The Novel and Its Future

ORIGINATING in the Greek romances of the fourth century, which were themselves the offspring of decline, the novel — this losel of literature and outcast of the wise — finds itself, after a long and adventurous career, at the head of all literary forms for present popularity and power. Called forth as a servant, to amuse some idle intellects, it has at length become the master, the instructor, the educator of vast modern audiences composed of thinking and progressive men. We must confess that, whatever our theoretic reverence for the drama, and whatever the triumphs it still achieves amongst us, the novel is still the more subtle, penetrative, and universal agent for the transmission of thought from poet to people.

Ours is essentially a period of prose. Versification, it is true, is a widespread accomplishment in these days, and there are instances enough of genius making it more than an accomplishment. But, on the whole, its frequency seems not so much to mark a strengthening of its empire, as to emphasize the truth that things most in vogue are most in danger of deterioration. As the quantity of verse increases, the merit has a tendency to subside to a common level. Instead of fountains of song bursting freely from the hill-sides, the nineteenth century maintains a large reservoir of liquid verse from which we may draw unlimitedly. The means of rhythmic expression are perhaps more varied and more perfect than at any previous epoch; but they assist lyrical demonstration, for the most part, — dramatic, seldom. It is the dramatic forms, however, which give the most manifold delight. Dramas are the cathedrals of poetry; the lyric verse is their adornment, rising in pinnacles. But we do not build cathedrals nor write great dramas. The novel, therefore, attracts to itself our chief energies. The novel is a portable drama, requiring no stage, no actors, no lights or scenery, and no fixed time of enactment. Moreover, as we shall presently see, it embraces a wide range of subjects not fitted for the salient treatment of the playwright. It is, further, especially adapted to the various and complex inner life of the modern world. The very finest things of which the novel is now capable are rather calculated, in their delicate profundity, for private perusal than public recitation. There is a refined emanation from them which can be appreciated in silence and solitude only, or with but a chosen listener or two at hand to share the influence. But, if the vogue of verse be regarded as an intimation of impending decline, it will be asked why the multiplication of novels is not, in the same manner, to count for a sign of approaching decadence. That there is much danger of disaster to the novel is precisely what I should like to have most clearly understood; but there are reasons favoring its immediate and efficient advance which either cannot be supplied, or are not equally operative in the case of lyric poetry. In the first place it is an organism of a higher type than the lyric, being essentially and substantially dramatic; and in the second place the popular demand supplies it with an immense stimulus, while the lyric is sustained by smaller audiences and less frequent opportunities of devotion from its servants. The drama could alone compete successfully with the novel; but to do so it must undergo reforms more weighty than those which are needful to the perfection of the novel. Let us, however, before attempting to cast the horoscope of the latter form, consider the technical differences of drama and novel more closely, with a view to determining their respective advantages as artistic means.

A convenient starting-point for the discussion is to be found in Goethe’s utterance on the subject. In the fifth book of Wilhelm Meister, he observes: “The difference between these sorts of fiction lies not merely in their outward form; not merely in the circumstance that the personages of the one are made to speak, while those of the other commonly have their history narrated for them. … But in the novel it is chiefly sentiments and events that are exhibited; in the drama it is characters and deeds. The novel must go slowly forward; and the sentiments of the hero must, by some means or other, restrain the tendency of the whole to conclude. The drama, on the other hand, must hasten, and the character of the hero must press forward to the end: it does not restrain, but is restrained. The novel-hero must be passive; at least he must not be active in a high degree: in the dramatic one we look for activity and deeds.” But this definition is certainly inadequate. In reality, it applies to the novel as practiced by Goethe and Rousseau, rather than to the stature of the novel altered and strengthened by recent developments in its history. It is patent that characters and deeds are as requisite in the modern dramatically organized novel, as sentiments and events; and that they bear just the same relation to these as in the drama. We are far enough, also, from demanding that the novel shall “go slowly forward” — a mode of locomotion sustained in Wilhelm Meister with almost fatal indefatigableness. Compression and swiftness, on the contrary, are becoming marked characteristics of this species of composition. But it is important to observe Goethe’s fundamental distinction, — that of the novel-hero’s passivity; for he is still at liberty to retain this attitude whenever it may advantage him. And herein lies a special superiority of the novel over drama, in that it is thus fitted to exhibit the hero as the recipient of impressions only, — concentrating in him the phantasmagoric elaboration of all surrounding life through his individual senses and perceptions; while, at any moment, his position may be reversed, so that his views of things shall no longer predominate, a purely dramatic development being accorded to all alike. In this way a double order of effects lies open to the novelist. And it is from this source that the autobiographical novel derives a chief element of power; the suppression of internal history in every one but the first person leaving the characters of the rest to develop themselves in a wholly dramatic manner. The means to this end, in the drama, are the aside and the soliloquy. But people behind the footlights cannot find an escape for every significant emotion of a moment in asides; nor is facial expression always adequate to the occasion. Although of this latter resource it is only the intellectual effect which the novelist can convey, by those numerous brief, indescribable touches of intimation peculiar to his art; and although he surrenders the inexhaustible charm of actual impersonation, still his mode is the more natural. As for the soliloquy, that is a delicate instrument which must be used with the utmost care, — like the chemist’s centigrade-weight, which he dares not lift with the fingers for fear of diminishing its accurate poise by the slight wear and moisture of manual contact.

