IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE THE TEXT OF
DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE OR LESS ATTENTION FROM
THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.
"Quite an original:" A phrase, we fancy, rather oftener used by the
young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled, than by the old, or the
well-read, or the man who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense
of originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably at its
lowest in him who has completed the circle of the sciences.
As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on
meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes
hear of an author who, at one creation, produces some two or three score
such characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly be original in
the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote, or Milton's Satan. That is to
say, they are not, in a thorough sense, original at all. They are novel,
or singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at once.
More likely, they are what are called odd characters; but for that, are
no more original, than what is called an odd genius, in his way, is.
But, if original, whence came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
up?
Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in
town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the
novelist goes for his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the
cattle-show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are
hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters--that
is, original ones. Their rarity may still the more appear from this,
that, while characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms so to
speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts.
In short, a due conception of what is to be held for this sort of
personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there,
as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or
the founder of a new religion.
In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted such in works
of invention, there is discernible something prevailingly local, or of
the age; which circumstance, of itself, would seem to invalidate the
claim, judged by the principles here suggested.
Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held to entitle
characters in fiction to being deemed original, is but something
personal--confined to itself. The character sheds not its characteristic
on its surroundings, whereas, the original character, essentially such,
is like a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself all round
it--everything is lit by it, everything starts up to it (mark how it is
with Hamlet), so that, in certain minds, there follows upon the adequate
conception of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that
which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of things.
For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so
can there be but one such original character to one work of invention.
Two would conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more
than one to a book, is good presumption there is none at all. But for
new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining
and instructive characters, a good fiction may be full of them. To
produce such characters, an author, beside other things, must have seen
much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he
must have had much luck.
There would seem but one point in common between this sort of phenomenon
in fiction and all other sorts: it cannot be born in the author's
imagination--it being as true in literature as in zoology, that all life
is from the egg.
In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety of the phrase,
_Quite an Original_, as applied by the barber's friends, we have, at
unawares, been led into a dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps
upon the smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned to, will be,
by retiring under cover of it, in good trim as may be, to the story.