expressions in the reading of themselves or their children

excluded works of fiction. As Miss Edgeworth said, most novels were

filled with vice or folly, and as Miss Burney complained, no body of

literary men were so numerous, or so little respectable as novelists.

But, in the hands of such writers as Sir Walter Scott, as Miss Ferrier,

as Miss Austen, as Dickens, as Thackeray, as Charles Kingsley, as Mr.

Anthony Trollope, the novel has achieved for itself a position of

respectability and dignity which seems to remain unimpaired,

notwithstanding the efforts of many authors to destroy it. Works of

fiction are to be found in every home, in the hands of parents, in the

hands of young boys and girls. The word novel has been given so high a

signification by the great names which are associated with it, that

parental censorship has almost ceased. It is impossible that a form of

literature to which so many and so great minds have been devoted, and

which takes so prominent a place in the favor of the reading public,

should not be without a powerful influence. Let us look more closely at

the works of fiction of the nineteenth century, and then endeavor to

determine how far their influence has been for good, and how far for

evil.

II.

It is the especial province of the novel of life and manners to be as

far as possible a truthful reflection of nature. And the more it

approaches to this condition, the more realistic it is said to be. But

the word realism is a vague term, and is constantly employed to express

different ideas. As far as it applies to the novel, it usually

signifies an author's fidelity to nature. But even with this

definition, the term realism has no very definite meaning unless all

persons agree as to what constitutes nature. There is a great

difference in men according as they are looked at with the eye of a

Raphael or of a Rembrandt. There has been a strong tendency among

novelists of the present century who have written since Scott, to

devote themselves more to the common characters and incidents of

every-day life; to describe the world as it appears to the ordinary

observer, who rarely associates with either heroes or villains, and has

little experience of either the sublime or the marvellous. Such was the

expressed object of Thackeray, and such is the general character of the

works of George Eliot and of Mr. Anthony Trollope. This tendency has

been carried to an extreme by some English novelists, and above all by

the Frenchman, Emile Zola, who have not only thrown aside entirely the

romantic element in their fictions, but have shown their ideas of

realism to consist in the base and the ignoble, and have confined their

studies to the vices and degradation of the human species.

An admirer of Thackeray and an admirer of Zola would consider the works

of his favorite author to be realistic, and yet nature appears under

very different aspects in the pages of the two novelists. But the

partisans of Thackeray and those of Zola would probably unite in the

opinion that Sir Walter Scott was not realistic; they would call him

romantic, and claim that he painted ideal scenes and ideal characters.

But among those who read and re-read the novels of Scott, by far the

greater number believe that "The Wizard of the North" was true to

nature, that Jeanie Deans and Rob Roy and Meg Merrilies were not

impossible characters. There are many who enter into the scenes

described by Scott with as much feeling of reality as is experienced by

those who follow the career of a Pendennis, of a Duke of Omnium, or of

a Nana. A novelist, then, is realistic or not realistic according to

the views which he and his reader entertain of nature. To the optimist,

to the youthful and romantic, "The Heart of Midlothian" and "Guy

Mannering" will seem a truthful representation of life. The more

worldly and practical will find their idea of reality in "The Mill on

the Floss," in "Vanity Fair," in "The Prime Minister." And finally

those whose taste or lot has kept them "raking in the dirt of mankind"

will think their view of truth best expressed by "L'Assommoir" or

"Nana."

But we would not be understood to mean that a novelist or a painter is

realistic, because he represents nature as it appears to him, whether

he look at it through a glass _couleur de rose_, or with the distorted

eye of a cynic. He may describe the sublime, the ordinary, or the vile,

as nature supplies examples of all three, and yet be realistic, so long

as he presents any one of these conditions without exaggeration, and

without too extended an application.

The writers who have devoted themselves to the novel of life and

manners have all sought to be realistic, and the value of their work

largely depends on the success which has attended their efforts in this

direction. The enduring vitality of "Tom Jones" is due to Fielding's

fidelity to nature, and it is safe to predict that no novel which fails

in this respect can have more than an ephemeral reputation. Nothing

could be more false than the views of contemporary life contained in a

large part of the fiction of the present day, and the future historian

who looks to the novel of the nineteenth century for information

concerning morals and social habits will have to exercise a constant

discrimination.

III.

Scottish life and manners have been made familiar to the world by a

series of brilliant novelists, first among whom stands the greatest

figure in the history of English fiction. Sir Walter Scott was

qualified to an extraordinary degree for the great work he was destined

to perform for his country and for the novel. His ancestry, the

traditions among which he grew up, his in-born love of legendary lore,

his vivid imagination and keenness of sympathy all fitted him to

appreciate and to put into enduring form the latent romance which

pervaded his beloved Scotland. His practical experience as a lawyer and

as a sheriff, gave him a clear insight into the institutions of his

country. Previous to the publication of "Waverley," Scotland was a

comparatively unknown land. Even Englishmen had little knowledge of its

national habits, of its traditions, or its scenery. To Scotchmen, the

history of their country was little more than a skeleton, till the

magic wand of Scott it filled it with flesh and blood, and gave it new

life and animation. "Up to the era of Sir Walter," says an eminent

Scotchman, "living people had some vague, general, indistinct notions

about dead people mouldering away to nothing, centuries ago, in regular

kirk-yards and chance burial-places, 'mang muirs and mosses many O,'

somewhere or other in that difficultly distinguished and very debatable

district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a

divining-rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts, some in woodmen's

dresses, most in warriors' mail; queer archers leapt forth, with yew

bows and quivers, and giants stalked shaking spears! The gray

chronicler smiled, and taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the

annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The

nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ancestors;

for these were not spectres--not they, indeed,--nor phantoms of the

brain, but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;--base-born

cottage churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to

the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high born

lineage of palace kings. * * * We know now the character of our own

people as it showed itself in war and peace--in palace, castle, hall,

hut, hovel, and shieling--through centuries of advancing civilization."

And it was not only to his countrymen that Scott made vivid and

familiar the history of his native land. Since his genius described the

Highland fastnesses, and peopled them with the chiefs and maidens of

old, all the world feels at home in that land at once so small and so

great. In Italy, in France in Germany, in America, Jeanie Deans and the

Master of Ravenswood are household friends, and Scottish life and

habits are known to tens of thousands who never leave their native

town.

Besides making his country celebrated by his writings, Scott placed the

novel on the firm foundation in public estimation which it has since

retained. He redeemed its character from the disrepute into which it

had fallen. He used it not only as a means of giving acute and

healthful pleasure, but he made it the medium for moral and

intellectual advancement. The purity of thought which pervades all his

writings, the never-failing nobility of the views of life which he

placed before his readers can have no other than an elevating

influence.

Scott's literary success was due both to genius and to industry. Of his

early precocity Mrs. Cockburn has left a remarkable instance.[203] "I

last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has the most extraordinary

genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when I

went in. I made him read on; it was the description of a shipwreck. His

passion rose with the storm. He lifted his eyes and hands: 'There's the

mast gone!' says he. 'Crash it goes! They will all perish!' After his

agitation he turns to me: 'That is too melancholy,' says he. 'I had

better read you something more amusing.' I preferred a little chat, and

asked his opinion of Milton and other books he was reading, which he

gave me wonderfully. One of his observations was: 'How strange it is

that Adam, just new come into the world, should know every thing! That

must be the poet's fancy,' says he. But when told he was created

perfect by God, he instantly yielded. When taken to bed last night, he

told his aunt he liked that lady. 'What lady?' says she. 'Why, Mrs.

Cockburn, for I think she is a virtuoso,--like myself.' 'Dear Walter,'

says Aunt Jenny, 'what is a virtuoso?' 'Don't ye know? Why, it's one

who wishes and will know every thing.' Now, sir, you will think this a

very silly story. Pray, what age do you suppose this boy to be? Name

it, now, before I tell you. 'Why, twelve or fourteen.' No such thing;

he is not quite six years old. He has a lame leg, for which he was a

year at Bath, and has acquired the perfect English accent, which he has

not lost since he came, and he reads like a Garrick. You will allow

this an uncommon exotic."

The vivid imagination and love of knowledge which Scott displayed from

his earliest years were supplemented throughout his life by an

assiduous self-cultivation. The great and varied body of legendary lore

which he accumulated, together with his ever active and universal

sympathy with mankind, made the chief elements in his fictions. There

is no one respect in which the Waverley novels are pre-eminent. As

regards plot, Scott has been frequently surpassed. While "Kenilworth,"

the "Bride of Lammermoor," and "Ivanhoe," are well constructed, the

plan of "Rob Roy" and "The Monastery" are lacking in sequence. Other

novelists, too, have drawn character with quite as much power. But the

Waverly novels have attained their supreme position in public

estimation by a rare and well balanced union of different qualities.

They contain beautiful examples of the sublime, and amusing examples of

the ludicrous. They reflect nature in various phases, and always with

picturesqueness, power, and truth. Of Scott's historical novels we

shall speak elsewhere. Of those which relate especially to his own

country, the most remarkable merit consists in the fidelity with which

they have reflected the Scotch nationality. On this account they will

always possess a value for the student of social history.

Of the estimation in which these novels have been held by the world,

and the immense area over which their influence has extended, some idea

may be formed from the fact that the actual profits which accrued from

them to the author or to his estate shortly after his death, exceeded

two millions of dollars. When we add to this sum the profits of the

publishers, and when we consider the number of translations issued in

Europe and the editions printed since Scott's death in Great Britain

and America, we can realize how vast a sum the world has been glad to

pay for the possession of these invaluable works.

Following the great Sir Walter in the description of Scottish life and

manners, are many well-known writers. John Galt, in the "Annals of the

Parish," gave many humorous descriptions of national character. In

Wilson's "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," in "The Ettrick

Shepherd," in the works of Scott's son-in-law, Lockhart, are scenes and

characters still very familiar to novel readers. Jane Porter embodied

rather ideal views of history in "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and "The

Scottish Chiefs." The talents of Miss Ferrier, of Mrs. Oliphant, and of

Mr. William Black have kept up the interest which the world has learned

to take in every thing appertaining to the land which Sir Walter Scott

taught it to know and love so well.[204]

[Footnote 203: Mrs. Cockburn to Rev. Dr. Douglas, 1777; Lockhart's

"Life of Scott."]

[Footnote 204: Other novelists belonging especially in Scotland and of

considerable reputation, are Maria Porter, Elizabeth Hamilton, A.

