WHAT IS A NOVEL?

My answer can only be a statement of opinion, which I make with much

deference to the prejudices of my brethren. Whether it will be of

interest to general readers I do not know; but the question I propose is

in itself more or less vital as regards novel-writing. No one will deny

that truism. Before going to work it is important to know what one means

to do. I pretend, however, to no special gift for solving problems in

general or this one in particular. To give “the result of one’s

experience,” as the common phrase puts it, is by no means so easy as it

sounds. An intelligent man mostly knows what he means by his own words,

but it does not follow that he can convey that meaning to others. Almost

all discussion and much misunderstanding may fairly be said to be based

upon the difference between the definitions of common terms as

understood by the two parties. In the exact sciences there is no such

thing as discussion; there is the theorem and its demonstration, there

is the problem and its solution, from which solution and demonstration

there is no appeal. That is because, in mathematics, every word is

defined before it is used and is almost meaningless until it has been

defined.

It has been remarked by a very great authority concerning the affairs of

men that “of making many books there is no end,” and to judge from

appearances the statement is even more true to-day than when it was

first made. Especially of making novels there is no end, in these times

of latter-day literature. No doubt many wise and good persons and many

excellent critics devoutly wish that there might be; but they are not at

present strong enough to stand against us, the army of fiction-makers,

because we are many, and most of us do not know how to do anything else,

and have grown grey in doing this particular kind of work, and are

dependent upon it for bread as well as butter; and lastly and chiefly,

because we are heavily backed, as a body, by the capital of the

publisher, of which we desire to obtain for ourselves as much as

possible. Therefore novels will continue to be written, perhaps for a

long time to come. There is a demand for them and there is profit in

producing them. Who shall prevent us, authors and publishers, from

continuing the production and supplying the demand?

This brings with it a first answer to the question, “What is a novel?” A

novel is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed

“luxuries,” as not contributing directly to the support of life or the

maintenance of health. It is of the class “artistic luxuries” because it

does not appeal to any of the three material senses--touch, taste,

smell; and it is of the class “intellectual artistic luxuries,” because

it is not judged by the superior senses--sight and hearing. The novel,

therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury--a definition which can be

made to include a good deal, but which is, in reality, a closer one than

it appears to be at first sight. No one, I think, will deny that it

covers the three principal essentials of the novel as it should be, of a

story or romance, which in itself and in the manner of telling it shall

appeal to the intellect, shall satisfy the requirements of art, and

shall be a luxury, in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at

work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours

of idleness. The point upon which people differ is the artistic one, and

the fact that such differences of opinion exist makes it possible that

two writers as widely separated as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Rider

Haggard, for instance, find appreciative readers in the same year of the

same century--a fact which the literary history of the future will find

it hard to explain.

Probably no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse

and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should

instruct as well as afford amusement, and the “novel-with-a-purpose” is

the realisation of this idea. We might invent a better expression than

that clumsy translation of the neat German “_Tendenz-Roman_.” Why not

compound the words and call the odious thing a “purpose-novel”? The

purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a

reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher. It

proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make

itself an “intellectual moral lesson” instead of an “intellectual

artistic luxury.” It constitutes a violation of the unwritten contract

tacitly existing between writer and reader. So far as supply and demand

are concerned, books in general and works of fiction in particular are

commodities and subject to the same laws, statutory and traditional, as

other articles of manufacture. A toy-dealer would not venture to sell

real pistols to little boys as pop-guns, and a gun-maker who should try

to sell the latter for army revolvers would get into trouble, even

though he were able to prove that the toy was as expensive to

manufacture as the real article, or more so, silver-mounted, chiselled,

and lying in a Russia-leather case. I am not sure that the law might not

support the purchaser in an action for damages if he discovered at a

critical moment that his revolver was a plaything. It seems to me that

there is a similar case in the matter of novels. A man buys what

purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a novel, a story of

adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at

his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebody’s views

on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws.

Such books are generally carefully suited with an attractive title. The

binding is as frivolous as can be desired. The bookseller says it is “a

work of great power,” and there is probably a sentimental dedication on

the fly-leaf to a number of initials to which a romantic appearance is

given by the introduction of a stray “St.” and a few hyphens. The buyer

is possibly a conservative person, of lukewarm religious convictions,

whose life is made “barren by marriage, or death, or division”--and who

takes no sort of interest in the laws relating to divorce, in the

invention of a new religion, or the position of the labour question. He

has simply paid money, on the ordinary tacit contract between furnisher

and purchaser, and he has been swindled, to use a very plain term for

which a substitute does not occur to me. Or say that a man buys a seat

in one of the regular theatres. He enters, takes his place, preparing to

be amused, and the curtain goes up. The stage is set as a church, there

is a pulpit before the prompter’s box, and the Right Reverend the Bishop

of the Diocese is on the point of delivering a sermon. The man would be

legally justified in demanding his money at the door, I fancy, and would

probably do so, though he might admit that the Bishop was the most

learned and edifying of preachers. There are indeed certain names and

prefixes to names which suggest serious reading, independently of the

words printed on the title-page of the book. If the Archbishop of

Canterbury, or General Booth, or the Emperor William published a novel,

for instance, the work might reasonably be expected to contain an

exposition of personal views on some question of the day. But in

ordinary cases the purpose-novel is a simple fraud, besides being a

failure in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.

What we call a novel may educate the taste and cultivate the

intelligence; under the hand of genius it may purify the heart and

fortify the mind; it should never under any circumstances be suffered to

deprave the one nor to weaken the other; it may stand for scores of

years--and a score of years is a long time in our day--as the exposition

of all that is noble, heroic, honest, and true in the life of woman or

man; but it has no right to tell us what its writer thinks about the

relations of labour and capital, nor to set up what the author conceives

to be a nice, original, easy scheme of salvation, any more than it has a

right to take for its theme the relative merits of the “broomstick-car”

and the “storage system,” temperance, vivisection, or the “Ideal Man” of

Confucius. Lessons, lectures, discussions, sermons, and didactics

generally belong to institutions set apart for especial purposes and

carefully avoided, after a certain age, by the majority of those who

wish to be amused. The purpose-novel is an odious attempt to lecture

people who hate lectures, to preach at people who prefer their own

church, and to teach people who think they know enough already. It is

an ambush, a lying-in-wait for the unsuspecting public, a violation of

the social contract--and as such it ought to be either mercilessly

crushed or forced by law to bind itself in black and label itself

“Purpose” in very big letters.