I confess this jars upon me. This soliloquy of Richard’s seems inferior to those of Hamlet and Wolsey, not only in poetical qualities but in its dramatic value. The same sense of inconvenience and unlikelihood attaches to the revery with which Iago closes the first act of Othello. Apparently, when the soliloquy must set forth in direct terms the speaker’s motives to impending conduct, instead of dealing with wide-reaching speculations or emotions, it of necessity loses somewhat of its force. It would seem to be the sensitive organ in the constitution of a drama, in which the weaknesses of that order of composition manifest themselves most promptly. But even soliloquy becomes more probable and more acceptable when employed in the novel. For the narrator is an admitted entity from the start, and he enjoys the presumption of having either witnessed, or had faithfully described to him the circumstances of his story which he now gives in reproductive reminiscence. He does not require that we should believe in the instant presence of the persons and their personal responsibility for what they are saying, as the dramatist requires it. However the principles of dramatic development may be involved in his work, the whole affair is professedly drawn from something already past, and is so represented; while in the drama we must relinquish, for the time being, even a subdominant consciousness that the scenes before us have been supplied by an already concluded episode of real life. But not only is the advantage greatly on the novelist’s side, when the soliloquy is in question: he is also in great measure relieved from the necessity of using it at all, because licensed to come forward in his own person, when occasion strongly demands direct explanation or enlightenment — an interruption which, for the reasons already mentioned in support of soliloquy, cannot disturb us. The novelist’s prerogative of description, too, though unconscionably abused in general, is in many situations, if properly respected by him, a palpable advantage. And in the matter of construction a gain is made over the dramatist’s necessary restrictions in this particular, through the novelist’s greater liberty of interrupting and rearranging the succession of incidents and events. With these technical advantages on its side, and being addressed to the reader at short range, so that its finest effects need not be lost or slurred over, if delicate and unobtrusive, the novel seems to offer a form in which subjects too little abounding in far-flashing externalities, to find successful embodiment in an acting play, may still be subjected to thoroughly dramatic processes.