Cunningham, Mrs. Johnstone, Hogg, Picken, Moir, Sir T.D. Lauder, Hugh

Miller, George MacDonald.]

IV.

First among the contributors to the novel of Irish life and manners may

be mentioned Maria Edgeworth, by whose successful labors Scott was

first inspired to undertake his own. In Miss Edgeworth's works, Ireland

found a true exposition of her wrongs and her virtues; and also of her

follies and errors. The evils of absenteeism were powerfully

illustrated in the novel of the same name. In "Castle Rackrent," the

trials and difficulties of landlord and tenant were described with

genuine sympathy and dramatic force. The peculiarities of Irish temper

and character have been studied by Miss Edgeworth with a fidelity which

has given her novels the same national stamp and value which belong to

those of Scott. Like him, too, she did much to raise fiction in

character, scope, and influence. Whether describing Irish, English, or

fashionable life, she is always true to nature, always pure and

elevated in tone. Her works are neither marred by the coarseness of the

past, nor by the false delicacy of the present. She studiously avoids

error and exaggeration in every form. Sentimentality and mock heroism

have no place in her pages. While she is wanting in poetry, she is

singularly rich in the scenes and characters of every-day life, and her

novels are marked by a common-sense knowledge of the world which never

degenerates into commonplace.

Miss Edgeworth has been ably followed by several students of Irish

life. William Carleton's "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,"

the novels of Samuel Lover and of John Banim are still well known.

Thomas Crofton Croker, with whose amusing description of the "Last of

the Irish Sarpints," the reader is probably familiar, has studied his

countrymen's superstitions and peculiarities with great success.

Charles James Lever has long retained a well-deserved popularity by the

production of about thirty jovial dashing novels, among which the most

celebrated is "Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon."[205]

[Footnote 205: Among other novelists of Irish life and manners may be

mentioned Lady Morgan, Mrs. S.C. Hall, Gerald Griffin, T.C. Grattan,

Justin MacCarthy, and others.]

V.

Novels relating particularly to English life and manners have been

greater in number and more varied in character than those of any other

country. A large volume would be necessary to do any critical justice

to the many distinguished writers whom we can only briefly notice here.

The most considerable subdivision of the English novel has been that

occupied with the study of domestic life,--a department for which women

are particularly fitted, and in which they have been eminently

successful.

Mrs. Opie's "Simple Tales," "Tales of Real Life," and "Tales of the

Heart," although displaying no great talent in construction or style,

excel in a natural pathos and a delicacy of sentiment which have made

them popular for many years. Miss Edgeworth brought to the study of

English life the same practical views and library talents which we have

seen in her Irish novels. Her children's stories, "Frank," "Harry and

Lucy," and "Rosamund" were among the first contributions to juvenile

fiction. "Helen," in which she exposed the evils of untruthfulness, is

a good example of the success with which this admirable woman could

combine entertainment and moral elevation. Jane Austen's name has long

been linked with that of Miss Edgeworth, as the two most powerful

female novelists of the earlier part of the century. In "Pride and

Prejudice," "Emma," "Mansfield Park," "Sense and Sensibility," she

described the country gentry and middle classes of society. She

depended neither on exciting scenes, nor on highly wrought effects of

human passion for the interest of her stories, but studied every-day

life and ordinary people with a sympathy and power of observation which

imparted a deep interest to all her works. Miss Ferrier's novels,

"Inheritance" and "Marriage," were greatly admired by Scott, and now,

some sixty years later, are still widely read, and receive the honor of

both cheap and expensive editions. Miss Ferrier's skill in the

construction of a plot, her natural studies of character and the

liveliness of her descriptions have kept her works popular,

notwithstanding great changes in the public taste. Mrs. Trollope, the

mother of a more celebrated son, contributed largely to the English

domestic novel. The pathetic story of the lives of the Brontë sisters,

supplied by Mrs. Gaskell, has deepened the interest excited by the

early popularity of "Jane Eyre." Charlotte was the most talented of the

family, and won a widespread admiration by her knowledge of life, her

freshness, her vigor, and her innocent disregard of conventionality.

Mrs. Gaskell described the life and trials of the manufacturing classes

with great ability in "Mary Barton" and other novels. Miss Yonge,

author of the "Heir of Redclyffe," Mrs. Henry Wood, author of "East

Lynne," and Mrs. Lynn Linton have added largely to this department of

fiction. The Baroness Tautphoeus described English and German life in

the particularly fascinating novels, "Quits," "At Odds," and "The

Initials." Miss Thackeray has made good use of talents inherited from

her father. Mary R. Mitford and Mrs. Alexander have written many

entertaining and popular novels. Miss Mulock began a long list of

successful works with "The Ogilvies" and "John Halifax."

But by far the greatest female novelist who has devoted her talents to

the English domestic novel, and by far the greatest female writer in

the language is undeniably George Eliot. Women almost invariably leave

the stamp of their sex upon their work. But George Eliot took and held

a man's position in literature from the outset of her career. It was

not that she was unfeminine. She brought to her work a woman's sympathy

and a woman's attention to detail. But in breadth of conception, in

comprehensiveness of thought, her mind was essentially masculine. Her

appreciation of varieties and shades of character was almost

Shakespearian. She could describe the self-indulgence of a Hetty Sorrel

leading to cruelty, and that of a Tito leading to treachery, with

perfect distinctness. She could enter into the generous aspirations of

a Savonarola, and the selfish desires of a Grandcourt, with equal

perspicuity. Her readers do not feel less familiar with the dull

barrenness of Casaubon than with the pregnant vivacity of Mrs. Poyser.

In the study of the inward workings of the human mind, George Eliot is

unsurpassed by any novelist. Thackeray alone can dispute her

pre-eminence in this respect. However much the reader may recoil from

the horror of Little Hetty's crime, he cannot deny that it follows as a

natural consequence. Although Dorothea's marriages are extremely

disappointing, the train of thought which led her to enter into them is

traced with unerring clearness.

An obstacle to the popularity of George Eliot's novels lies in the

slowness of their movement. The author's soliloquies, comments, and

reflections, which are so much valued by her especial admirers,

constantly interrupt the course of the narrative, and prove cumbersome

to such readers as enjoy a rapid, flowing story. But without these

interruptions, how much of George Eliot's best wisdom would be lost!

How many significant phrases would be lost from familiar language! The

commentaries of the authoress herself on the incidents of her tale give

her works a value which inclines us to take up her volumes again and

again, long after the stories themselves have become familiar. We never

weary of such sentences as the following from "Adam Bede": "There is no

despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our

first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have

suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope."

Not less beautiful and concentrated are those few words on woman's love

in "Middlemarch":--"Those childlike caresses which are the bent of

every sweet woman, who has begun by showering kisses on the hard pate

of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the

wealth of her own love."

A faculty which George Eliot possessed in common with Dickens and

Thackeray was that of making very ordinary people interesting. And this

is a talent characteristic of the best minds which have contributed to

fiction or the drama. Shakespeare possessed it in a high degree, and

the best creations of Scott are ordinary, unheroic persons. The faculty

arises from superior powers of observation. Some people will take a

walk through a picturesque country or a crowded city without having

seen any thing worthy of remark. Others will pass over the same

ground, and return overflowing with description. In the same manner,

the great number of men and women pass through life finding every thing

commonplace, and the observing sympathy of a Thackeray, a Miss Austen,

or a George Eliot is necessary to light up the unnoticed figures which

throng the path. George Eliot is particularly happy in drawing a really

ordinary person, especially when a little pretension is added. She must

have written Mr. Brooke's opinion of women with true enjoyment: "There

is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and go--music, the fine

arts, that kind of thing--they should study those up to a certain

point, women should; but in a light way, you know." But though Mrs.

Poyser be humble, she is far from ordinary. "Some folks' tongues," she

says, "are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time

o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside."

So long as George Eliot confined herself to her own sphere of action,

she exhibited the same remarkable powers. But even her great name could

not command admiration for "The Spanish Gypsy." Her limitations clearly

appeared in "Daniel Deronda." When describing the characters and

intercourse of Grandcourt and Gwendolen, when dealing with every thing

English in that variously estimated work, she remained the great author

of "Adam Bede" and "Silas Marner." But in undertaking the discussion of

the religion and social position of the Jews, she mistook her own

talents, and created in Daniel Deronda, an indefinite combination of

virtues unworthy of her genius.

We have now noticed fifteen women, from Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen

to George Eliot, who have contributed to the single department of

fiction concerned with English domestic life. Many other names almost

equally deserving and equally celebrated might be added to the list.

The enduring popularity of their works is sufficient commentary on the

success with which woman's talent has been directed toward fiction. Not

only have the productions of these writers a high literary value, but

their widespread circulation has afforded a really healthful amusement

to tens of thousands, and their influence has been uniformly for

good.[206]

The novels of English domestic life written by men have been little

more numerous or able, but much more extended in scope. "Tremaine" and

"De Vere," of R. Plumer Ward, contain clever sketches of character, but

the narrative is loaded down with political and philosophical

disquisitions. Theodore Hook's stories were as unequal as his life.

Almost all bear the marks of haste and carelessness, and yet very few

are without some portion of that pointed wit and delicate humor which

delineated Jack Brag, or described Mr. Abberley's dinner party in the

"Man of Many Friends." Richard Harris Barham is well known as the

author of the witty "Ingoldsby Legends," and Samuel Warren as the

author of "Ten Thousand a Year." Charles Kingsley described the life

and grievances of mechanics in "Alton Locke." Charles Reade began a

long series of popular novels with "Peg Woffington" and "Christie

Johnstone." His best work is "Never Too Late to Mend," in which he

criticized prison discipline, and described the striking scenes of the

Australian gold-fields. Few novels of the present day contain a more

interesting story or more lifelike delineations of character. Wilkie

Collins' greatest power lies in the construction of his plot; the

"Moonstone" and the "Woman in White," are among the most absorbing

narratives in the whole range of fiction. His studies of the morbid

workings of the mind are often striking, but with the exception of

Count Fosco and a few others, his characters are not strongly marked.