In art of all kinds the moral lesson is a mistake. It is one thing to

exhibit an ideal worthy to be imitated, though inimitable in all its

perfection, but so clearly noble as to appeal directly to the

sympathetic string that hangs untuned in the dullest human heart; to

make man brave without arrogance, woman pure without prudishness, love

enduring yet earthly, not angelic, friendship sincere but not

ridiculous. It is quite another matter to write a “guide to morality” or

a “hand-book for practical sinners” and call either one a novel, no

matter how much fiction it may contain. Wordsworth tried the moral

lesson and spoiled some of his best work with botany and the Bible. A

good many smaller men than he have tried the same thing since, and have

failed. Perhaps “Cain” and “Manfred” have taught the human heart more

wisdom than “Matthew” or the unfortunate “idiot boy” over whom Byron was

so mercilessly merry. And yet Byron probably never meant to teach any

one anything in particular, and Wordsworth meant to teach everybody,

including and beginning with himself.

There are, I believe, two recognised ways of looking at art: art for the

public or “art for art,” to adopt the current French phrase. Might we

not say, Art for the buyer and art for the seller? Or is that too

practical a view to take of what is supposed to be so eminently

unpractical as art itself? Has it not been said similarly, and with

truth, that religion is for man, and not man for religion? Is it our

province to please those who read our works, or to force them to please

us by buying them? Do not these questions lie at the root of the

conflict between realism and romance? Are we to take Talleyrand’s speech

as our guide?--“I have furnished you with an argument; I am not bound to

furnish you with an understanding.” The story is old, but the position

it defines is as old as humanity. When a novelist turns prophet, it will

be time enough for him to convert his readers at the point of the pen.

Are we writers so vain as a class, and so proud of ourselves as men, as

to be above affording amusement to our readers without attempting to

comfort them, to teach or to preach to them? We are not poets, because

we cannot be. We are not genuine playwriters for many reasons; chiefly,

perhaps, because we are not clever enough, since a successful play is

incomparably more lucrative than a successful novel. We are not

preachers, and few of us would be admitted to the pulpit. We are not, as

a class, teachers or professors, nor lawyers, nor men of business. We

are nothing more than public amusers. Unless we choose we need not be

anything less. Let us, then, accept our position cheerfully, and do the

best we can to fulfil our mission, without attempting to dignify it with

titles too imposing for it to bear, and without degrading it by bringing

its productions down even a little way, from the lowest level of high

comedy to the highest level of buffoonery. It is good to make people

laugh; it is sometimes salutary to make them shed tears; it is best of

all to make our readers think--not too serious thoughts, nor such as

require an intimate knowledge of science and philosophy to be called

thoughts at all--but to think, and, thinking, to see before them

characters whom they might really like to resemble, acting in scenes in

which they themselves would like to take a part. In trying to amuse, let

us be consistent each in his own way, never giving our public a pretext

of appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober. If we have poetry within

us, let us put such of it as is worth anything into our books, for

almost all poetry which deserves the name is good. But let us keep out

of our novels all that savours of preaching and teaching, for our

readers’ sakes; and for our own, all such matter as is limited by modern

science, present fashion, and actual taste, and which consequently

imposes too wilful a limitation upon the permanence of our own work.

But I perceive that although this little essay is not a work of fiction,

I myself am falling into one of the errors which I have wished to point

out, for I am beginning to preach where I have no right to inculcate a

lesson, and mean only to express a purely personal opinion in the only

matter upon which a novelist is justified in expressing one at all.

Moreover, I hereby disclaim all intention of setting an example, since

in many points upon which I have touched I admit that I myself am the

last of literary sinners; and with this admission of fallibility and

confession of weakness I cry _peccavi_, and ask absolution of the

public.

I do not wish to be accused of what is called smart writing. It is much

easier to attack than to defend and much more blessed to give hard

knocks than to receive them. A professed novelist is perhaps not a

competent judge of novels from the point of view which interests the

reader, and which is of course the reader’s own. We know the _technique_

of the trick better than the effect it produces, just as it is hard for

a conjuror to realise the sensations of the old gentleman in the

audience who finds a bowl of goldfish in his waistcoat pocket. We do not

all know one another’s tricks, but we have a fair idea of the general

principle on which they are done and a very definite opinion about our

own business as compared with that of the parson or the professor. We

know our books from the inside and we see the strings of the puppets,

while the public only guesses at the mechanism as it sits before the

stage, watching the marionettes and listening to the voice from behind

the scenes. A novel is, after all, a play, and perhaps it is nothing but

a substitute for the real play with live characters, scene-shifting, and

footlights. But miracle-plays have gone out of fashion in modern times,

except at Ober-Ammergau. The purpose-novel is a miracle-play--and if it

be true that any really good novel can be dramatised, nothing short of

a miracle could put a purpose-novel on the boards.

Most people have a very clear conception of what a good play ought to

be, and of the precise extent to which realism can be effective without

being offensive. But it is strange, and it is a bad sign of the times,

that persons who would not tolerate a coarse play read novels little, if

at all, short of indecent. An answer suggests itself which may be

comprehensive as an explanation, but is insufficient as an excuse. In

our Anglo-Saxon social system the young girl is everywhere, and, if the

shade of Sterne will allow me to say so, we temper the wind of our

realism to the sensitive innocence of the ubiquitous shorn lamb. Once

admit that the young girl is to have the freedom of our theatre, and it

follows, and ought to follow, and very generally does follow, that our

plays must be suited to maiden ears and eyes. It is a good thing that

this should be so, but the effect is rather strange. The men who hear

plays in English are not, perhaps, more moral than their contemporaries

of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. We like to believe that our women are

better than those of foreign nations. We owe it to them to put more

faith in them because they are our own, our dear mothers and wives and

sisters and daughters, for whom, if we be men, we mean to do all that

men can do. But we are all men and women nevertheless, and human, and

we have the thoughts and the understanding of men and women and not of

school-girls. Yet the school-girl practically decides what we are to

hear at the theatre and, so far as our own language is concerned,

determines to a great extent what we are to read.

But if we do not write for the young girl, who will? We have not the

advantage possessed by the French of satisfying the demands of young

people by translations from works in other languages. The young girl in

France, as a matter of fact, reads Walter Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens,

while her mother diverts her leisure with the more lively productions of

Paul Bourget, Guy de Maupassant, or possibly Balzac, whom all educated

Frenchmen and French-women are at least supposed to have read. The

advocate of a broader license in the English fiction of the future may

answer that the whole body of novels already in existence should be more

than sufficient for the delectation of “the young.” Should the

development of the new school, however, lead to the creation of a

literature in our language, resembling, as a whole, that of the French,

our novel, in its present form, would soon cease to be written, and

those of the type which are already in existence would in a short time

be regarded as antiquated, dull, and savouring of the Sunday-school.