Yet the prevalent opinions among too many novel-makers, as well as novel-consumers, in respect of what constitutes the dramatic, make it evident that this species of imaginative literature must clear itself of serious misconceptions, before it can proceed unimpeded in the direction of further improvement. An agitated notion seems generally to have gained ground — always reinforced, doubtless, by a benevolent forethought for those readers who choose their fiction from the book-stall mainly according to the broken and easy aspect of the pages — that the novel should be made above all things “conversational;” and to this mistake, serenity, and the contained and forcible utterance characterizing genuine mastery of the dramatic, are constantly sacrificed. But people have other ways of displaying their characters than by talking, and may be treated objectively by other means than those of conversation. Nor is the determined use of the present tense, by which writers occasionally (but too often) attempt to heighten the “graphic” effect of their scenes, at all essential, or even in any way an enhancement. We must take cognizance of a new modification of the dramatic, exemplified in some of the later achievements in the novel form. The stage necessarily appeals more broadly to the senses, and, in these days of excessive and corruptive mechanical contrivance, the sensuous agency has so far diminished the importance or infected the fineness of the subject-matter, as to charge the term, theatrical, with a certain implication of reproach. Those novels, therefore, which are most completely wrought out in the conversational manner, or in such fashion as to make a transposition to the stage an easy process, are not always the most dramatic, using the word at its best and highest. Dickens, Reade, Wilkie Collins, and Bulwer, have so written. And these possess in common a love of stimulating, melodramatic incident, unfolded in rapid and intricate succession. Collins, in particular, is noted for his ingenious joiner-work, his elaborate and studied mechanism of incidents. The long “narratives” through which he conveys the same history, or different parts of it, by different persons, have, it is true, some faint flavor of the dramatic, being based on that unfailing surprise which arises from the partial and conflicting views taken by different people in regard to one and the same transaction. But all the true glory of dramatic abstemiousness is lost in his execution. His detail is excessive, and his accumulation of small items often redundant. The skill of selection which he exercises never rises above the plane of simple cleverness. He has arrived at a useful formula for methodic enumeration, of which he uniformly avails himself; displaying a surprising distrust of the reader’s imaginative ability, or power of apprehending minor points, by a constant wordy explanation of the most trifling matters. A showy familiarity with the superficial aspects of human nature enables him to dazzle the reader, enough to conceal the fact that, for himself, he cares much more for his plot than for his persons. The latter are cut out to fit their places in the piece; but their individuality in this way takes an artificial tone, and their narratives seem little more characteristic than affidavits in a police-trial — a kind of literature which we may suppose to have furnished Mr. Collins with a great part of his motif. In short, we possess in this noted sensationalist an inventor, not a discoverer. He is a literary artisan, rather than an artist. Dickens and Reade, on the other hand, though theatrical in manner, possess real genius, which might have carried them higher, had they carefully pruned it and thrown its strength always to the upward. Dickens differs from Reade, in being far less studied: he is also more crude, Reade is apparently a careful student of the stage, while Dickens relied on the natural bent of his genius toward the theatrical. Collins, on the whole, is superior to Reade in the slow worrying and final decapitation of a mystery — a thing which the latter does not always and especially affect. But, on the other hand, Reade has a swift and sunny sympathy which Collins lacks; and his comparative openness in the matter of plot, leaves him free to develop incidents and characters together, by a series of stimulant surprises. His grand fund of spirits, and his quick sensibility to smiles or tears, are akin to attributes of the finest genius, and carry us on readily through all sorts of incongruities. But, once pausing or returning, to analyze the structure of his stuff, we find the conversation (at its liveliest) modeled on the rapid dialogues of brilliant comedy. Mabel Vane, in Peg Woffington, exclaims to Triplet, “And you a poet!” “From an epitaph to an epic, madam,” he answers. Her very next words, “A painter, too!” he meets with: “From a house front to an historical composition, ma’am.” At other times, as in Love me Little, Love me Long, and later novels, we find Reade lost in the mire of multitudinous commonplace, apparently trying to reproduce life beyond all possibility of mistake, by letting loose upon us a flood of indiscriminate gabble. Thus he seems to waver between the farcically inclined talk of the stage, and a deadly literalism. In general, his pictures are not so much drawn from life itself, as they are spirited transcripts from stage-manners in the guise of real ones, and always strengthened by a considerable observation of real life, besides. But the novel has, by its history, assumed, and in this essay I have claimed, that it comes closer to real life than any antecedent form. By dropping into the stage-manner, however, the writer of a novel not only fails to draw nearer to life than before, but—what is still worse — separates himself from it by a double remove. As life has first been shown him under the gas-light of the theatre, so he kindles in his book a still fainter illumination, the reflection of a reflection. But, with all his brilliancy and energy, Reade disregards this, and plumes himself too openly upon his cleverness, obtruding the consciousness of his dexterity in the most ill-timed and annoying paragraphs of bold allusion to it. It cannot be denied that people relish this knowingness, as they do the equally omnipresent (though unspoken) knowingness of Dickens. Dickens’s characters enter the arena with a jingling of the clown’s cap and bells, as it were; and the audience sees at once that they are about to perform. There is a suggestion of the End Man’s manner, in the way he has of opening a dialogue intended to be laughable. And (to return to our other simile) when the intervals of joking are over, we seem to hear the ring-master cracking his whip, as a signal for the serious and breathless business of riding bareback and jumping through paper hoops to begin again. This is a figure only partially true, yet with a truth worth heeding. The public likes this, I have said: but it likes better things, as well. Yet there is an impartiality of omnivorousness, that it is not altogether desirable to sustain. We like to settle the respective merits of authors by the scale of avoirdupois. But, rather than magnitude, it is quality and radical tendency which we ought here to consider; for on these rests the future of fiction.