Thomas Hughes accomplished a truly noble work in the composition of

"Tom Brown's School Days" and "Tom Brown at Oxford,"--books which have

found their way to every boy's heart, and have appealed to all that was

most healthful and manly there. The novels of Benjamin d'Israeli are

chiefly interesting in their relation to the character of their

illustrious author. As works of art they are faulty in construction,

exaggerated in description, and unnatural in effect. "Vivian Gray" and

"Lothair" cannot pretend to be truthful studies of English life, nor

would their author, probably, have represented them as such. But so

much of the great statesman's power was instilled into his novels that

they have a certain interest even for those who are most alive to their

faults. They are the conceptions of a very rich imagination, and

contain many pictures which, if untrue to nature, are still extremely

vivid. D'Israeli's chief literary, and perhaps also his chief political

characteristic, was a constant endeavor to make striking effects. The

reader may be sure to find nothing commonplace in his writings. Every

scene and every character is painted in the brightest of colors. If the

background be sombre, it will simply throw out more brilliantly the

figures in the foreground. It is said that most men have a favorite

word. That of d'Israeli was "wondrous." He took his reader into

wondrous baronial halls, filled with wondrous gems, with wondrous

tapestries, with wondrous paintings, and introduced him to wondrous

dukes and duchesses, looking out from wondrous dark orbs, and breathing

through almond-shaped nostrils. He loved to bring the royal family on

the scene, and to trace the awe-inspiring effect of their august

presence. When we open a novel of d'Israeli's we are certain of moving

in a brilliant society, although one belonging to a yet undiscovered

world. Women whose political influence changes the map of Europe,

irresistible Catholic priests are mingled with impudent adventurers and

professional toad-eaters. And over every thing is cast, by d'Israeli's

Eastern imagination, a glamour of unlimited wealth, of numberless

coronets, and of soaring ambitions. The political career of the Earl of

Beaconsfield is one of the most remarkable in history, and even his

opponents cannot withhold admiration from the great abilities and

undaunted resolution which brought that career to its triumphant close.

But the novels of the Earl of Beaconsfield have little value beyond

their reflection of his dreams and his ambition.

Among the most famous writers of fiction of the nineteenth century will

always be mentioned the name of Sir Bulwer Lytton. More than any other

writer, he studied and developed the novel as a form of literature.

Almost every novelist has taken some special field and has confined

himself to that. Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray made occasional

incursions on historic ground, but still their chief work was expended

upon the novel of life and manners. Lytton attempted, and successfully,

every department of fiction. In "Zanoni," he gave to the world a novel

of fancy; in "Pelham" and "The Disowned," fashionable novels: in "Paul

Clifford," a criminal novel; in "Rienzi," "Harold," "The Last of the

Barons," historical novels; in "What Will He Do With It?" a novel of

familiar life. And he brought to each variety of fiction the same

artistic sense, the same knowledge of the world, and keen observation.

To describe English life in all its phases, he was particularly fitted.

Born in a high rank, he was perfectly at home in his descriptions of

the upper classes, and never slow in exposing their vices. His studies

of men took so universal a form that he became familiar even with the

slang terms of pickpockets and house-breakers. "What Will He Do With

It?" combines examples of the heroic, the humorous, the pathetic, and

the villainous, and affords, perhaps, the best general view of the

author's varied talents. Sir Bulwer Lytton is one of the most

voluminous writers of a very prolific class, and yet he has never

repeated himself. Mr. Anthony Trollope and several other novelists have

shown how fallacious is the idea that the imagination is a fickle

mistress to be courted and waited for. They have proved that she can be

made to settle down and accustomed by habit to working at stated hours

and for regular periods. But Bulwer Lytton not only forced his

imagination to continuous labor, but he was able to insure an unending

novelty of conception. In each one of his novels we are introduced to

an entirely new set of characters inhabiting quite unfamiliar scenes.

With a few exceptions, Mr. Anthony Trollope has confined himself to the

novel of English social life, but that mine he has worked with

wonderful assiduity and success. In "The Warden," in "Barchester

Towers," are studies of clerical character for which this writer has

won a special reputation. "The Small House at Allington" is a love

story of particular fascination. Few writers have described the

manifestations of love in the acts and thoughts of a modest, sweet girl

as delicately as Mr. Trollope has done in the case of the deserted

Lily. Her rejection of a second suitor is felt by the reader to be the

inevitable consequence of so pure a passion, and the treachery of

Crosbie is traced through its various gradations with true fidelity to

nature. "Phineas Finn" is an excellent example of a parliamentary

novel. That work and its companions, "Phineas Redux," "The Prime

Minister," and "The Duke's Children," keep up our acquaintance with the

family and connections of Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, than

which few groups of fictitious characters are more continuously

interesting. Mr. Trollope's novels will have a special value for the

future student of English social life in the nineteenth century. The

race-course, the hunting field, the country seat, Piccadilly, Hyde

Park, the life of clubs and parliament, are described by him with

photographic minuteness. And the novel-reader of to-day derives a

constant pleasure from his books, notwithstanding the fact that the

monotony of modern life is somewhat too closely reflected in them.

The works of no writer in the English language, except those of Scott,

have attained so immediate a reputation and have won so wide-spread a

popularity as the novels of Charles Dickens. "In less than six months

from the appearance of the first number of the 'Pickwick Papers,'" said

the _London Quarterly Review_ in 1837, "the whole reading public were

talking about them, the names of Winkle, Warden, Weller, Snodgrass,

Dodson and Fogg, had become familiar in our mouths as household terms;

and Mr. Dickens was the grand object of interest to the whole tribe of

'Leo-hunters,' male and female, of the metropolis. Nay, Pickwick

chintzes figured in linen-drapers' windows, and Weller corduroys in

breeches-makers' advertisements; Boz cabs might be seen rattling

through the streets; and the portrait of the author of 'Pelham' or

'Crichton' was scraped down or pasted over to make room for that of the

new popular favourite in the omnibuses." For forty years the writings

of this great novelist have held their place in the public esteem

without any sensible diminution. Hundreds of thousands, old and young,

in Great Britain, in America, in every country of Europe, have followed

the fortunes of Nicholas Nickleby, of David Copperfield, of Oliver

Twist, and of numberless other celebrated characters with unflagging

interest. Perhaps Dickens' most remarkable achievement lay in the

number of his creations, and in the distinctness with which he could

impress them on the memory of his readers. Of the great host of figures

who throng his scenes, how many we remember! Their names remain stamped

on our minds, and some of their characteristic phrases, like Micawber's

"Something will turn up," or Tapley's "There's some credit in being

jolly here," have passed into current phrases. Dickens' great object

was to celebrate the virtues of the humbler ranks of life, and to

expose the acts of injustice or tyranny to which they are subjected.

This he did in a spirit of the truest philanthropy and most universal

benevolence. The helpless victims of oppression, like little Oliver

Twist, or the inmates of Dotheboys Hall, found in him an effective

champion. Never has hypocrisy, the besetting vice of this age, been so

mercilessly exposed as in the works of Dickens. It is not only in such

a character as Pecksniff that its ugliness is revealed, but wherever

pretence hides guilt behind a sanctimonious countenance, the mask is

surely torn off. Dickens hated hypocrisy as Thackeray hated snobbism.

And both, in their zeal, occasionally saw the hypocrite or the snob

where he did not exist. Dealing, as Dickens did, so exclusively with

common and low-born characters, it is remarkable that his books so

rarely leave any impression of vulgarity behind them. And this result

is due to the author's love of truth and detestation of all pretence.

There can be no vulgarity without pretension. A great many novels of

the day are extremely vulgar, because they describe ill-bred people and

represent them to the reader as ladies and gentlemen. But Dickens'

shopkeeper or street-sweeper makes no pretence to gentility, and

therefore is as far from being vulgar as the man who has never known

what it was to be any thing but a gentleman. The faults, like the

merits, of Dickens' work resulted from the exuberance and power of his

imagination. The same vividness of conception which gives such life to

his description of a thunderstorm or of a quiet family scene, sometimes

betrayed him into exaggeration and caricature. And yet when we consider

the number and variety of the figures conjured up by his creative mind,

from Paul Dombey to the Jew, Fagin, it is extraordinary that to so few

this criticism will apply.

Dickens' vast popularity resulted only in part from the artistic merit

of his works. The breadth of his canvas, his intense realization of

fictitious scenes, and his extraordinary descriptive power are

qualities enough to win for him his eminent position in fiction. But

the affection felt for Dickens as a man, which has made him occupy so

much the hearts as well as the minds of the reading public, was

attracted by qualities apart from those which excited admiration for

the author. Dickens was essentially a national writer in the variety of

the characters with whom he brought his readers into communion. He was

essentially popular, from the fact that he dealt with the masses and

not with any particular class. He was essentially English, in that he

was the apostle of home. No novelist who has treated domestic life has

so thoroughly caught its spirit, and has so sympathetically traced its

joys and sorrows, its trials and recompenses. Family life has been for

more than two centuries gradually supplanting the life of the camp and

the court. It is in the domestic circle that men now find the interest

which was formerly sought in adventure or publicity. Not only in the

Christmas stories, especially devoted to the celebration of home, but

through all his great fictions Dickens made domestic life his chief

study. And he is, above all others, the favorite household novelist.

While he lived, each new work of his was welcomed alike by parent and

child, and when he died, there were few homes where books ever came

that the loss of a friend was not felt.

Scott, Dickens, almost all the great English novelists described heroes

and heroines. They made their chief character an embodiment of virtue

or strength, and strove to win for him the admiration of the reader.

Even Tom Jones was a hero to Fielding, and Roderick Random to Smollett.

But Thackeray said to himself as he looked out on the world, that

humanity was not made up of heroes and villains. He had never met with

the truly heroic, nor with the utterly depraved. It seemed to him that

human nature lay between the two extremes. In "Vanity Fair," in

"Pendennis" and in "The Newcomes" he resolved to describe man as he

was, with virtues and failings, with occasional glimpses of the noble,

and more common exhibitions of the mean and the little. Young men were

to appear in his pages with their weakness and selfishness; young girls

with their silliness and affectation. Thackeray, in a word, was to be

more realistic than his predecessors in fiction had dared to be. He was

to show his readers what they really were, and not what they would wish

to be.

But in Thackeray's novels is evident the difficulty of establishing any

generally accepted standard of realism. If this quality consists in

representing a character as speaking and acting just as we should

expect such a character to speak and act, Thackeray succeeded as

perhaps no novelist, except Fielding, had done before him. Becky Sharp,

Sir Pitt Crawley, Pendennis, Clive Newcome, all use such words as the

reader would expect from them. Their actions are the natural results of

the trains of thought into which the author has given us an insight.