Youth, too, dislikes to be treated as youth. The old, who regretfully

long to be young again, may find some consolation in the ardent desire

of youth for mature years. Moreover, it is easier to lower the reader’s

moral tone than to raise it ever so little. The ambition of all boys,

and probably of very many young girls, is to read such novels as their

parents do not habitually leave on the drawing-room table. Every boy

wants to read “Guy Livingstone,” and most boys do, with or without their

mamma’s permission, at a very early age. If we advanced so far as the

French realistic point of view, that book would become a common property

of boys and girls, and perhaps “Nana,” or “Les Mensonges,” would take

its place in the estimation of our children,--a consummation devoutly to

be prayed against. Our “books for the young” are not, on the whole, a

success, unless we are willing to modify the expression, and call them

books for the very young. There are not in existence, I believe, enough

really interesting, and yet perfectly harmless, novels to occupy the

vast amount of spare time which the young seem ready to devote to

literature, and which we, the workers, seek in vain. It is not always

easy to see--it is certainly not easy for us to explain--why we

novelists occasionally introduce a thought, a page, or a chapter in a

novel otherwise fit for a child’s ears, which may have the effect, so to

say, of turning weak tea into bad whiskey. Yet most of us have done it,

contemplate doing it, or at least go so far as to wish that we might

allow ourselves the liberty. Perhaps, if that liberty were universally

granted, we should desire it less. Perhaps a number of my colleagues

will not admit that they desire it at all. I believe that in most cases

it is only a desire to escape from limitations not unlike those

overstepped when an author writes much in dialect. It looks as though it

might be easier to write interesting books with the help of the

knowledge of evil, as well as with the help of the knowledge of good;

and after a certain number of years of hard work a novelist

instinctively leans towards any method of lightening his labours which

presents itself to his tired imagination. If he yields once, he will

probably yield again and fall into the slipshod, careless ways for

which the overworked man is often cruelly, if not altogether unjustly,

blamed. For the public, which most of us acknowledge to be a perfectly

just body in the long run, is as thoroughly unforgiving as Justice

herself. “He has written himself out.” How carelessly that little phrase

is often uttered! How terrible it is for any author to hear! It is

indeed a solemn _memento mori_, the phrase of all others of which we

dread the application to ourselves. For the romance of romancing soon

disappears. After the production of one, two, three, or half-a-dozen

novels, if the writer is really what we call “a professional,” and must

go on writing as a business, he discovers how serious is the occupation

in which he is engaged. Half-a-dozen books, or less, will make a

reputation; ten will sustain one; twenty are in ordinary cases a career.

Does any one, not an author, who reads these lines guess at the labour,

the imagination, the industry, the set purpose, the courage, which are

necessary to produce a score of novels of an average good quality? And

if not, how can he understand the intense longing for a removal of

restraint, for a little more liberty that tempts the overwrought

intelligence into error? Far be it from me to appeal in any way to the

public pity, for my own sake or in behalf of others. We are no more to

be pitied when we break down than an old shoemaker who can no longer

see the point of his bristles, and not so much as a broken-winded

cab-horse that has never had any option in the choice of a career. Let

this be taken as an explanation, not as an apology. To judge from the

standards of some people, however, the worn-out novelist, whose works

have filled the shelves of the young girl of the period, might find

profitable employment if he would adopt the tenets of realism and write

for the jaded taste of those who, whether already old or what is called

still young, have exhausted their capacity for bread and milk and crave

red pepper and stimulants.

The taste for “realism” is abroad, and in opposition to all this. Out

of the conflict arises that very curious production, the realistic novel

in English--than which no effort of human genius has sailed nearer to

the wind, so to say, since Goethe wrote his “Elective Affinities,” which

an Anglo-Saxon young girl pronounced to be “a dull book all about

gardening.” That our prevailing moral literary purity is to some extent

assumed--not fictitious--is shown by the undeniable fact that women who

blush scarlet, and men who feel an odd sensation of repulsion in reading

some pages of “Tom Jones” or “Peregrine Pickle,” are not conscious of

any particular shock when their sensibilities are attacked in French.

Some of them call Zola a “pig” with great directness, but read all his

books industriously, and very often admit the fact. When they call him

names they forget that he writes for a great public of men and women,

not for young girls--and when they read him he makes them remember that

he is a great man--mistaken perhaps, possibly bad, mightily coarse to no

purpose, but great nevertheless--a Nero of fiction. But Zola’s shadow,

seen through the veil of the English realistic novel, is a monstrosity

not to be tolerated. We see the apparent contradiction in our own taste

between our theory and our practice in reading, but we feel

instinctively that there is a foundation of justice to account for the

seeming discrepancy. Both are coarse, but the one is great and bold,

and the other is damned by its own smallness and meanness. The result of

the desire for realism in men who try to write realistic novels for the

clean-minded American and English girl is unsatisfactory. It is

generally a photograph, not a picture--a catalogue, not a description.

A community of vices is a closer and more direct bond between human

beings than a community of virtues. This may be because vice needs

solidarity among those who yield to it in order to be tolerated at all,

whereas virtue is its own reward, as the proverb says, and is happily

very often its own protection--far more often than not, in our day. This

seems to be the reason why the realistic method is better suited to the

exposition of what is bad than of what is good. Wordsworth and Swinburne

are two realistic poets. Most people do not hesitate to call Wordsworth

the greater man. I need not express an opinion which few would care to

hear, but so far as the relative effect of their work is concerned it

can hardly be denied that, of the two, Swinburne appeals far more

strongly and directly to sinful humanity as it is. Wordsworth speaks to

the higher and more spiritual part of us, indeed, but too often in

language which rouses no response in the more human side of man’s nature

which is most generally uppermost. These are but illustrations of my

meaning, not examples, which latter should be taken among novelists--a

task, however, which may be left to the discriminating reader.

It has always seemed to me that the perfect novel, as it ought to be,

exists somewhere in the state of the Platonic idea, waiting to be set

down on paper by the first man of genius who receives a direct literary

inspiration. It must deal chiefly with love; for in that passion all men

and women are most generally interested, either for its present reality,

or for the memories that soften the coldly vivid recollection of an

active past, and shed a tender light in the dark places of bygone

struggles, or because the hope of it brightens and gladdens the path of

future dreams. The perfect novel must be clean and sweet, for it must

tell its tale to all mankind, to saint and sinner, pure and defiled,

just and unjust. It must have the magic to fascinate and the power to

hold its reader from first to last. Its realism must be real, of three

dimensions, not flat and photographic; its romance must be of the human

heart and truly human, that is, of the earth as we all have found it;

its idealism must be transcendent, not measured to man’s mind, but

proportioned to man’s soul. Its religion must be of such grand and

universal span as to hold all worthy religions in itself. Conceive, if

possible, such a story, told in language that can be now simple, now

keen, now passionate, and now sublime--or rather, pray, do not conceive

it, for the modern novelist’s occupation would suddenly be gone, and

that one book would stand alone of its kind, making all others worse

than useless--ridiculous, if not sacrilegious, by comparison.