The more completely a novel remains a novel, the higher must it be rated, as being the more perfect representative of its class. Bulwer was both playwright and novelist, and he is conspicuous for the production of hybrids uniting the features of these two literary forms. His books are crowded with the stalest stage devices. One has but to look through the conversations in My Novel, Bulwer’s most careful attempt at a reproduction of real life, to see how unshrinkingly he could dilute the pungent currents of nature with the flattest of liquids from the conventional theatrical tap. Much of the dialogue is given in the same form as if written for the stage. But in attempting, at the same time, to remain true to the aspect of common life, the author has been overcome by a disastrous inclination simply to imitate appearances; and the double desire to do this, and to be effective in the style of the stage, has resulted in something at once deplorably dull and intolerably conventional. Mere transcription of facts, aspects, and phases, actually observed by the writer, is — we find it necessary, notwithstanding its self-evidence, once more to announce — neither artistry, nor anything approaching it. On the other hand, conventionalisms, though they are sometimes very necessary, should never be relied on for mere effect’s sake, nor admitted at all unless they are genuine, thoughtful, brilliant, or forcible. Those which Bulwer introduces in My Novel and elsewhere are, it is true, pointed after a certain fashion: but they are whittled, rather than diamond-cut — sharp pegs, instead of sparkling gems crystallized by the invisible chemistry of genius. And yet these things would, no doubt, pass off well enough upon the stage. But the little green hedge of the foot-lights separates two territories of fiction in which the qualifications to success are, it would seem, by no means identical. Bulwer ignored this fact. Whether we skim the prattling shallows of Pelham, or turn the creaking leaves of Eugene Aram, — that heavy piece of melodramatic machinery, — or examine the dialogue of the Lady of Lyons, we shall hardly fail to meet everywhere the same prolix paucity, although less prolix, of course, in the plays, than in the novels. A knack of proportioning ingredients enabled Bulwer to give his works a pleasant taste to the public; but the critic, unfortunately, knows too well that they were prepared according to recipe. Lord Lytton may be said to have maintained a flourishing “cheap store” or popular emporium of ready-made romance. His novels, like those of Anthony Trollope, though more pretentious and less neatly finished, bear the marks of the mold, still. The excessive activity of his invalid intellect never led him to a real originality. He searched for it on every side, imitating, in turn, Fielding, Sterne, Walter Scott, and Goethe; but had he possessed it, he would have learned this by simply looking within. Originality, it may be observed here, lias even more of sameness in it than of variety; for this lies in the subject-matter, and that is fundamental. Variety and versatility do not, of course, conflict with originality, any more than sameness is always the ensign of it. But it is the abiding peculiarities of a man’s point of view (when these are developed, not derived) which make his writing original; and these continue to give it that character, so long as he abstains from conscious exertion to repeat and renew such peculiarities. From a stable and enduring quality of view, springs style, including not only phraseology, but the character of an author’s observation, likewise. Thackeray, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Balzac, Turgénieff, possess distinct points of view, from which to contemplate the revolving world. Pausing at some standpoint of ideal perception, they let the variety of life pass under their eyes, and translate its meanings into the new language of their new genius. Hence comes it that large poetic genius is at once radical and conservative: it can look into the roots of things, but it also highly appreciates the value of calm, unchanging heights, upon which to build securely and live happily. Even when engaged in works of deracination and reform, you can see that, in spite of its intelligence, it loves and clings to what is old.

But Bulwer, and the other novelists of the theatrical group, almost wholly lack the distinction of style. Charles Reade is careless, and hardly more than a mannerist, even at his best. Wilkie Collins is lucid, without being concise; simple, not so much from severity, as because it is easy to be so, in the subjects and within the mental scope he allows himself; and devoid of any deep characteristics. Dickens, it may be urged, occupies an undeniably unique point of view. But his talent was even more accessory to his fame, than his genius. Talent is quick at catching a knack that will please the popular taste; but originality measures the sense of this taste, and guides more than it is guided by it. Shall we say that Dickens did not appreciate what was most genuine in himself; did not know in what proportion to combine with the more precious substance of his genius the common alloy of talent, to make it pass current, without debasing it? At all events, the deficiency in style exists. Who does not recall that droll and at the same time almost pitiable method of lengthening out sentences, to suit the increased suspense of a situation? To so many crowded and hurried emotions, we are allowed a corresponding number of clauses connected by colons, semicolons, and dashes, — like supplemental chairs at a hotel-table, to accommodate a rush of visitors. At other times, we accompany the author through long paragraphs of vague and confused description, at his own verbose leisure; and hardly do we find at any point the enhancement of a really beautiful, resonant, masterly verbal style, organically developed from the originality of his observation. Once let us recognize that this original observation is in great part superficial, taking the tinct rather of a brilliant whimsicality than of a profound and vigorous insight, and we shall see why his style is poor and arid.