When the old reprobate, Lord Steyne, discovers that Becky Sharp had

appropriated to herself the money which he had given her to restore

poor Miss Briggs' stolen property, he is not indignant at the

deception. The admiration of the noble rogue is only increased for the

woman who has shown herself to be possessed of a more astute roguery

than his own:--

"What an accomplished little devil it is!" thought he. "What a

splendid actress and manager! She had almost got a second supply

out of me the other day with her coaxing ways. She beats all the

women I have ever seen in the course of all my well-spent life!

They are babies compared to her. I am a green-horn myself and a

fool in her hands--an old fool. She is unsurpassable in lies." His

lordship's admiration for Becky rose immeasurably at this proof of

her cleverness. Getting the money was nothing--but getting double

the sum she wanted and paying nobody--it was a magnificent stroke.

In his delineation of character, in the perfect naturalness with which

all his personages act out their respective parts, no novelist is more

realistic than Thackeray. But realism has a broader application. A

novelist who takes every-day life for his subject has not only to give

the stamp of nature to all his scenes and individuals, but he must so

write, that at the end of his book the reader will have the impression

that real life, with its due apportionment of good and evil, of

happiness and grief, has been placed before him. Some readers will

receive that impression from Thackeray's novels; but they will be those

who think that the evil and the unhappiness predominate. So thought the

author himself. But the world in general think differently, and agree

to look upon Thackeray as a satirist.

As such, he ranks in English literature second only to Swift. To the

great Dean, man was a lump of deformity and disease. He saw in humanity

little besides its vice, and painted his species in colors under which

few men have been willing to recognize a portrait. Thackeray's genial

disposition naturally made him far less bitter than Swift. He neither

saw nor portrayed the monstrous vice which excited the hatred of the

satirist of the eighteenth century. To Thackeray, men were weak rather

than bad, selfish rather than vicious. George Osborne braves the

consequences of marrying poor Amelia Sedley, and yet prefers his own

pleasure to that of his wife. Rawdon Crawley is ignorant, rude, and

unprincipled, but yet is loving and faithful to Rebecca. Weakness,

pettiness, self-deception were the main objects of Thackeray's satire.

Where are the absurdities of youthful woman-worship held up to such

derision as in Pendennis' love for Miss Costigan!

Pen tried to engage her in conversation about poetry and about her

profession. He asked her what she thought about Ophelia's madness,

and whether she was in love with Hamlet or not? "In love with such

a little ojus creature as that stunted manager of a Bingley?" She

bristled with indignation at the thought. Pen explained that it was

not of her he spoke, but of Ophelia of the play. "Oh, indeed, if no

offense was meant none was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she

did not value him--not that glass of punch." Pen next tried her on

Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was he?" "The author of the play in which

she had been performing so admirably." "She did not know that, the

man's name at the beginning of the book was Thompson," she said.

Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity.... "How beautiful she is,"

thought Pen, cantering homewards. "How simple and how tender! How

charming it is to see a woman of her genius busying herself with

the humble affairs of domestic life, cooking dishes to make her old

father comfortable, and brewing him drink! How rude it was of me to

begin to talk of professional matters, and how well she turned the

conversation! ... Pendennis, Pendennis,--how she spoke the word!

Emily! Emily! how good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect she

is!"[207]

Thackeray's satire is all the more powerful in that it is directed

against foibles more than against vices. Many a reader who will reject

Swift's portrait of man as a libel, cannot but feel a twinge at

Thackeray's delicate pencillings. After dwelling on the worldliness,

the hypocrisy, the self-seeking of the inmates of Queen's Crawley, how

softly but how terribly he scourges them! "These honest folks at the

Hall, whose simplicity and sweet rural purity surely show the advantage

of a country life over a town one." His praise is the severest cut of

all. "Dear Rebecca," "the dear creature," and we wince for Becky. "What

a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! How

tenderly we look at her faults, if she be a relative." "These money

transactions, these speculations in life and death--these silent

battles for reversionary spoil--make brothers very loving toward each

other in Vanity Fair."

Thackeray is the novelist whose works depend in the least degree on

narrative interest. The characters are so clearly drawn and so

interesting, the manner of Thackeray's writing is so uniformly

entertaining, that his books can always be opened at random and read

with pleasure. "Henry Esmond" is the only novel in which the plot is

carefully constructed. The others are a string of consecutive chapters,

each one of which possesses its individual interest.[208]

The novel of English life and manners includes many subdivisions. Among

the writings of Miss Edgeworth, Miss Ferrier, Bulwer Lytton, Mr.

Anthony Trollope, and others, are novels which deal to a greater or

less extent with fashionable life. A number of novelists, principally

female, have confined their studies to the aristocratic classes.[209]

But the so called fashionable novel is most often the composition of

adventurers whose catch-penny productions aim at affording, to the

middle or lower ranks, information concerning the habits of the

aristocracy. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that

fashionable life in these novels is such as it might appear to an

imaginative kitchen-maid whose idea of up-stairs existence is founded

on the gossip of servants. When written by persons conversant with

their subject, the fashionable novel forms a legitimate subdivision of

the novel of life and manners. But it is most often a noxious weed. Its

cultivators constantly make up for lack of talent by the excitement of

immoral scenes, and give to their audience of sempstresses and grooms a

most degraded view of aristocratic life. Even when harmless in matter,

its rank luxuriance fills up space much better occupied by the flowers

of literature.

The eminent criminal novel is taken as a tonic by minds satiated with

the vapidity of fashionable fiction. From Lytton's "Paul Clifford," and

Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," down to "Merciless Ben, the Hair-Lifter,"

criminal narrative has been occupied with endowing burglars and

murderers with the graces of gentlemen and the moral worth of Christian

missionaries. In its celebration of successful crime, and its

representation under a heroic aspect of villains and blacklegs, no

species of fiction is more false to nature or more injurious to

youthful readers.

To such writers as George A. Lawrence and "Ouida" the world is indebted

for the "Muscular Novel," which combines all the worst elements of both

fashionable and criminal narrative. In "Guy Livingstone," "Strathmore,"

and a hundred similar fictions, the reader is introduced to men of

extraordinary physical development, whose strength is proof against

the wildest dissipation; to women of extraordinary beauty, whose charms

are enhanced in proportion to their coarseness and lack of modesty.

Jack Sheppard, reposing on a velvet couch, smoking a perfumed

cigarette, and worshipped by two or three ornaments of the demi-monde,

is the type most admired by the muscular novelist. Lawrence and "Ouida"

have brought to their work a literary power which has given them

considerable notoriety; and has placed them at the head of their

particular school; but it is a school whose distinctive characteristics

consist in extravagance, unhealthiness of tone, and falseness to

nature.

English military life has been ably described by such writers as E.

Napier, G.R. Gleig, W.H. Maxwell, and James Grant. But as a maritime

nation, England has been much more prolific of naval novelists. At the

head of these stands Captain Marryat, who has celebrated the pleasures

and described the incidents of sea-faring life in about thirty jovial,

dashing books. Among the great number of odd and entertaining

characters sketched by his hand, "Peter Simple" and "Midshipman Easy"

are perhaps the most interesting. Marryat's narratives are not

carefully constructed, but flow on gracefully and easily, enlivened by

an inexhaustible fund of humor, and enriched by an endless succession

of bright or exciting scenes. The names of Captain Glassock, Howard,

Trelawney, Captain Chamier, Michael Scott, and the author of the "Wreck

of the Grosvenor," are among those most prominently associated with the

marine novel. These writers have not only dealt with the adventures of

a sailor's life and the peculiarities of a sailor's character, but have

studied the influence of the sea on the human mind.

Through the great interest felt by Englishmen in the manners and

customs of Eastern nations, Oriental novels have become a recognized

department of English fiction. In the eighteenth century, Johnson, in

"Rasselas," and Beckford, in "Vathek," had drawn on the romantic

features of Eastern life. In the present century successful attempts

have been made to study Oriental character through the medium of the

realistic novel. Hope, in "Anastasius," described the vices and

degradation of Turkey and Greece in the person of his hero. In James

Morier's "Hajji Baba of Ispahan" and "Ayesha," are vivid delineations

of Eastern character and highly humorous sketches of Persian life.

James Baillie Fraser, in "The Kuzzilbash," and Miss Pardoe in a number

of tales, have still further enriched the department of Oriental

fiction.

[Footnote 206: Other women who have contributed to the English domestic

novel--. Mary K. Mitford, Mrs. Crowe, Mrs. Marsh, Lady Georgiana

Fullerton, Miss Kavanaugh, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs. Alexander, S.

Bunbury, C. Sinclair, A. Strickland, M.C. Clarke, L.S. Costello, C.

Crowe, A.H. Drury, G. Ellis, M. Howitt, Mrs. Hubback, Hon. Mrs. Norton,

M.A. Power, E. Sewell, Mrs. Marquoid, Hesba Stretton, Florence Marryat,

Elizabeth Wetherell, Sarah Tytler, C.C. Fraser-Tytler, C. Craik, Hon.

Mrs. Chetwind, M.M. Grant, A.E. Bray, and others.]

[Footnote 207: "Pendennis," Chap. v.]

[Footnote 208: Many other well-known writers have contributed to the

English domestic novel: Thomas Love Peacock, H. Coke, Samuel Philips,

Angus B. Reach, Albert Smith, R. Cobbold, Edmund Yates, Thomas A.

Trollope, Thomas Hardy, James Payn, George Augustus Sala, William

Thornbury, the author of "The Bachelor of the Albany," Mortimer

Collins, G.H. Lewes, Shirley Brooks, Douglas Jerrold, C. Crowley, T. de

Quincey, S.W. Fullom, J. Hannay, W. Howitt, C. Mackay, G.J.

Whyte-Melville, T. Miller, L. Ritchie, F.E. Smedley, J.A. St. John, M.F.

Tupper, F.M. Whitly, F. Williams, C.L. Wraxall, and others.]

[Footnote 209: T.H. Lister, Marquis of Normanby, Lady Caroline Lamb,

Countess of Morley, Lady Charlotte Bury, Lady Dacre, Mrs. Gore, Lady

Blessington.]

VI.