Why must a novel-writer be either a “realist” or a “romantist”? And, if

the latter, why “romanticist” any more than “realisticist”? Why should a

good novel not combine romance and reality in just proportions? Is there

any reason to suppose that the one element must necessarily shut out the

other? Both are included in every-day life, which would be a very dull

affair without something of the one, and would be decidedly incoherent

without the other. Art, if it is “to create and foster agreeable

illusions,” as Napoleon is believed to have said of it, should

represent the real, but in such a way as to make it seem more agreeable

and interesting than it actually is. That is the only way to create “an

agreeable illusion,” and by no other means can a novel do good while

remaining a legitimate novel and not becoming a sermon, a treatise, or a

polemic.

It may reasonably be inquired whether the prevailing and still growing

taste for fiction expresses a new and enduring want of educated men and

women. The novel, as we understand the word, is after all a very recent

invention. Considering that we do not find it in existence until late in

the last century, its appearance must be admitted to have been very

sudden, its growth fabulously rapid, and its development enormous. The

ancients had nothing more like it than a few collections of humorous and

pathetic stories. The Orientals, who might be supposed to feel the need

of it even more than we do, had nothing but their series of fantastic

tales strung rather loosely together without general plan. Men and women

seem to have survived the dulness of the dark age with the help of the

itinerant story-teller. The novel is a distinctly modern invention,

satisfying a modern want. In the ideal state described with so much

accuracy by Mr. Bellamy, I believe the novel would not sell. It would be

incomprehensible, or it would not be a novel at all, according to our

understanding. Do away practically with the struggle for life, eliminate

all the unfit and make the surviving fittest perfectly comfortable--men

and women might still take a curious interest in our present

civilisation, but it would be of a purely historical nature. To

gratuitously invent a tale of a poor man fighting for success would seem

to them a piece of monstrously bad taste and ridiculously useless. Are

we tending to such a state as that? There are those who believe that we

are--but a faith able to remove mountains at “cut rates” will not be

more than enough to realise their hopes.

It may fairly be claimed that humanity has, within the past hundred

years, found a way of carrying a theatre in its pocket; and so long as

humanity remains what it is, it will delight in taking out its

pocket-stage and watching the antics of the actors, who are so like

itself and yet so much more interesting. Perhaps that is, after all, the

best answer to the question, “What is a novel?” It is, or ought to be, a

pocket-stage. Scenery, light, shade, the actors themselves, are made of

words, and nothing but words, more or less cleverly put together. A play

is good in proportion as it represents the more dramatic, passionate,

romantic, or humorous sides of real life. A novel is excellent according

to the degree in which it produces the illusions of a good play--but it

must not be forgotten that the play is the thing, and that illusion is

eminently necessary to success.

Every writer who has succeeded has his own methods of creating such

illusion. Some of us are found out, and some of us are not; but we all

do the same thing in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously.

The tricks of the art are without number, simple or elaborate, easily

learned or hard to imitate, and many of us consider that we have a

monopoly of certain tricks we call our own, and are unreasonably angry

when a competitor makes use of them.

The means, all subservient to language, are many, but the object is

always one: to make the reader realise as far as possible the writer’s

conception of his story.

That word “realise” has a greater value and a wider application upon the

question which I am endeavouring to treat so briefly than in ordinary

conversation. To realise means to make real from one’s own standpoint,

to see as vividly through the imagination what is partially imaginary as

what is altogether imagined; in other words, to call up an image as

coincident with the representations of fact as truth itself. Of course,

in a printed book, the author has no means to attain this end excepting

language, and upon the terms of language employed must depend a very

large part of his success. Language is the tool with which he makes his

weapons, and these in their turn may vary in manufacture and temper

according to his requirements. The most powerful weapon of all is what

is most commonly called truth to nature. Goethe said of his “Wilhelm

Meister,” “there is nothing in it which I have not lived and nothing

exactly as I lived it”; yet most people would call “Wilhelm Meister” a

fantastic book. Other means of producing an impression are local colour,

the use of dialects and foreign languages. Here I know I am touching

upon a very delicate point, and that I risk wounding the sensibilities

of many writers and attacking the individual tastes of many readers of

fiction. Nevertheless, the mention of the dialect-novel raises a

question which is before the literary grand jury of the world. Assuredly

every man has a prime right to make use of the material at his disposal;

and if some particular dialect forms a part of this stock in trade, he

is as free to employ it as an African traveller, for instance, is free

to introduce his own reminiscences into a novel, if he writes one.

Colour alone amuses some people, chiefly children. Small boys and girls

do not despise a kaleidoscope as a toy on a rainy day, and dialect

without dramatic interest is colour without form or outline, and some

novels in dialect are nothing more. But then, there are plenty of works

of fiction written in ordinary English which have not even that one

merit, and of these I do not wish to say anything. Take a really good

novel, however, in which more than half the pages are filled with

dialogues in a language not familiar to the English-speaking public as a

whole. Is not the writer wilfully limiting his audience, if not himself?

Is he not sacrificing his privilege of addressing all men, for the sake

of addressing a few in terms which they especially prefer? Is he not

preferring local popularity to broader and more enduring reputation?

Could he not, by the skilful use of description, by a clever handling

of grammar and a careful selection of words, produce an impression which

should be more widely felt, though less warmly received, perhaps, in

that one small public to which he appeals? Is he not, although he be a

first-rate man, often tempted to lapses of literary conscience by the

peculiar facilities he finds in the literary by-way he has chosen? How

much of what is screaming farce in the dialect of the few, would be

funny if translated into plain English for the many? Wit and humour are

intellectual, and when genuine are susceptible of being translated into

almost all languages; but dialect seems to me to rank with puns, and

with puns of a particular local character. A practical demonstration of

this is found in the fact that stories in dialect, when told and not

read, are duller than any other stories, unless the teller has the power

of imitating accents. Almost all limitations which a man willingly

assumes afford facilities for the sake of which he assumes them.

But this is not the place for a study of methods. So far as I have been

able, I have answered the question I asked, and which stands at the head

of this essay. But I have answered it in my own way. What am I, a

novel-writer, trying to do? I am trying, with such limited means as I

have at my disposal, to make little pocket-theatres out of words. I am

trying to be architect, scene-painter, upholsterer, dramatist and

stage-manager, all at once. Is it any wonder if we novelists do not

succeed as well as we could wish, when we try to be masters of so many

trades?