Balzac laid down the law, that the modern novelist must possess des opinions arrêtees: that, in our phrase, he must have “views.”¹But nothing is more dangerous to the fiction-writer than views which are based upon prejudice. It is immaterial whether he supports himself with social tradition or common-sense, religious authority or unfettered theory: none of these will justify prejudice. These “views” should be the results of perfectly impartial observation of character, resembling somewhat the immovable, inclosing heavens of the old astronomy, which contained all the spheres and atmospheres. Yet they cannot be altogether, like this, changeless. It is simply profound and sympathetic penetration into character which is demanded. From positive views otherwise founded than upon patient and placid insight, spring the swarms of pamphleteering tales which are the bane of the fictionist’s art in our time; and, in the domain of more genuine creation, they lead to the narrowness and limitations of Jane Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Anthony Trollope. It is true, we should suffer irreparable loss if obliged to surrender Miss Austen and Miss Edgeworth. The world cannot afford to dispense with their pure and gentle feeling. What should we do, without the well-molded gelatinous “forms” of amiability, the excellent Potted Proprieties with which they have supplied us? — wholesome confections which it is to be hoped may regale many a generation yet to come. And yet, despite their charms, and that slow, sleepy spell which Trollope knows so well how to exercise, we cannot but think that writers treating human nature in this way are like placer-miners, who, it is granted, may extract every grain of gold from their field of operations, but only by working in superficial deposits. And, when all is done, the gold-bearing stratum has been sacrificed, washed away in the process: only the barren bed-rock remains to after-comers. These, truly, are the “novelists of manners,” for they never get below the crust of society. A change in manners makes occasion for a new writer of the same stamp; and Anthony Trollope, in his generation, takes up the task of Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, in theirs. What is this remark of Dr. Johnson’s, about Fielding giving us characters of manners, and Richardson characters of nature? It would be obviously unjust to Fielding, to place him with writers like Austen, Edgeworth, and Trollope, excellent as they are in their way.

Reade and Dickens, predominantly men of impulse, give no evidence in their works of having apprehended the importance of “arrested opinions.” Dickens, indeed, went so far as to follow out certain unsettled, impetuous feelings, which he mistook for convictions; and so became a propagator of prejudice (though doubtless effecting a great deal of transient good). Reade, appreciating impartiality, and trying to avoid results of this kind, is content with treating mankind as an opportune and curious plaything for the amusement of himself and his reader. But in Victor Hugo we find an altogether singular writer, capable of genuine opinions arrêtées, and yet abounding in vagaries, and indulging an unlimited taste for the sensational-picturesque, which compel us to call him theatrical and a mannerist. Here is an author of undeniable genius, a great romantic dramatist, a delicate lyrist, exceptionally noble in his aims, and comprehending the value of an objective treatment of character; who at times delights us with simple and exquisite observation; yet who, for the most part, strays wholly from the ways of nature in his effects, and is wholly extravagant in style. As far as improbability is concerned, it may be said that objections to it, are too often and easily urged in a way to imply that such a thing were quite inadmissible. But if probability were in all eases an indispensable condition of poetic achievement, we should have to condemn much that is obviously above reproach. Nevertheless, it seems certain that the sentiment of probability should never be violated. If the artist should succeed with his illusion, there would be much to justify his use of the improbable. Still, it can scarcely be defended, if it does not also commend itself to the second thought; as it does in the ease of Lady Macbeth, who has no children, but who nevertheless exclaims:

The truth seems to be, that improbability is a potent means to effect; but when the effect obtained through it is momentary, rather than inherent in the situation’s deepest truth, it becomes meretricious, and in degree as it is unessential. With such meretriciousness Victor Hugo seems fairly chargeable, in cases. The fire-cracker-like dialogues with which he emulates Dumas, and which so needlessly confuse us, at times, as to the succession of speakers; the multiplication of short paragraphs, that are in some danger of becoming no paragraphs at all — being often reduced to a single word; and his curious division of a novel into books and parts, with fresh titles and sub-titles as abundant as newspaper-headings, and chapters of every length, from a single paragraph upwards — all this is the issue of an undue desire to impress. Perhaps it should in some measure be excused, because of its service to the author, in carrying the average reader through much that would otherwise appear to him outrageously wearisome. For it is Hugo’s plan to connect everything with infinity, on the shortest notice. To fly from the simplest fact into the far ether of abstract thought is his favorite exercise; and to render the reader capable of sharing in these aerial flights, he is obliged to wrap him in a magic cloak of invisibility, woven of sundry expansive and slightly windy phrases. He indites a chapter on a girl’s hand, and reaches the weighty conclusion that “Déruchette smiling was simply Déruchette.” In another place, describing the nature of a battle, he proudly convinces us, after a series of the most self-evident statements, that “he who leaves the field, is beaten.” In fine, he wrestles with nothing, in these cases, as if it were a labor only to be ventured on by intellectual giants like himself; and he comes out of the fight with an immense appearance of victory. Under its guise of pompous emptiness, however, this method conceals capabilities of vigorous surprise and pathetic brevity. Very majestic, to my thinking, is that conclusion of Les Travailleurs de la Mèr: “Nothing was now visible but the sea.” But the defects of this method are more frequent than its beauties. Hugo’s desire to air his enthusiasm and to expand in mystic revery furnishes another example of philosophy injuring art; in the same way that the inclination of George Eliot and Balzac toward philosophical parentheses and interspersed epigram fastens a clog on the dramatic movement of their stories. The novelist, it is true, may fulfill to some extent the functions of a chorus; but he should be very cautious in the fulfillment. Victor Hugo is guilty of “spouting.” He tries to magnify, and often to distort, the proportions of all that comes in his way; but things sometimes refuse to be magnified, and leave him in rather a luckless plight. The elasticity and eccentricity of his form he seeks to defend by a mere hyperbole.