James Fenimore Cooper said in regard to the materials for American

fiction: "There is a familiarity of the subject, a scarcity of events,

and a poverty in the accompaniments that drive an author from the

undertaking in despair." But the truth of this statement has been

greatly modified, if not quite refuted, by the work of that great

novelist and of several others who have succeeded him. It is true that

American life presents less salient characteristics than that of

Europe; that class distinctions are less marked; and that the energies

of the nation are still so much confined to strictly utilitarian

objects, that life moves along with unpicturesque sameness and

evenness. But mankind remains equally complicated and equally

interesting under whatever circumstances it may be placed. The vast

extent of American territory and the infinite variety of its

inhabitants afford material to the novelist which yet remains almost

untouched. New England, New York, the Southern States, and, above all,

the Great West, are rich in special customs, traditions, and habits of

thought with which fiction has only begun to concern itself. The

visitor to Washington cannot fail to be struck by the variety of men

who jostle each other in that cosmopolitan city. The New England

farmer, the New York banker, the Southern planter, the Western herder

or grain merchant, the California mine-owner, the negro, and perhaps a

stray visiting Indian chief, represent widely differing and highly

interesting forms of life and opinion. Whenever native genius has cast

aside foreign influence and has found inspiration in American

traditions and institutions, the extent and richness of its literary

material have been made manifest.

The earliest examples of fiction in the United States were tentative

and lacking in originality. At the close of the eighteenth century,

Charles Brockden Brown began the career of the first American novelist

with "Wieland." His pecuniary necessities and the slight encouragement

offered at that time to American authors made it impossible for him to

afford the time and care essential to artistic finish. His novels are

of an imaginative and psychological character, often interesting in

parts from the intense mental excitement which they describe. They were

much admired by the English novelist Godwin, whose works they resemble

in intensity of conception and faultiness of execution. A novel called

"Charlotte Temple," by Susanna Rowson, obtained a wide circulation in

the beginning of the present century, due much more to its foundation

on a notorious scandal than to its own literary merit. "Modern

Chivalry; or the Adventures of Captain Farrago and Teague O'Reagan,

his Servant"--a poor imitation of "Don Quixote"--as a satire directed

against the Democratic party by H.H. Brackenridge. R.H. Dana's "Tom

Thornton" and "Paul Felton" have little claim to attention beyond the

excitement of their rather sensational stories.

But with the publication of "The Spy," Cooper opened a thoroughly

national vein, and began a literary career which showed how little

native genius need rely on foreign influence or on foreign subjects. He

described the stirring events and the moral heroism of the American

Revolution with patriotic sympathy and original literary power. He

touched the romantic chords of that great struggle with a delicacy

which met with a world-wide response. Not only did Americans feel that

in Cooper's novels the picturesque and characteristic features of their

country were delineated by a master-hand, but in almost every European

land, translations of "The Spy," "The Pioneers," or "The Pathfinder,"

testified to the universal interest excited by the examples of

simplicity, endurance, and sagacity which formed the subjects of

Cooper's pen. In "The Pioneers," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The

Prairie," "The Pathfinder," and "The Deer-slayer" figures the character

of Leatherstocking, than whom no fictitious personage has a greater

claim to interest. His bravery, resolution, and woodland skill make him

a type of the hardy race who pushed westward the reign of civilization.

The scenes among which he lived, the primeval forest, the great inland

lakes, the hunter's camp, and Indian wigwam were described by Cooper

with a fidelity and picturesqueness which will always give to his works

a national value. Now that farms and manufacturing towns cover what a

century ago was a trackless wilderness, where backwoodsmen and Indians

shot bear and deer, it would be almost impossible for us to realize the

previous condition of our now populous country were it not for the

novels of Cooper. And this great writer not only described the wild

aspect of American scenery and the hardly less wild features of pioneer

character. He painted with equal skill the life of the American sailor,

at a time when that life had an interest and excitement it no longer

possesses. Long Tom Coffin, Tom Tiller, Bob Yarn, belonged to a period

when the United Stales was a maritime country, before American

enterprise and industry were shut off from the sea by legislative

imbecility. No marine novelist has given a more life-like impression of

a ship than Cooper, and none have excelled him in descriptions of the

sea and in studies of those peculiar forms of human nature produced by

life on the ocean. So long as Cooper confined himself to purely

national subjects, his success was brilliant and continuous; but many

of his works show the effect of misdirected talent, and have fallen

into neglect.

The "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and "Rip Van Winkle" are the specimens

of American fiction most intimately associated with New York. In these

stories the traditions and scenery of the Hudson River were treated by

Washington Irving with all the richness of imagination and delicacy of

expression of which he had so great a store. Some part of that romantic

interest afforded to the traveller by the castles of the Rhine, has

been imparted to the Hudson by the exquisite pages of the "Sketch

Book." The stories of Nathaniel P. Willis and some of the novels of

Bayard Taylor and of J.G. Holland also belong especially to New York.

At the head of New England, and, indeed, of American writers of

fiction, stands Nathaniel Hawthorne. His three great works, "The

Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Blithedale

Romance," are the finest specimens of imaginative writing which

American genius has yet produced. The interest of Hawthorne's novels

lies almost entirely in their subtle and astute studies of the hidden

workings of the human mind. His fictions are remarkable for their want

of action. "The Scarlet Letter" can hardly be said to have a plot. The

series of chapters which intervene between the exhibition of Hester

Prynne on the scaffold and the voluntary self-exposure there of the

Puritan minister, simply represent gradual changes from the first to

the last situation of the principal characters. But narrative

excitement was never Hawthorne's object, and the want of it is never

felt by his reader. Each scene is an appropriate sequel to the last,

and a natural introduction to the next. Each chapter has its special

interest,--the analysis of a condition of mind, a dramatic situation,

or a highly finished domestic picture. It is in the delineation of

character and the study of human motives that Hawthorne's chief

excellence as a novelist consists. Nothing can exceed the penetration

and vividness with which such persons as Zenobia, in "The Blithedale

Romance," and Holgrave, in "The House of the Seven Gables," are

described. The homeward walk of the fallen young minister, in "The

Scarlet Letter," when he had resolved to desert his flock and to

connect himself again with Hester Prynne, is an unsurpassed delineation

of sudden moral degeneration. There is nothing of modern realism in

Hawthorne's novels, and yet they leave a realistic impression behind

them. The greater number of his characters appear to us rather as

representatives of certain mental conditions then as real flesh and

blood. Neither in the dialogue, nor in what may be called the

"properties" of his writing did Hawthorne strive at realistic effects.

Still, when the reader lays down "The Scarlet Letter," or "The House of

the Seven Gables," he insensibly feels himself embued with the spirit

and atmosphere of Puritan New England. Hawthorne was so intensely a New

Englander in his sympathies, prejudices, and habits of mind, that his

writings were always colored by the thought and sentiment of his native

land. In "The Scarlet Letter," there is little evidence of the use of

historical researches, and yet in that volume, colonial life has been

made real and actual to us by the very intensity of the author's

national feeling.

New England fiction includes a number of other celebrated and honored

names. Catherine M. Sedgwick began her literary career with "Hope

Leslie," a story founded on the early history of Massachusetts, which

was followed by "Redwood" and "The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in

America." Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes studied New England village life in

"Elsie Venner," and Sylvester Judd that of the Maine backwoods in

"Margaret." Mr. T.W. Higginson has written "Malbone." Mr. W.D. Howells,

Rev. Edward Everett Hale, and Miss E.S. Phelps are still adding to

their reputations.

Among the novels relating to life in the Southern States, "Uncle Tom's

Cabin" is the most prominent. The circulation and fame of this book

have been the most remarkable phenomenon in the annals of literature.

Within a year, more than two hundred thousand copies were sold in the

United States, and fully a million in England. Thirteen different

translations were issued in Germany, four in France, and two in Russia;

the Magyar language boasted three separate versions; the Wallachian,

two; the Welsh, two; and the Dutch, two; while the Armenian, Arabic,

Romaic, and all the European languages had at least one version. The

book was dramatized in not less than twenty different forms, and was

acted all over Europe. In France, and still more in England, all other

books and all other subjects became, for the time, secondary to "Uncle

Tom's Cabin." This extraordinary popularity was chiefly due to the

importance and novelty of the subject treated. Mrs. Stowe imparted a

considerable narrative interest to her work, and gave to her characters

a very life-like effect. Her pathetic and humorous scenes are natural

and well arranged. The peculiarities of negro life and habits of

thought are placed before the reader with genuine sympathy and truth.

Uncle Tom and Topsy are fine and original creations. But taken simply

as a novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not more remarkable than a hundred

others, and cannot compete with such works as "Tom Jones," "Adam Bede,"

or "David Copperfield." Mrs. Stowe's extraordinary success was fully

deserved, but it resulted less from the literary excellence of her

work, than from the fact that when one great subject rose pre-eminent

in the public mind, she was able to embody it in a popular and easily

comprehended form. Gilmore Simms and John P. Kennedy have contributed

largely to the novel of Southern life. Mr. G.W. Cable is now studying

Louisiana characters, and Judge Tourgee the general condition of the

South since the war.

Novels descriptive of Western life have been written by Charles Fenno

Hoffman, James Hall, Timothy Flint, Thomas, and O'Connell. But none of

these writers have given such original sketches of character, or have

so graphically portrayed the spirit of life in the far West as Mr.

Bret Harte. "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and the other stories of this

talented writer have opened a vein of romance where it was least

expected.

American fiction has been exceptionally rich in stories adapted to the

juvenile mind, among which the most prominent are Mrs. Whitney's "Faith

Gartney's Girlhood," Miss Alcott's "Little Women," and Mr. T.B.

Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy." Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of the

Grotesque and the Arabesque," are remarkable for intensity and

vividness of conception, combined with a circumstantial invention

almost equal to that of Defoe. Mrs. Burnett and Mr. J.W. De Forest are

still writing excellent novels of American life; and Mr. Henry James,

Jr., is studying that peculiar form of human nature known as the

American in Europe.[210]

[Footnote 210: Other American writers of fiction:--R.B. Kimball, Herman

Melville, Dr. R. Bird, John Neal, H.W. Longfellow, Washington Allston,

Maria S. Cummins, W.G. Simms, Theodore Winthrop, Mary J. Holmes, Mrs.

Terhune, Augusta Evans Wilson, Catherine Sedgwick Valerio.]

VII.

The historical novel is obviously a subdivision of the novel of life

and manners. But, dealing as it does with remote ages, with forgotten

opinions and long-disused customs, it has to reconstruct where the

novel of contemporary life has only to illustrate. Strict historical

accuracy can hardly be expected in fiction concerned with the past. The

details of life, always difficult to seize, are almost beyond the reach

of the novelist who deals with a subject with which he has had no

personal experience. A certain amount of accuracy concerning dress,

customs, peculiarities of opinion and language are necessary to give to

a historical novel the effect of verisimilitude. But what is chiefly

requisite in such a work is that the general spirit of the period

treated should be successfully caught; that the reader should find

himself occupied with a train of associations and sympathies which

insensibly withdraws his thoughts from their ordinary channels, and

occupies them with the beliefs, opinions, and aspirations of a totally

different state of society.