Nor is this all. The great development of the modern superficial

education in society has brought with it a thirst for knowledge which

adds considerably to the difficulties of the novelist’s art. There are

few sciences, few of the arts, few of the branches of learning, in which

the reading public does not take some sort of interest. That interest is

not a profound one, but with its growth encyclopædias, primers, and

“cram-books” have multiplied exceedingly on the face of the earth. Upon

the slightest suspicion the reader accuses the author of inaccuracy,

goes to his own, or his friend’s, or the Public Library’s bookshelves,

takes down the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” the “Century Dictionary,” or

“Larousse,” and with cruel directness sets the author right. We are

expected to be omniscient, to understand the construction of the

telephone, the latest theories concerning the cholera microbe, the

mysteries of hypnotism, the Russian language, and the nautical

dictionary. We are supposed to be intimately acquainted with the

writings of Macrobius, the music of Wagner, and the Impressionist school

of painting. In these days when there has been much discussion

concerning the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays,--concerning which

“Punch” wisely said they were probably written by another man of the

same name,--the principal argument against Bacon’s authorship of them

seems to me to be this: No one man of whom we have ever known anything

can be conceived capable of having produced such an enormous body of

thoughtful work as is contained in what is attributed to Shakespeare and

in what is known to have been written by Bacon. And yet, for the sake of

a little profit and the inducement of a modicum of glory, we authors are

sometimes expected to rival both. The absurdity of this is apparent to

the most ordinary mind and painfully so to the ordinary critic, who,

though he may never have written a book, may very possibly know more

than we do about some subjects upon which we are obliged to write. Dr.

Johnson, it will be remembered, said that a man need not be a

coach-builder in order to say that a carriage is well made. I am aware

that many persons will think my statement exaggerated, or, if they do

not, will say that they prefer an honest love story to a tale involving

the intricacies of the modern invention. And I believe there has been a

reaction in this respect. With regard to the play, it is the opinion of

some of the best actors and most successful managers now alive, that the

public, if it really knew what it wanted, instead of being forced to

feed upon what it gets, would demand real, old-fashioned love pieces

rather than comedies, dramas and melodramas, in which the leading actor

is the mechanician and the hero of the piece is little more than a

“walking gentleman.” On my theory that the novel is, or should be, a

play, the same must be approximately true about fiction. An acquaintance

with the developments of modern science cannot do more than lend a

modern colour to the story, and so far as that goes the more closely

acquainted we are with such things, the better for us. But no one has a

right to demand that we should know everything, in order to find fault

with us if we lose our heads over the reversing gear of a locomotive or

the most approved fashion of rigging a top-gallant studding-sail boom.

One may be pardoned for asking sometimes whether the advance of science

does not almost mean the retreat of thought. Again I protest against

the accusation of smart writing, which is so easily brought, so hard to

bear, and so difficult to refute. I do not mean that science thinks less

as she progresses, but I do mean to say that there is much in favour of

the _homo unius libri_--the man of one book--the man who reads less and

thinks more than his fellows. The wonders of science are very

attractive, many of them are decidedly spectacular and may be used by

the author to amuse when he cannot interest, but I doubt whether books

which depend upon them for success will be much more popular fifty years

hence than “Sandford and Merton” or Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity”

are in our time. At that not distant future date, our grandchildren

will probably look upon our quoted wonders and marvels with about as

much interest as we regard the experiment of asphyxiating a mouse under

the receiver of an air-pump, or making a piece of paper stick to a piece

of rubbed sealing-wax and explaining that it is electricity. Yet, to

take an instance, medicine and surgery play a considerable part in

modern light literature, and the fire-engine is a distinct feature on

the modern stage. Generally speaking, I venture to say that anything

which fixes the date of the novel not intended to be historical is a

mistake, from a literary point of view. It is not wise to describe the

cut of the hero’s coat, nor the draping of the heroine’s gown, the shape

of her hat, nor the colour of his tie. Ten years hence somebody may buy

the book and turn up his nose at “those times.” Until a date which may

still be called recent, it was customary to play Shakespeare with the

dress of modern times. Garrick, I think, played Macbeth in a full

bottomed wig. I may be wrong, but I have the impression that what we

call stage costume first became common in his days and to some extent by

his individual efforts. In Shakespeare’s times, Achilles in “Troilus and

Cressida” dressed like Sir Walter Raleigh, and Cymbeline perhaps like

Henry VIII., to give himself an air of antiquity. But there was nothing

absurd about the plays for all that, because they did not depend upon

such trifles as dresses, ruffles--or fire-engines for the emotions they

excited in the hearts of their listeners.

The danger of falling into absurdities lies not in anachronisms of

dress, but in speeches that contradict sentiments, and actions that

belie the character. We need not go far to find truth, but having begun

our search in one direction, we must not wander to another, or we shall

fall out of the natural sequence of events upon which we depend for the

effect of reality. For a man of superior gifts there is an easy but

dangerous way out of the difficulty. Instead of inventing his characters

he may take men and women who have really lived and played parts in the

world’s story and have made love, so to say, in the face of all

humanity. In other words, he may write an historical novel.

The historical novel occupies a position apart and separate from others,

but it does not follow that it should not conform exactly to the

conditions required of an ordinary work of fiction, though it must

undoubtedly possess other qualities peculiar to itself. It is doubtful

whether any genuine historical novel has ever yet been written for the

sake of the history it contains. In nine cases out of ten the writer has

selected his subject because it interests him, because it has dramatic

elements, and possibly because he hopes to interest his readers more

readily by means of characters and events altogether beyond the reach of

the carping critic. If this is not the case, it is hard indeed to see

why the historical novel should be written at all, seeing that it is

neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, but salad. It is indeed a regrettable

fact, but also an indubitable one, that a good many people of our time

have derived their knowledge of French history from the novels of

Alexandre Dumas, and of some of the most important events in the story

of the British Empire from those of Walter Scott. But no one pretends

that such books are history deserving to be taught as such, and the

writers certainly made no such pretensions themselves. Where fact and

fiction are closely linked together, the elements may obviously be mixed

in an infinite variety, and in any possible degree of relative

intensity--all wine and no water, or almost all water and no wine to

speak of. Provided that no attempt is made to palm off the historical

novel as a school-book, there can be no real objection to it on other

grounds.