“This book,” he says, in Cosette, “is a drama, the first person of which is the Infinite.”

“Man is the second.”

But it is difficult to reconcile ourselves on these easy terms with his reckless practice of “painting up” each and every separate picture in the series which compose a story, so that it may brave the glare of the combined exhibition. This whole question with which we are engaged, as to the grounds for discrimination between theatrical and dramatic novelist, culminates in Hugo’s character as a writer of fiction. To get a fresh view of so important a figure, let us subject him to a contrast. Quitting the atmosphere of his lurid spectacles, let us enter the sad-colored every-day world in which rare Thackeray moves. Hugo and Thackeray both indulge in ample comment; but Thackeray’s moralizing only partially impedes dramatic action, while Hugo’s declamation is so interwoven with the story as to be almost beyond eluding, and is connected with a coarse and dazzling use of colors that reminds one of the scene-painter’s trick. In Thackeray there is no hint of effect for effect’s sake; but Victor Hugo’s novels may be said almost to reek with it. An equally eloquent contrast is furnished by the romances of Hawthorne. “As the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the preestablished moment,” runs Coleridge’s fine phrase, “such and so low is surprise as compared with expectation.” Now, it is the determined preference of this lower pleasure that distinguishes novelists of the theatrical class. Observe, as opposed to this, that in The Scarlet Letter the identity of the unknown sharer in Hester’s sin is clearly intimated in the opening scene, and the mind of the reader thus thrown forward, in an attitude of expectation, which the objective treatment pursued throughout the book is designed to assist. Such a master does not find any Jack-in-the-box surprise needful, to engage his audience. But Hawthorne stands in an atmosphere peculiar to himself. To distinguish him from Thackeray, by calling him an idealist, would entail misapprehension; for no novelist possessing genuine insight can fail to be in some sort an idealist. His personal impressions, and keen, unswerving perceptions must enter into the substance of his creation; idea will insensibly enter into every item of the representation. But thus much may be said, that Hawthorne’s idealism is exceptionally free from all turbidness. It might be conceived of as a clear and stainless, rounded and buoyant sphere, and capable of bearing us serenely through the most solemn and awful spaces. So far is this idealism from being opposed to that of the acknowledged realistic writers, as people are often inclined to believe it, that we find Hawthorne’s realism to be careful, detailed, perfectly true, and perfectly finished. But so suffused is it with fine spirituality, that it does not yet gain popular recognition. Some quality is perhaps wanting in his realism, which would make it more acceptable to the public; but Hawthorne, being engaged with the operation of spiritual laws, did not enter so industriously into descriptive realism as many others have done; although, with a true delight in appearances, he used those particular realistic means which were apt to his purpose with a complete mastery.

Let us consider the import of realism. It is, without doubt, an essential to the best dramatic novel-writing; though in the hands of different authors its manifestations must, of course, vary greatly. One reason for its value is, that it supplies the visual distinctness which is one great charm of the stage. But the necessity for it is more radical. As the painter will study anatomy, in order to a better structural idea of the human form, so the novelist will investigate the functions of all those complicated impulses, emotions, and impressions which we experience from hour to hour, from day to day, and by which our actions and characters are continually controlled, modified, or explained. With his investigation of psychological phenomena, or insight into the mysteries of spiritual being, he must unite the study of all that accompany these in the individual; as corporeality, with that curious net-work of appearances, habits, opinions, in which each human person is enveloped. Of all eminently realistic novelists, Turgénieff is, I imagine, the most vigorous, acute, and delicate. A little livelier play of fancy, he might, indeed, allow himself, without injury. That he is capable of it, certain rare touches seem to indicate. Speaking of a dandy, in Dimitri Roudine, he says: “He tried to give himself airs, as if he were not a human being, but his own statue, erected by national subscription.” For freshness, airiness, and genial sarcasm, this equals the best flights of Dickens’s fancy. Balzac, as well as Turgénieff, however, seems sometimes to fall below the level of completely artistic representation, simply from neglect of these more elastic motions of the mind. Balzac, in particular, is often too matter-of-fact, or too statistical in his statement of characters, situations, and appearances. It is important clearly to grasp the difference between realism and that which is merely literalism.

I. Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events which are apparently the most ordinary and uninteresting, in order to extract from these their full value and true meaning. It would apprehend in all particulars the connection between the familiar and the extraordinary, and the seen and unseen of human nature. Beneath the deceptive cloak of outwardly uneventful days, it detects and endeavors to trace the outlines of the spirits that are hidden there; to measure the changes in their growth, to watch the symptoms of moral decay or regeneration, to fathom their histories of passionate or intellectual problems. In short, realism reveals. Where we thought nothing worthy of notice, it shows everything to be rife with significance. It will easily be seen, therefore, that realism calls upon imagination to exercise its highest function, which is the conception of things in their true relations. But a lucid and accurate statement of these relations, in so many words, does not meet the requirements of art. In certain portions of his work, Balzac seems to overlook this: he depends too much upon exact descriptions both of mental processes and physical appearances. He is too much the classifier. In his anxiety to be absolutely correct, he grafts upon his style whole technical vocabularies which confuse and discourage the reader. He often describes houses with a topographical minuteness that ends by effacing from our minds any picture the imagination had formed for itself, and leaving us without the ability to project a new one; and this, when his object is simply to give us a perfect physical impression. It is plan-drawing, rather than the painting of a picture; and this defect extends to his descriptions of persons. All description should be simple, pictorial, and devoid of technicalities. Otherwise, one kind of literalism is entailed upon us.

II. In this matter, Turgénieff completely surpasses Balzac. But there is a subtler truth which no pictorial description and no abstract exposition will suffice to convey; for the intimation of which, in fine, fancy alone is fitted. In apprehending this, Hawthorne is supreme. Dickens abounds in instances of fancy, grotesque, humorous, and pathetic; but he is not so uniformly true as Hawthorne. George Eliot, too, sometimes employs it gracefully. But George Eliot, Dickens, and Scott, all have, again, a somewhat excessive regard for the appearances of realness in and for itself, seen in their labored and frequently tiresome imitations of imperfect articulation. This, though undoubtedly a valuable auxiliary in some cases, is only occasionally essential to artistic representation. When carried too far, it makes the writer a copyist, an imitator, — merely a reporter of life. This sort of literalism is exemplified in still another way by the novels of Anthony Trollope, who accumulates irrelevancies with a persistence proving him to be for verisimilitude before all things. He will construct a long story out of atomic particles, making it as densely compact as a honey-comb — with the honey left out. He continually gives us, with the utmost gravity, the exact time to a minute, at which some one of his characters takes a train of cars, although this precision has no result in events. And an entire paragraph is consumed by the simple statement that two gentlemen went from the City to a London suburb, in a cab. First, he says that they went hence, and came hither; next, he repeats the declaration, adding that it was long since they had last done so; after which, he goes back and describes their meeting in the street — giving the precise insignificant words which they exchanged; and finally he crowns all with the triumphant announcement that they came home together (as he at first said) — this time explaining that they came by means of a cab. There is a certain fascination in all this: the natural man meets mediocrity half-way: but at bottom it is vicious. Trollope panders to an intellectual laziness which is, unfortunately, characteristic of novel-readers; and his books are pervaded by an unhealthy languor. His observation of character is timid and superficial, though abundantly clever: and his impartiality lapses into indifference, a dullness of sensibility. He has but one method of indicating a man’s affection for a woman: that is, by making him put his arm around her waist. In Trollope, then, we see how thoroughly demoralizing literalism of this kind may become. It is impossible to prescribe any rules adequate to the various cases in which literalism may occur. But, in general terms, we may say that it is precipitated so soon as the aesthetic balance between idea and fact is, from whatever cause, at all unsettled. We have also seen that realism is assisted by fancy, and quick, pictorial language.

So much being supplied concerning the nature and requirements of realism, we are in a position to recognize the general community of aims in such masters as Hawthorne, George Eliot, Balzac, Thackeray, and Turgénieff. All these are leaders in the best dramatic novel-writing, and their example opposes itself, by its very nature, to the practices of Hugo, Dickens, Reade, and Bulwer. Among themselves, they of course differ in respect of quality and degree of realism, and as to their feeling for pure beauty. We have seen the positive character of Hawthorne’s ideal tendency; that of the rest is more negative. Again, they vary in the degrees of pure dramatic effect achieved; and these particular differences are matters of vital consequence. Hawthorne, though thoroughly objective in his rendering, sustains throughout a resonant undertone of poetic revery; George Eliot and Balzac mingle analytical discourse and philosophic suggestion with the action — the latter, however, being by far the less diffuse, and having an easy grace in analysis which our great Englishwoman lacks. Thackeray, in his turn, takes the part of a grumbling and evil-predicting chorus; and Turgénieff claims little more than the right to introduce his persons, and tersely to explain the periods “supposed to have elapsed.” There is fair room for choice among these several modifications of method. If Balzac and George Eliot make their books too much like treatises on human nature, anecdotically illustrated, it must still be said that their system is admirably adapted to bring men to a true appreciation of character; and there is small chance of mistaking the special truths which they wish to enforce in their “modern instances.” So that what is lost to art, in their case, is possibly a gain to the direct instruction of the human race, in the problems of character and circumstance it constantly has to encounter. But that there is a loss to art, we cannot allow ourselves to forget. The highest dramatic skill would work upon us less directly: it would educate, instead of instructing us. By a gentle, if also searching satire, by a sunny insistence upon the joy of living (the joy of sadness, no less than that of gladness), and by the wise exercitation in us of noble emulation and noble pity, it would insensibly develop, and strengthen, and heal us. I think we are ready for something less medicinal than these magic potions — these bitter brews from sad experience, and deep, undeluded thought — with which the novelists, in these latter and greater days of their dynasty, have come to treat us.