Such is the special merit of Scott's historical novels. Many

inaccuracies of fact might be pointed out in them. His study of the

character of James I, in "The Fortunes of Nigel," is in several

respects entirely mistaken. His description of a euphuist in "The

Monastery" bears no resemblance whatever to the followers of John Lyly.

In "The Talisman" and in "Ivanhoe," of which the scenes are laid in the

time of Richard Coeur de Lion, the reader recognises little realism

of language. But as Scott's historical novels deal with periods

extending from that of the crusades down to the Pretender's attempt in

1745, an intimate knowledge of the innumerable social changes and

peculiarities is not to be expected.

It is, indeed, to be doubted that a novelist can so reproduce a distant

epoch as to satisfy the ideas of careful historical students. He can,

however, make familiar to his readers the general spirit of a time.

And, in this, Scott was eminently successful. "Kenilworth" gives a

vivid picture of the gay picturesqueness of Elizabeth's age.

"Woodstock" contains a fine contrast between the Cavalier and the

Puritan character. "Quentin Durward" affords a lasting impression of

the times of Louis XI and Charles the Bold. Scott's strong national

feeling and his intense sympathy with the traditions of his native land

naturally gave to his Scotch fictions a particular historical value.

"The Legend of Montrose," describing the civil war in the sixteenth

century; "Old Mortality," dealing with the rebellion of the

Covenanters; and "Waverley," occupied with the Pretender's troubles in

the middle of the eighteenth century, threw into bold relief widely

differing periods of Scotch history. Its is, indeed, extraordinary that

one mind should have been able to seize so many and so varied

historical conditions as are treated in the Waverley novels. Of these

works, about fourteen deal with entirely distinct epochs, each one of

which is given its individual character and obtains its appropriate

treatment.[211]

Bulwer Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii," and "Harold, the Last of the

Saxon Kings," are both powerful, ingenious, and interesting narratives,

and they give as definite an idea, perhaps, of the times of which they

treat as is possible after so long a lapse of time. "Rienzi" leaves a

greater impression of verisimilitude. "The Last of the Barons" is

somewhat clogged by its superabundance of historic incident, but still

affords a striking view of declining feudalism. In the "Tale of Two

Cities" and "Barnaby Rudge," Dickens described the sanguinary scenes of

the French Revolution and the Lord Gordon Riots with his never-failing

power. Since the Waverley novels, the most perfect specimen of English

historical fiction has been "Henry Esmond." The artistic construction

of its plot, and the life-like reality of its characters, place it

first among Thackeray's works. But its pre-eminence among historical

novels is due to the fact that it reproduces so vividly the spirit and

atmosphere of a past age. All the thoughts, opinions, and actions of

the characters in "Henry Esmond" are such as we should expect from

persons living in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Whoever is

familiar with the pages of the "Spectator" will notice how faithfully

Thackeray adopted the language of Steele and Addison. It is true that

he had a far less difficult task before him in describing the age of

Queen Anne than fell to the lot of Bulwer Lytton in "The Last Days of

Pompeii." The latter work required far more historical research and a

far greater effort of the imagination. But while in Lytton's novel the

reader cannot divest himself of a certain sense of unreality, he feels

that "Henry Esmond" really carries him back to the period it portrays.

George Eliot's "Romola" must always retain a high place in historical

fiction. But its author's great creative power led her to bestow more

pains on such of the characters as proceeded from her own imagination,

than on those whom history provided ready-made. The reader's memory

retains a more vivid impression of Tito than it does of Savonarola.

Charles Kingsley's "Hypatia" and "Westward Ho!" are among the most

prominent of recent historical novels. The latter aimed at describing

the time of Elizabeth, but resembles more closely that of Cromwell.

John Gibson Lockhart, in "Valerius," and Mr. Wilkie Collins in

"Antonina," have studied the life of ancient Rome. James Fenimore

Cooper in "The Spy" and "The Pioneers" threw into bold relief the

stirring incidents of American colonial and revolutionary times.

Nathaniel Hawthorne reproduced the spirit of Puritan New England in

"The Scarlet Letter," of which mention has already been made.

[Footnote 211: Horace Smith, Sir T.D. Lauder, and G.P.R. James are

well-known historical novelists who have written under the influence of

Scott. W. Harrison Ainsworth has made use of historical material in

"The Tower of London," and similar writings.]

VIII.

The novel of purpose may be defined as a work of fiction of which the

main object is to teach a lesson or to advocate a principle. Strictly

speaking, every good novel has a purpose, or some well-defined aim, if

it be only that of affording entertainment. But the novel of purpose

distinctly subordinates the amusement of the reader to his improvement

or information. With a few exceptions, such as "The Fool of Quality,"

this species of fiction is the product of the nineteenth century. It

has special difficulties to contend against. To combine a didactic aim

with artistic excellence is among the most difficult of literary

experiments. If the lesson or principle to be inculcated be given too

much prominence, the reader who opens the book for entertainment will

shut it very soon in spite of any prospective self-improvement. If

narrative interest or artistic beauty be the most striking feature of

the work, its serious aim will be unnoticed. The safest plan for the

writer of the novel of purpose to pursue, is to openly acknowledge his

object, and to place that object before the reader in as attractive a

manner as possible. But he cannot expect to attain success unless the

principle he advocates be one of general interest and importance. Nor

can he expect, when that principle has obtained acceptance, that the

work in which it is urged can have any further prominence. He must be

content that his object is attained, and that his book, having served

its purpose, falls into obscurity.

Some of Miss Edgeworth's tales, and such novels as Miss Brunton's

"Self-Control" and "Discipline," were among the earliest specimens of

fiction having the professed object of moral improvement. These books

were very popular at a time when a well-justified prejudice against

novels prevailed. But since the character of fiction has been raised to

its present standard of purity, professedly moral novels have become

unnecessary for general reading. The successors of Miss Edgeworth's and

Miss Brunton's works now appear in the form of temperance novels and

Sunday-school books. A curious form of the novel of purpose is that

written in the interest of religious sects or special tenets, of which

specimens may be found in the writings of Elizabeth M. Sewell, who

advocated High Church doctrines. Harriet Martineau made very successful

use of fiction in conveying her ideas on political economy. In "Ginx's

Baby," by Mr. Edward Jenkins, the popularity and interest of a

political pamphlet had been greatly increased by the assistance of a

narrative form.

The most important specimens of the novel of purpose are those written

in the interest of some injured or suffering class. A mere recital of

general grievances is not likely to have much effect on the public

mind. But a novelist who can interest a considerable body of readers in

a few well-chosen characters, who can subject his fictitious personages

to the evils which he means to expose, and thus arouse the sympathy and

indignation of a large number of people, can make a novel of purpose a

very effective weapon of reform. Individuals are much more interesting

than bodies of men, and the sufferings of little Oliver Twist or of the

inmates of Dotheboys Hall, as related by Dickens, will arouse public

attention far more actively than the report of an examining committee.

But although a novelist may accomplish great results by such devotion

to a philanthrophic object, he can hardly avoid injury to the artistic

effect and permanent value of his work. Many passages in Dickens'

novels which have had a great influence in the cause of reform, cannot

fail, in the future, when the evil exposed is no longer felt, to be a

drag on the works which contain them.

Charles Kingsley described the grievances of mechanics in "Alton

Locke," a work in which the artistic elements are much subordinated to

the didactic. A more powerful novel of purpose is Mrs. Gaskell's "Mary

Barton," which enlists the sympathies of the reader very strongly with

the trials of the manufacturing classes. Not of more literary

excellence, but dealing with a subject of far wider interest than that

of "Mary Barton," was the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of Mrs. Stowe. This work

is a wonderful example of the capacities of fiction for moving the

public mind. Before its publication, great numbers of ordinarily humane

people had a general, ill defined horror of slavery. It was felt to be

a barbarous institution, a blot on American civilization. But to most

people it was a distant abuse, with which they seldom or never came in

contact, and of which they only heard the evil effects in a general

way. But with the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" the whole Northern

public were brought face to face with the question of slavery. Here

were individuals, made real and interesting by the power of the

novelist, subjected to tyranny and suffering from which every generous

nature recoiled. Slavery then assumed a new and more personal aspect,

and thousands who were indifferent to the rights of the negroes in

general felt a sympathy with the fate of Uncle Tom which easily

extended to the sufferings of the whole race. But the extraordinary

reputation and circulation given to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by the

world-wide interest in its subject, could not be sustained when public

interest in that subject declined; and the volume which at one time

occupied the attention of the whole civilized world, fell into

comparative obscurity when its mission was accomplished.

IX.

Works of fiction occupied with purely imaginary or supernatural

subjects have been comparatively rare. While Byron, Shelley and his

wife were living at the Lake of Geneva, a rainy week kept them indoors,

and all three occupied themselves with reading or inventing ghost

stories. Mrs. Shelley, who was the daughter of Godwin the novelist, and

who inherited his intensity of imagination, reproduced the impressions

then made upon her mind in the remarkable but disagreeable romance of

"Frankenstein." The story is related by a young student, who creates a

monstrous being from materials gathered in the tomb and the

dissecting-room. When the creature is made complete with bones,

muscles, and skin, it acquires life and commits atrocious crimes. It

murders a friend of the student, strangles his bride, and finally comes

to an end in the Northern seas. While some parts of the story are

written with considerable power, the general effect is exceedingly

unpleasant. Bulwer Lytton's "Zanoni," a peculiarly fanciful work,

unfolds the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. In "Alice's Adventures in

Wonderland," the freaks and vagaries of the imagination in sleep are

vividly traced. The curious mixture of the actual and the unreal, the

merging of wholly different ideas in one conception, so frequent in

dreams, are described with extraordinary skill and delicacy. The

childlike simplicity of Alice's mind is charmingly maintained, and the

exquisite vein of humor which runs through the whole book makes it one

of the most delightful as well as one of the most remarkable of

fictions.

X.