It seems quite certain that the oldest form of dramatic art dealt solely

with subjects considered at the time to be historical, or which

constituted articles of belief. The Greek dramatists founded all their

plays, without exception, so far as I know, upon history, myths, or

traditions, either religious or secular, and produced works of

unrivalled beauty and enduring strength. Some one once called the novel

the “modern epic.” There is just enough truth in the saying to give it

social currency in conversation, but it is true, so far as we know,

that the ancient epic preceded the ancient drama, creating the taste and

the demand for emotions which the dramatists subsequently satisfied, and

it was perhaps because the epic was wholly historical in a measure, that

the drama was founded upon an historical basis. The average novelist

likes to make use of historical facts principally because he knows that

his critics cannot impugn the possibility of the situations he uses,

while the latter are so strong in themselves as to bear the burden of

the writer’s faults with comparative ease, if his talents are not

remarkable. If he is a man of genius, he gets a certain amount of very

valuable liberty by doing his “sensation work” with tragic facts widely

known, which help to produce in the reader’s mind an _a priori_

impression of interest, perfectly legitimate because perfectly well

grounded, but enormously in the writer’s favour. Altogether there is

much to be said for the historical novel, if we take the view that the

novel itself is but a portable play; and there is no especial reason why

we should be so desperately true to the definitions of common parlance

as to say that the novel must be a work of fiction and nothing else. But

in the case of the historical novel there is a very important proviso

which must never be forgotten under any circumstances. It must be good.

The ordinary story may be bad from an artistic point of view, and may

nevertheless succeed as a literary speculation; but in treating of

history, where the personages are great and the events are of stupendous

import, the distance which separates the sublime from the ridiculous is

even less than the step to which Tom Payne limited it. No author can

make Julius Cæsar, Mary Stuart, or Louis XIV ridiculous; but no writer

should forget that they can make a laughing-stock of him in his book

almost as easily as they could have done in real life. On the whole,

therefore, the historical novel is always likely to prove more dangerous

to the writer than to the reader, since, when it fails to be a great

book, it will in all likelihood be an absurd one. For historical facts

are limitations, and he who subjects himself to them must be willing to

undertake all the responsibility they imply. Nothing is easier than to

write a fantastic tale against which no criticism can be brought beyond

a vague statement that it is dull or worthless, and not worth reading;

but so soon as a man deals with events which have actually taken place,

he is bounded on all sides by a multitude of details with which he must

be acquainted and from which he cannot escape. I have sometimes wondered

whether Walter Savage Landor did not really meditate writing an

historical novel at some time during the evolution of the “Imaginary

Conversations.” More than one work of the kind, and assuredly of the

highest order, must have presented itself to his mind, since he

possessed in a supreme degree the power most necessary to the historical

novelist, that of seizing the dramatic points in the lives of historical

personages and of creating splendid dramatic dialogues without at any

time compromising undoubted facts. In other words, he knew how to

combine the romantic and the real in such true and just proportions as

to demonstrate clearly that they may and should go hand in hand. And

this brings us back to the great question of romance and realism, two

words which can hardly fail to drop from the modern writer’s pen in

treating of such a subject.

There is much talk in our day of the realistic school of fiction, and

the romantic school, though not often mentioned, is understood to be

opposed to it. Of course, it is easy to enter into a long discussion

about the exact meanings of the two words; but, on the whole, it seems

to be true that if the people who talk about schools of fiction mean

anything or wish to mean anything, which sometimes seems doubtful, they

mean this: the realist proposes to show men what they are; the romantist

tries to show men what they should be. It is very unlikely that mankind

will ever agree as to the relative merits of these two, and the

discussion which was practically begun in Plato’s time is not likely to

end so long as people care what they read or what they think. The most

any one can do is to give a personal opinion, and that means, of course,

that he who expresses it commits himself and publicly takes either the

one side or the other. For my part, I believe that more good can be done

by showing men what they may be, ought to be, or can be, than by

describing their greatest weaknesses with the highest art. We all know

how bad we are; but it needs much encouragement to persuade some of us

to believe that we can really be any better. To create genuine interest,

and afford rest and legitimate amusement, without losing sight of that

fact, and to do so in a more or less traditional way, seems to be the

profession of the novelist who belongs to the romantic persuasion.

That novel-writing is a business I am credibly informed by my

publishers. And since that is the case, it must be taken for granted

that it is a business which to some extent must be practised like any

other and which will succeed or fail in the hands of any particular man

according as he is more or less fitted to carry it on. The

qualifications for any business are three: native talent, education, and

industry. Where there is success of the right kind, the talent and power

of application must be taken for granted. The education is and always

must be a question of circumstance. With regard to novel-writing, when I

speak of education I am not referring to it in the ordinary sense. Some

people take a great deal of interest in concrete things, while others

care more for humanity. The education of a novelist is the experience of

men and women which he has got at first hand in the course of his own

life, for he is of that class to whom humanity offers a higher interest

than inanimate nature. He can use nature and art only as a scene and

background upon which and before which his personages move and have

their being. It is his business to present his readers with something

which I have called the pocket-theatre, something which every man may

carry in his pocket, believing that he has only to open it in order to

look in upon the theatre of the living world. To produce it, to prepare

it, to put it into a portable and serviceable shape, the writer must

know what that living world is, what the men in it do and what the women

think, why women shed tears and children laugh and young men make love

and old men repeat themselves. While he is writing his book, his human

beings must be with him, before him, moving before the eye of his mind

and talking into the ear of his heart. He must have lived himself; he

must have loved, fought, suffered, and struggled in the human battle. I

would almost say that to describe another’s death he must himself have

died.

All this accounts perhaps for the fact that readers are many and writers

few. The reader knows one side of life, his own, better than the writer

possibly can, and he reads with the greatest interest those books which

treat of lives like his own. But the writer must have seen and known

many phases of existence, and this is what the education of the novelist

means: to know and understand, so far as he is able, men and women who

have been placed in unusual circumstances. And this need not and should

not lead him into creating altogether imaginary characters, nor men and

women whose circumstances are not only unusual, but altogether

impossible. We see grotesque pieces given at the theatre--too grotesque

and too often given--which make us laugh, but never make us think. They

would not make good novels. The novel must amuse, indeed, but should

amuse reasonably, from an intellectual point of view, rather than as a

piece of good fun. Its object is to make one see men and women who might

really live, talk, and act as they do in the book, and some of whom one

would perhaps like to imitate. Its intention is to amuse and please, and

certainly not to teach or preach; but in order to amuse well it must be

a finely-balanced creation, neither hysterical with tears nor convulsed

with perpetual laughter. The one is as tiring as the other and, in the

long run, as unnatural.