In regard to form, it seems that Turgénieff’s example is likely to have the most general and far-reaching influence. His self-exclusion, however, is almost too rigid. This northern athlete demands a muscularity of apprehension in the reader nearly equal to that of his own style of presentation. It is sometimes too violent an exercise to read his books: they set every nerve quivering, hinting the agonies of a vivisection. Besides, he would seem to do himself injustice, in recounting such woful histories as those he chooses, without allowing a single note of hope or of convincing joy to redeem their horror. He is too keenly responsive to outward beauty, to wish the destruction of our faith in some corresponding and essential beauty pervading and including all things. Yet, poet as he is, he finds the world all too unpoetical. To him, it is apparently not malleable in the fires of profound faith, but offers only fixed, enormous oppositions of loveliness and hideousness over which he will permit no veil of illusion to rest. There is truth in his picture; but it seems to deny beauty, and incites to despair. Does it not, then, verge upon error? In marked contrast to the great Russian, we find the Norwegian novelist and dramatist, Björnsen, who, while as strictly dramatic in the form and movement of his stories as Turgénieff, is an enthusiastic apostle of beauty, besides. It would be difficult to conceive of a more delicately inflected piece of dramatic recital, than his novelette called The Fisher Maiden. He has there given the history of an ingenuous, healthy, highly imaginative girl, whose glowing impulses involve her in a curious inconsistency and faithlessness with a pair of lovers, and bring temporary disgrace upon her mother. But at last her imagination makes an escape into art, and she becomes an actress. In the prejudiced community she lives in, she cannot do this without a struggle; and the climax of the tale is in her ultimate triumph, and her engagement at a theatre in the capital. We enter the theatre, to witness her performance; but the book closes with the rising of the curtain. How exquisite is this reticence, this reverence for his subject, that compels the poet to leave his revelation of that fresh maiden heart unspotted by any of the garish splendors or excitements with which novelists are wont so copiously to supply us! In general, they are only too willing to raise the curtain on all imaginable scenes, and to expose matters which should never be made the subject of spectacular interest (although admissible enough when handled with morally sensitive art). Fiction has too frequently indulged in what deserves no better name than downright debauchery. The advances it has made toward temperance, purity, health, and beauty are indeed surprising; but Björnsen, with his sweet and simple histories, has suggested the possibility of still greater refinement.

We already see the dawn of a new epoch. Christ’s thought, however slow to manifest itself firmly in the details of our social, political, and religious organization, has assuredly taken root in the novel. Pity and charity, love, or admiration for the poor, the common, the unfortunate, and the unrecognized nobility of the world, are what it is continually endeavoring to arouse and propagate. Dickens’s exaltation of the cruder or more ignorant classes was perhaps excessive; but there was much truth in his probably much-needed and opportune exaggeration. Thackeray stimulates inferences, by exposing false pretensions, and dethroning the unduly reverenced. The tragic element of frequency which George Eliot points out has, in fact, been already unconsciously accepted, and the moral value of the familiar seized by the artist. Our heroes and heroines are taken from the rank and file of the race, and represent people whom we daily encounter; indeed, we shall easily find our very selves depicted, if we look frankly for such depicture. There is no escaping the thoughtful and elevating influence of this. Nor need there be any implication of littleness or dullness in these aims. The great circle of the horizon may draw its ring around whatever spot shall be chosen as the groundwork of a fiction, and the exact zenith hang above the heads of its personages. Far from lessening the force of personality in fictitious characters, this choice of the frequent is most favorable to a true discrimination of qualities in character. When we have once become aware of the great number of points in which human beings are nearly identical; of the real coincidence of great people and little people, in minute traits no less than in fundamental characteristics; when, in fine, we perceive the incredible resemblances of men; then we shall best be able justly to estimate their equally astounding differences. The level of humanity is like that of the ocean; but each constituent particle rejoices in its own atomic being, and all have a chance to crest the highest waves, if wind and moon should conspire favorably. The instantaneous photograph is necessary to depict this ocean and its movements. But we must have more than any photograph can give us; with the accuracy of that, should be combined the æsthetic completeness of a picture and a poem in one, — and always of a picture and a poem.