In an article published in _The Ninteenth Century_, Mr. Anthony

Trollope expressed his views on the good and evil influences exerted by

works of fiction, and he has repeated very much the same opinions in

his interesting book on Thackeray.[212] "However poor your matter may

be," he says, "however near you may come to that 'foolishest of

existing mortals,' as Carlyle presumes some unfortunate novelist to be,

still, if there be those who read your works, they will undoubtedly be

more or less influenced by what they find there. And it is because the

novelist amuses that he is thus influential. The sermon too often has

no such effect, because it is applied with the declared intention of

having it. The palpable and overt dose the child rejects; but that

which is cunningly insinuated by the aid of jam or honey is accepted

unconsciously, and goes on its curative mission. So it is with the

novel. It is taken because of its jam and honey. But, unlike the

honest, simple jam and honey of the household cupboard, it is never

unmixed with physic. There will be the dose within it, either curative

or poisonous. The girl will be taught modesty or immodesty, truth or

falsehood; the lad will be taught honor or dishonor, simplicity or

affectation. Without the lesson the amusement will not be there. There

are novels which certainly teach nothing; but then neither can they

amuse any one. I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my

own confraternity if I were to declare that the bulk of the young

people in the upper and middle classes receive their moral teaching

chiefly from the novels they read. Mothers would no doubt think of

their own sweet teaching: fathers of the examples which they set: and

schoolmasters of the influence of their instructions. Happy is the

country that has such mothers, fathers, schoolmasters! But the novelist

creeps in closer than the schoolmaster, closer than the father, closer

almost than the mother. He is the chosen guide, the tutor whom the

young pupil chooses for herself. She retires with him, suspecting no

lesson, safe against rebuke, throwing herself head and heart into the

narration as she can hardly do into her task-work; and there she is

taught how she shall learn to love; how she shall receive the lover

when he comes; how far she should advance to meet the joy; why she

should be reticent, and not throw herself at once into this new

delight. It is the same with the young man, though he would be more

prone even than she to reject the suspicion of such tutorship. But he,

too, will there learn either to speak the truth, or to lie; and will

receive from his novel lessons either of real manliness, or of that

affected apishness and tailor-begotten demeanor which too many

professors of the craft give out as their dearest precepts."

Such are the views of a close observer of human nature, whose works

have had an exceedingly wide and an always excellent influence. While

Mr. Trollope has probably exaggerated the educational power of the

novel, it cannot be denied that this form of literature takes a

considerable part in moulding the opinions and standards of the young.

The impressions of life derived from novels are almost as strong as

those we receive from what is passing in the world about us. If a work

of fiction form a truthful reflection of nature, it must hold up to

the reader's view examples of evil as well as examples of good; it must

deal with depravity as well as with virtue. And, therefore, all that

can be expected from the novelist is that he should endeavor to

represent life as it is, with its due apportionment of beauty and of

ugliness. And so much is demanded not only by the moralist, but by the

critic. Many writers who have described the life of criminals, who have

endeavored to make infamous careers attractive, and have pandered to

the lower tastes of the reading public, would urge in their own

defence: that they have nothing to do with morality; that their object

is to produce a work of art; that no question of the good or evil

effect of their writing should be allowed to trammel their imagination.

But the critic would rightly reply, that truth at least must be

respected in a work of art; that the imagination must not be allowed

the liberty of misrepresentation; and that the novelist in whose pages

vice predominates, or is given an alluring aspect, is no more artistic

than the writer of Sunday-school books. In judging the influence

exerted by the great body of writers of fiction whose names have been

mentioned in this chapter, I shall therefore proceed on the

understanding that that novelist who writes almost exclusively of good

people is not necessarily the one whose influence has been the best,

nor that he who has drawn many weak or evil-doing characters has

necessarily taught the worst lessons. The standard by which we must

judge an author, as well from an artistic as from a moral point of

view, must be founded on the recognition that both good and evil

prevail in the world, and that whoever undertakes to give a picture of

life must paint both the evil and the good in their true colors.

In commenting on the fiction of the eighteenth century, its prevailing

coarseness was reprehended. But this characteristic was objected to on

the score of taste, but not at all on that of truth or morality. The

novelist of that time would not have faithfully represented the society

about him had he not allowed himself that license which universally

prevailed. Nor could the coarseness of the eighteenth-century writer be

objected to on moral grounds. Morality is concerned with thoughts, not

with expression. Whether we speak plainly the ideas in our mind,

whether we communicate them by means of some, circumlocution, or

whether we keep them wholly to ourselves, is a matter of fashion, not

of morality.[213] Our great-grandmothers were not less chaste because

they spoke of things regarding which we remain silent in a mixed

society: they were simply less squeamish. Mrs. Behn in her day, and

Fielding in his, described a licentious scene openly and honestly

without a suspicion of evil.

But a great change has come over public taste, and I may even say over

public morality, during the present century. Licentious conduct is no

longer a venial offence; gross and immodest expressions are no longer

allowed in respectable society. The improvement has certainly been

great, although not as great as it seems. Out of our higher morality,

out of our new and boasted refinement, has sprung a vice more ugly than

coarseness, more degrading than sensuality, and that vice is hypocrisy,

which shelters all others behind its deceptive mask. Many a parent now

winks at the hidden vice of a son, the exposure of which would fill him

with shame and indignation. Thousands of young men feel that they can

privately lead a life of dissipation, so long as they keep a

respectable face to the world. It is not the vice that society

punishes, it is the being found out. So when we think of our improved

morality and refinement, we must temper our pride with the reflection

that we may be simply more hypocritical, and not more virtuous than our

ancestors. Still, the fact that licentiousness must now wear a mask of

respectability, that social status is now greatly affected by moral

worth, shows that a real advance has been made. This advance has left

plainly marked traces on the fiction of our time, where, too, we shall

find plentiful evidence of that hypocrisy which has become our

besetting sin.

As we look back upon the list of the great authors who have written in

the present century, it must be with a feeling of gratitude for the

benefits they have conferred. They have devoted their lives to the

production of literary works, the beauty and excellence of which have

incalculably elevated the public taste. They have held up ideals and

noble conceptions which insensibly impart a dignity to life, and an

encouragement to youthful aspiration. They have described so truthfully

and sympathetically the character and aims of different classes and

different peoples, that whoever reads their works cannot but feel

himself drawn nearer to great divisions of the human race, which he had

hitherto regarded with an indifferent or a prejudiced eye. The novels

of Scott, of Dickens, of Thackeray, of George Eliot, of Miss Austen, of

Miss Ferrier, of very many others, have afforded to hundreds of

thousands, young and old, a never failing source of healthful

entertainment. Domestic life, as well in the cottage as the castle, has

been cheered and enlivened by their presence. Their examples of

heroism, of patience, of generosity, have excited the emulation of the

young, while their pictures of selfishness and vice have stifled many

an evil inclination and have given birth to many a good resolution.

Such writers as these have expressed the best tendencies of the age.

And they have been able to do so because they themselves are among the

best men and women of their time. But, unfortunately, as the nineteenth

century has many evil characteristics, and as depraved and weak-minded

persons are often endowed with some literary capacity, a great deal of

poisonous matter has unavoidably come to the surface in English

fiction. The writers who have prostituted their talents in pandering to

the low tastes of their readers, have carefully avoided any such open

representation of vice as was permissible in the last century. But they

have hidden under an outward respectability of words the most immoral

and degrading thoughts. They have recognized the fact that a not

inconsiderable number of persons would be be glad to find in a work of

fiction the same gross ideas which occupy their own minds. And thus a

more dangerous, because a more insidious, species of literature has

sprung up. The absence of parental censorship, the general freedom with

which works of fiction are allowed to enter almost every household,

permit these novels to fall into the hands of the youngest and most

susceptible. The young girl or boy whose parents carefully put away the

newspaper which contains an account of a divorce trial or a rape, is

very possibly reading a novel of which the main interest lies in a

detailed description of a seduction. It is not of the so-called "dime

novels" or of the stories published in a police gazette to which

reference is made, but to books issued by respectable publishers and

often written by women. Of these novels, the subject is the unlawful

gratification of the passions. Bigamy, seduction, adultery, are the

incidents on which the story turns, and an effort is always made by the

novelist to give to the sinners as attractive and interesting an aspect

as possible, and to hold up any respectable people who may appear in

the book to the contempt and derision of the reader. Perhaps we would

be wrong in blaming a writer for his or her vulgarity. This is a fault

into which some authors fall unconsciously, and is a part of their

nature which they cannot shake off. If Rhoda Broughton or "Ouida" were

to cease being vulgar in print, they would be obliged to stop writing

altogether, a public benefit which we can hardly expect them to confer.

But we have a right to severely call an author to task for representing

vice in an attractive aspect, for condoning offences against morality,

for depicting licentiousness as unattended by retributive consequences.

In so doing, a writer is false to art and to nature, as well as to

morality.

Critics have done their utmost to discourage and expose this kind of

literature. The pages of _The Spectator_, of _The Saturday Review_, of

_The Athenæum_, of _The London Examiner_, of _The Nation_, are full of

reviews which denounce in unmeasured terms the vulgarity and pruriency

of much of the fiction of the present day. But their censure can have

little practical effect. So long as a class of corrupt readers exists,

so long will evil-minded men and women find a sale for the low

conceptions of their depraved minds. Parents alone, by supervising the

reading of their children, can prevent the evil effects of immoral

novels. Some may think that I have exaggerated the bad characteristics

of modern fiction. A few examples of objectionable works will be found

at the foot of this page,[214] an acquaintance with which will sustain

my remarks.

The reader may possibly object that these are obscure names in

literature, and that they represent writers whose works are ephemeral.

The names chosen are the most prominent in the class to which they

belong. Their obscurity is a redeeming feature of the society which can

tolerate their existence. Although writers are able to find a sale for

the most disgusting productions; although the critic is continually

obliged, in reviewing current literature, to wade through the nastiest

mire, it yet remains certain that public taste is not pleased with the

vile. A limited circulation will be found for immoral novels among a

depraved class, but it is to be said, for the credit of the nineteenth

century, that talents prostituted can never bring fame. The conceptions

of a Goldsmith, a Scott, a Dickens, a Thackeray, a George Eliot, remain

among the dearest possessions of all English-speaking people. But the

unhealthy, unnatural, and hideous pictures given to the world by

vicious men and women receive the same wages as the sin they portray.

[Footnote 212: In Mr. John Morley's edition of "English Men of

Letters," chapter ix.]

[Footnote 213: See Macaulay on "The Comic Dramatists."]