It is easy, comparatively speaking, to appeal to the emotions, but it is

hard to appeal to the heart. This may sound somewhat contradictory at

first, but there is truth in it, nevertheless. The outward emotions are

in real life much more the expressions of the temperament than of what

we call the heart. We all know that there are men and women who laugh

and cry more easily than others, and we are rather inclined to believe

that these are not they who feel most deeply. A very difficult question

here presents itself. Bacon says somewhere that we are apt to extol the

powers of the human intellect without invoking its aid as often as we

might. This extolling of humanity has been a fashion of late years, and

it has not yet disappeared, though its popularity is waning fast. In

England Sir Andrew Clarke, M.D., has recently talked learnedly of “the

religion of the body,” and Lord Coleridge with eloquence of “the

religion of the mind.” These things are good enough, no doubt, but what

of the religion of the heart, which is after all the only religion there

is--if the heart is the earthly representative of the soul? There are

some people--fewer than is generally supposed--who really do not believe

in the existence of the soul. Let me tell them that they are very near

to denying the existence of the heart. Perhaps some of them do, and

they may live to repent of their unbelief in this world, if not in the

next.

What is the heart, or, rather, what do we in common conversation and

writing understand by that word? It looks a great deal like attempting

to define belief, but belief has received an excellent definition, for

belief is knowledge and nothing else, so far as the individual who holds

it is concerned. What we call the heart in each man and woman seems to

mean the whole body of innate and inherited instincts, impulses, and

beliefs, taken together, and in that relation to one another in which

they stand after they have been acted upon throughout the individual’s

life by the inward vicissitudes and the outward circumstances to which

he has been exposed. When all this is quiescent I think we call it Self.

When roused to emotional activity we call it the Heart. But whatever we

call it, it is to this Self or Heart that everything which is ethic and

therefore permanent must appeal.

The foundation of good fiction and good poetry seems to be ethic rather

than æsthetic. Everything in either which appeals to the taste, that is,

to the æsthetic side, may ultimately perish as a mere matter of fashion;

but that which speaks to man as man, independently of his fashions, his

habits, and his tastes, must live and find a hearing with humanity so

long as humanity is human. The right understanding of men and women

leads to the right relations of men and women, and in this way, if in

any, a novel may do good; when written to attain this end, it may live;

when addressed to the constant element in human nature, it has as good a

right and as good a chance of pleasing the men and women of the world in

our day, as it had to appeal to the intellect of Pericles or to thrill

the delicate sensibilities of Aspasia. Their novels were plays in

outward effect, as ours should be in inward substance, and we must needs

confess that the form in which their intellectual artistic luxuries were

presented to them was superior to that of the modern effort included in

four hundred pages at one dollar and twenty-five cents. Possibly, even

probably, it is unfair to us to compare ourselves with Sophocles,

Euripides, and Aristophanes; yet the comparison suggests itself if the

definition be true and if our novels really aspire to be plays.

We have indeed something in our favour which the genuine playwright has

not. We appeal entirely to the imagination, and, unless we use algebraic

_formulæ_ or scientific discussion, we give no standard measure in our

books by which to judge the whole. We can call up surroundings which

never were and never can be possible in the world, and if we are able to

do it well enough we can put impossible characters upon our stage and

make them do impossible things, and the whole, acting upon a

predisposed imagination, may create for the moment something almost like

belief in the mind of the reader. We can conceive a tale fantastic

beyond the bounds of probability, and if there be a touch of nature in

it, we may for a while transport our readers into Fairyland. We can

clothe all of this in poetic language if our command of the English

tongue be equal to the occasion, and we can lend pathos to a monster and

heroism to a burlesque man. But the writer of plays for the real theatre

cannot do this; if he does, he makes that which in theatrical language

is called a “burlesque” or a “spectacle”; or, if he be a follower of the

“decadent school,” he may produce what he has decided to call by a new

name--a production not always conducive to a high belief in human

nature.

The writer of plays, if he write them for actual performance, has living

interpreters, and they and he are judged by the standards of real life.

He is to a great extent dependent upon his actors for the effect he

hopes to produce, and they are dependent not only upon him, upon their

individual education, depth of feeling, and power of expression, but

also upon the material conditions and surroundings in which they have to

do their work. The most dramatic scene of real life, if it actually took

place on the stage of a theatre, would seem a very dull and tame affair

to any one who chanced to find himself in the body of the house. The

fundamental lack of interest, until it has been artificially aroused, is

a gulf not to be bridged by such simple means as being really “natural.”

The art of the actor lies in knowing the precise degree of exaggeration

necessary to produce the impression that he is not exaggerating at

all--but exaggeration there must be. Without it, neither the words nor

the actions can speak or appeal to the intelligence of the spectator.

But we novelists are in an easier position in our relation to our

audience. We are granted many privileges and have many advantages which

the playwright has not; for we can appeal to the heart almost directly

without the conscious intervention of practised eyes and ears, used to

realities and eager to judge by real standards. We speak of Edwin’s

great height, broad shoulders, noble features and silken moustache, and

are not obliged to look out for an actor who shall fulfil these

conditions of manly beauty before we can be heard without being

ridiculous. Angelina’s heavy hair is a fact on paper; on the stage it is

a wig, and must be a good one. Her liquid blue eyes are blue because we

say they are; but it would annoy a playwright to find that his leading

actress had light gray ones, when Edwin must compare them to the depths

of the blackest night.

All this is rather frivolous, perhaps; but a little frivolity is to the

point here, since there can be no amusement without a dash of it, and we

profess to provide diversion to meet the public demand. With most men

who have moulded, hacked, and chiselled the world into history, to think

has been to act. With us novelists, so far as the world need know us, to

think is to dream, and perhaps to dream only little dreams of merely

passing significance. Few novelists are poets; only one or two have been

statesmen; none have been conquerors. I suppose we are very

insignificant figures compared with the great ones of this earth; but

to our comfort we may dream, and if we need consolation we may console

ourselves, as Montaigne puts it, with the art which small souls have to

interest great ones, “_L’art qu’ont les petites âmes d’intéresser les

grandes._”

Frivolity is not weakness, though in excess it may be a weakness.

“_Carpe diem_” is a good motto for the morning, but in the evening

“_Dulce desipere in loco_” is not to be despised as a piece of advice.

The frivolities of great men and famous women have filled volumes of

memoirs, and are not without interest to the little, as our little

interests do not always seem dull to the great. The greater men are, the

more heart they have, good or bad, and the easier it is to affect them

through it, through the multiform feelings which their varied lives have

created within them, or through the few strong sentiments by which most

of them are ruled, guided, or impelled according as they are

conscientious, calculating, or impulsive, and to some extent according

to their nationality, a matter which has almost as much to do with the

author’s dream as with the reader’s subjective interpretation of it, and

which largely determines the balance between sentiment and

sentimentality.

Sentiment heightens the value of works of fiction as sentimentality

lowers it. Sentimentality is to sentiment as sensuality to passion. The

distinction is not a fine one and has grown common enough in our day to

be universally understood. We owe it, I think, to the international

balance of sentiment and sentimentality that the novelists of the

present day are the French, Anglo-Saxons, and Russians. With all due

respect to the great German intelligence, it does not seem capable of

producing what we call a novel though it turns out most excellent plays.