[Footnote 214: See "Strathmore," and others, by "Ouida"; "Not Wisely,

But Too Well," "Red as a Rose Is She," "Joan," by Rhoda Broughton;

"Cherry Ripe," by Helen Mathers; "The Lovels of Arden," by Miss

Braddon; "Under which Lord?" by Mrs E.L. Linton; "A Romance of the

Nineteenth Century," by W.H. Mallock; "Children of Nature," by the Earl

of Desart. A long list of very nasty books might easily be added, but

these will be sufficient to illustrate the bad tendencies of fiction,

and to show how thoroughly female authors have kept pace in immodesty

and indecency with their rivals of the less pretentious sex.]

THE END.

INDEX.

Addison, 180

Ainsworth, H., 303

Alcott, Miss, 312

Aldrich, T.B., 312

Alexander, Mrs., 288

Alice's Adventures in Wonder Land, 319

Allston, W., 312

Amadis of Gaul, 46

"Arcadia," Greene's, 83

---- Sidney's, 92

"Argenis", 101, _note_

Arthur, King, 21, 39

---- Combat with Accolon, 31

Atalantis, The New, 123

Austen, Jane, 287

Banim, John, 285

Barclay, Robert, 101, _note_

Barham, R.H., 291

Beckford, W., 247

Behn, Aphra, 125

Bird, R., 312

Black, W., 284

Blessington, Mrs., 302, _note_

Boyle, Roger, 121

Brackenridge, H.H., 307

Braddon, M.E., 327, 288

Bray, A.E., 291

Brooke, H., 243

Brooks, S., 302, _note_

Broughton, R., 327

Brown, C.B., 306

Brunton, Mrs., 316

Bunbury, S., 291

Bunyan, John, 106

Burnett, Mrs., 312

Burney, Miss, 251

Bury, Lady C., 302, _note_

Cable, G.W., 311

Calprenède, 119

Carleton, W., 285

Chamier, Capt., 304

Charlemagne, 21, 24

Chaucer, 42

Chetwind, Mrs., 291

Chivalry, Decline of, 45

---- Origin of, 17

---- Rise of, 9

---- Romances of, chap., 1

---- Theory and Practice of, 14

Clarke, M.C., 291

Cobbold, R., 302, _note_

Coke, H., 302, _note_

Collins, M., 302, _note_

Collins, W., 292, 315

Cooper, J.F., 307, 315

Costello, L.S., 291

Craik, G., 295

Croker, T.C., 285

Crowe, C., 291

Crowe, Mrs., 291

Crowley, G., 302, _note_

Cummins, M.S., 312

Cunningham, A., 281

Dacre, Lady, 302, _note_

Dana, R.H., 307

D'Arblay, Mme., 281

Defoe, D., 183

De Forest, J.W., 312

Deloney, T., 51

De Quincey, T., 302, _note_

Desart, Earl of, 327

Dickens, C., 295, 314

D'Israeli, B., 293

Drury, A.H., 206

Edgeworth, M., 285

"Eliana", 121

Eliot, George, 288, 315

Ellis, G., 291

"Euphues", 76

Euphuism, 76, 82, _note_

Excalibur, 26, 39

Ferrier, Miss, 284, 287

Fielding, Henry, 203

Flint, T., 311

Ford, E., 47, _note_

Fraser, J.B., 305

Fraser-Tytler, C.C., 291

Friar Bacon, 52

Friar Rush, 54

Fullerton, Lady G., 291

Fullom, S.W., 302, _note_

Galahad, Sir, 35, 37

Galt, John, 284

Gaskell, Mrs., 287, 318

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 24

"George-a-Green", 50

Glassock, Capt., 304

Gleig, G.R., 304

Godwin, Francis, 101, _note_

Godwin, W., 248

Goldsmith, O., 227

Gomberville, 119

Gore, Mrs., 303, _note_

Grant, James, 304

Grant, M.M., 291

Grattan, T.C., 286

Graves, 248

Greene, Robert, 82

Griffin, Gerald, 286

Guenever, 23, 34, 39

Gulliver's Travels, 173

Hale, E.E., 310

Hall, J., 311

Hall, S.C., 286

Hamilton, E., 284

Hannay, J., 302, _note_

Hardy, T., 302, _note_

Harte, Bret, 312

Hawthorne, N., 309

"Helyas", 46, _note_

Heroic Romance, 119

Heywood, Mrs., 193

Higginson, T.W., 310

Hoffman, C.F., 311

Hogg, 284

Holcroft, T., 248

Holland, J.G., 308

Holmes, M.J., 314

Holmes, O.W., 310

Hook, Theodore, 291

Hope's "Anastasius", 305

Howard, 304

Howells, W.D., 310

Howitt, M., 291

Howitt, W., 302, _note_

Hubback, Mrs., 291

Hughes, Thomas, 292

Humor in Sidney's "Arcadia", 100

---- in the "Morte d'Arthur", 40

Ideality in Fiction, 111

Igraine, 25

Inchbald, Mrs., 255

Irving, W., 308

Isould, 34

"Jack, the Giant-killer", 24

James, G.P.R., 311

James, H., Jr., 312

Jenkins, E., 317

Jerrold, Douglas, 302 _note_

Jewsbury, Geraldine, 291

Johnson, Dr., 234

Johnson, R., 46, _note_

Johnstone, C., 240

Johnstone, Mrs., 284

Judd, S., 310

Kavanagh, Miss, 219

Kennedy, J.P., 311

Kimball, R.B., 312

Kingsley, C., 291, 315, 318

"Lady of the Lake", 26

Lamb, Lady C., 302, _note_

Launcelot, 22, 34, 39

Lauder, Sir T.D., 284, 314

Lawrence, Geo. A., 303

"Lear, King", 24

Lee, Harriet and Sophia, 256

Lennox, C., 254

Lever, C.J., 286

Lewes, G.H., 302, _note_

Lewis, 269

Linton, E.L., 327

Lister, T.H., 302, _note_

Lockhart, 284, 315

Lodge, T., 88

Longfellow, H.W., 312

Lover, S., 285

Lyly, J., 75

Lytton, Bulwer, 293, 314, 319

MacCarthy, J., 266

MacDonald, G., 284

Mackay, C., 302, _note_

Mackenzie, H., 241

Marquoid, Mrs., 291

Malory, Sir Thomas, 25

Mallock, W. H., 327, _note_

"Man in the Moon", 101, _note_

Manley, Mrs., 123

Mapes, Walter, 24

Marryat, Capt., 304

Marryat, F., 291

Marsh, Mrs., 291

Martineau, H., 317

Mathers, H., 327

Maturin, 269

Maxwell, W.H., 304

Meliadus, 25

Melville, H., 312

Merlin, 24

Miller, H., 284

Miller, T., 302, _note_

Mitford, M.R., 288

Moir, 284

Moore, Dr., 248

Moore, Sir T., 56

Morier, J., 305

Morgan, Lady, 286

Morgana, 26

Morley, Countess of, 302, _note_

"Morte d'Arthur", 24, 40

Mulock, Miss, 288

Napier, E., 304

Neal, J., 312

Newcastle, Duchess of, 122

Normanby, Marquis of, 302, _note_

Norton, Hon. Mrs., 291

Novel, Development of, _see_ Addison, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding

Novel, in the xixth Century, 274

---- of American Life, 305

---- of English Life, 291

---- of Irish Life, 285

---- of Scotch Life, 280

---- Criminal, 303

---- Fashionable, 303

---- Historical, 313

---- Immoral, 303

---- Military, 304

---- Muscular, 303

---- Naval, 304

---- Oriental, 305

---- of fancy, 319

---- of purpose, 316

O'Connell, 311

Oliphant, Mrs., 284

Opie, Mrs., 286

"Ornatus and Artexia", 46, _note_

"Oroonoko", 126

Orrery, Earl of, 121

Ouida, 303, 326

Palmerin of England, 46

Palomides, Sir, 35

"Pandosto", 85

Pardoe, Miss, 305

"Parismus", 47, _note_

Parthenissa, 121

Payn, J., 302, _note_

Peacock, T.L., 302, _note_

Pendragon, Uther, 25

Perceval le Gallois, 25

"Pheander", 17, _note_

Phelps, E.S., 310

Philips, S., 302, _note_

"Philomela", 86

Picken, 284

"Pilgrim's Progress", 108

Poe, E.A., 312

Porter, Jane, 284

Porter, Maria, 284

Power, M.A., 291

Radcliffe, Ann, 265

Reach, A.B., 302, _note_

Reade, C., 291

Realism, 279

Reeve, Clara, 264

Religious Revival, 220

Richardson, Samuel, 193

Ritchie, L., 302, _note_

Robin Hood, 47

"Robert the Devil," 47, _note_

Roberts, H., 47, _note_

Romantic Revival, 259

"Rosalynde," 88

Round Table, 26, 33, 38

Rowson, S., 306

"Saint Gréal," 25, 35

Sala, Geo. Aug., 302, _note_

Scott, Michael, 304

Scott, Sir Walter, 280, 313

Scudéri, 119

Sedgwick, C.M., 310

"Seven Champions of Christendom," 46, _note_

Sewell, E., 291

Sewell, E.M., 317

Shelley, Mrs., 319

Sidney, Sir Phillip, 91

Simms, G., 311

Simms, W., 312

Sinclair, C., 307

Smedley, F.E., 302, _note_

Smith, A., 302, _note_

Smith, C., 257

Smith, H., 314

Smollett, T., 211

Sterne, L., 231

St. John, J.A., 302, _note_

Stowe, H.B., 310, 318

Stretton, H., 291

Strickland, A., 291

Swift, J., 170

Tautphoeus, Baroness, 287

Taylor, B., 308

Terhune, Mrs., 312

Thackeray, Miss, 287

Thackeray, W.M., 298, 314

Thomas, 311

"Thomas of Reading," 50

Thornbury, W., 302, _note_

"Tom-a-Lincoln," 46

Tourgee, Judge, 311

Trelawney, 304

Tristram, 22, 25, 30, 34

Trollope, A., 294, 295

Trollope, Mrs., 287

Trollope, T.A., 302, _note_

Tupper, M.F., 302, _note_

Turner, T., Diary of, 221

Tytler, S., 297

Valerio, C.S., 312

Walpole, Horace, 259

Ward, R. Plumer, 291

Warren, S., 291

Wetherell, E., 291

Whitly, F.M., 302, _note_

Whitney, Mrs., 312

Whyte-Melville, G.J., 302, _note_

Wilson, A.E., 312

Wilson, Prof., 284

Williams, F., 302, _note_

Willis, N.P., 308

Winthrop, T., 312

Wood, Mrs. H, 287

Wraxall, C.L., 302, _note_

Yates, E., 302, _note_

Yonge, Miss, 287