The German mind, measured by our standard, is sentimental, not romantic.

Perhaps there is as much romance to be found in the history and

traditions of Germany up to a date which I should place at about forty

years ago as there is anywhere in the civilised world. Yet for some

reason or other, the modern German, as I have said, seems to be more

sentimental than romantic in his habits of thought and feeling.

It is not possible in a paper of this length to inquire into the

foundations of sentimentality and romance. Practically, however, what we

call a romantic life is one full of romantic incidents which come

unsought, as the natural consequence and result of a man’s or a woman’s

character. It is therefore necessarily an exceptional life, and as such

should have exceptional interest for the majority. When our lives are

not filled with emotions, they are too often crammed with insignificant

details too insignificant to bear recording in a novel, but yet making

up for each of us all the significance life has. The great emotions are

not every-day phenomena, and it is the desire to experience them

vicariously which creates the demand for fiction and thereby and at the

same time a demand for emotion. This is felt more particularly nowadays

than formerly.

There was a great deal of artificiality in the last century, and I

believe very little real emotion or true sentiment. The evidences of the

truth of this statement appear sufficiently, I think, in the current

literature, the music, and the social manners of that time. Of the three

the music alone has survived. Musicians constitute, in a certain sense,

a caste, not unlike the Christian priesthood or the Buddhist

brotherhood. Their art is more distinctly handed down from teacher to

scholar, from master to pupil, than any other, and this may perhaps

account for their unwillingness to break through their traditions and

accepted rules. Few persons, however, can listen to an average symphony

for orchestra, or sonata for piano, especially to the _allegro_

movements, without being struck by the utter conventionality and

artificiality of many parts of the production. This, it seems to me, is

not due to the instinct of the musician, nor to the taste of the musical

public, but is a distinct survival of a former existence, as much as the

caudal appendage or the buttons on the backs of our coats. This is

probably rank heresy from the musical point of view, and, like all I say

here, is a mere personal opinion; but to judge by analogy from the

remains of other arts cultivated a hundred years ago, there seems to be

some foundation for it. Can any one see such plays acted, for instance,

as Sheridan’s, without being forcibly struck by the total absence of

spontaneity and the absolute submission to social routine of the average

society man and woman of those days. Sheridan’s comedies are undoubtedly

as true to their times on the one hand as they are to human nature on

the other, but the humanity of them is thrown into vivid and strong

relief by the artificiality of the elements in the midst of which the

chief actors have their being. As for the literature, it is hardly

necessary for me to defend the statement that it was conventional.

There was an intellectual dress, as it were, put on by the man of genius

of those times. It hung loosely upon Goldsmith’s irregular frame. It sat

close, well-fitting and fashionable upon Addison, but Samuel Johnson’s

mighty limbs almost burst its seams and betrayed at every movement the

giant who wore it. On a sudden the fashion changed, and it has not done

changing yet.

The French Revolution seems to have introduced an emotional phase into

social history, and to it we must attribute directly or indirectly many

of our present tastes and fashions. With it began the novel in France.

With it the novel in the English language made a fresh start and assumed

a new form. To take a very simple view of the question, I should like

to hazard, as a guess, the theory that when the world had lived at a

very high pressure during the French Revolution, the wars of Napoleon,

and what has been called the “awakening of the peoples,” it had acquired

permanently “the emotional habit,” just as a man who takes opium or

morphia cannot do without the one or the other. There was a general

desire felt to go on experiencing without dangerous consequences those

varying conditions of hope, fear, disappointment and triumph in which

the whole world’s nervous system had thrilled daily during so many years

and at such fearful cost. The children of the women who had gone to the

scaffold with Marie Antoinette, the sons of the men who had charged

with Murat, who had stood by La Tour d’Auvergne, or who had fired their

parting shot with Ney, were not satisfied to dwell in returning peace

and reviving prosperity with nothing but insipid tales of shepherds and

shepherdesses to amuse them. They wanted sterner, rougher stuff. They

created a demand, and it was forthwith supplied, and their children and

children’s children have followed their progenitors’ footsteps in war

and have adopted their tastes in peace.

Modern civilisation, too, has done what it could to stir the hearts of

men. Evil communications corrupt good manners, and it is not a play upon

words to say that the increased facility of actual communications has

widened and deepened those channels of communication which are evil, and

increased at the same time the demand for all sorts of emotion, bad or

good. Not that emotion of itself is bad. It is often the contrary. Even

the momentary reflection of true love is a good thing in itself. It is

good that men and women should realise that a great affection is, or can

be, a reality to many as well as a convenient amusement or a

heart-rending drama to a few.

Modern civilisation has created modern vices, modern crimes, modern

virtues, austerities, and generosities. The crimes of to-day were not

dreamed of a hundred years ago, any more than the sublimity of the good

deeds done in our time to remedy our time’s mistakes. And between the

angel and the beast of this ending century lie great multitudes of

ever-shifting, ever-changing lives, neither very bad nor very good, but

in all cases very different from what lives used to be in the good old

days when time meant time and not money. There, too, in that vast land

of mediocrities, emotions play a part of which our grandfathers never

heard, and being real, of the living, and of superior interest to those

who feel them, reflect themselves in the novel of to-day, diverting the

course of true love into very tortuous channels and varying the tale

that is ever young with features that are often new. Within a short few

months I myself have lived in a land where modern means of communication

are not, and I have come to live here, where applied science is doing

her best to eliminate distance as a factor from the equation of

exchanges, financial and intellectual. The difference between the

manifestations of human feeling in Southern Italy and North America is

greater and wider than can be explained in intelligible terms. Yet it

is but skin-deep. Sentiment, sentimentality, taste, fashion, daily

speech, acquired science, and transmitted tradition cleanse, soil,

model, or deface the changing shell of mutable mortality, and nothing

which appeals to that shell alone can have permanent life; but the prime

impulses of the heart are, broadly speaking, the same in all ages and

almost in all races. The brave man’s beats as strongly in battle to-day,

the coward’s stands as suddenly still in the face of danger, boys and

girls still play with love, men and women still suffer for love, and the

old still warn youth and manhood against love’s snares--all that and

much more comes from depths not reached by civilisations nor changed by

fashions. Those deep waters the real novel must fathom, sounding the

tide-stream of passion and bringing up such treasures as lie far below

and out of sight--out of reach of the individual in most cases--until

the art of the story-teller makes him feel that they are or might be

his. Cæsar commanded his legionaries to strike at the face. Humanity,

the novelist’s master, bids him strike only at the heart.