Studies in Literature and History
scrupulously and historically exact. The future is a domain upon which
the novelist has rarely trespassed; but in close propinquity to it
lies theologic speculation, and we have not long ago witnessed the
fascination that can be exercised over a multitude of readers by a
novel which described the unhappiness brought upon the peaceful home
of an Anglican clergyman who was driven forth from his parsonage by
imbibing some tincture of modern Biblical criticism. The sensation,
for so it must be called, produced by _Robert Elsmere_, illustrated
the degree to which in these days popularity depends on hitting the
intellectual level of the general reader, and on touching the fancy or
the conscience of that very numerous class whose culture is of the
medium sort, neither high nor low. For while it seems certain that to
a great many people the views and arguments which overthrew Elsmere's
orthodoxy and brought him to martyrdom must have seemed profound,
daring, and novel, to others they are but too familiar and by no means
fresh. To some of us, indeed, the overpowering effect produced on
Elsmere's mind by his remarkable discoveries may be not unlike the awe
and gratitude with which an African chief receives the present of an
obsolete cannon. But the main reason why the future is no better field
than the distant past for the modern novelist, is that in both cases
there is a want of actuality, and that the positive temper of the age
requires in either case something more definite and verifiable.
It may be affirmed, moreover, as a general observation, that the
spirit of realism is hostile to the Novel with a Purpose, whether it
be that species which undertakes to argue or instruct under the cloak
of agreeable fiction, or that other species, much cultivated by
Dickens in his later works, which attacks antiquated institutions and
public abuses in a story so contrived as to expose their absurdity and
injustice. There is an air of artificiality about such compositions
which damages the artistic illusion, the photographic rendering of
actual life, upon which the author relies, because it throws over the
stage a shadow of his own personality. For one tendency of excessive
realism is to encourage an approximation between literary and
theatrical effects, since the whole interest becomes concentrated upon
figures acting and moving under a strong light in the foreground of
scenes carefully adjusted, so that anything which betrays the author's
presence interrupts the performance.
Yet although our contemporary novelist is thus subjected, in respect
of his period and his repertory, to limitations from which his
predecessors were free, there has never been a time when English
fiction has exhibited, in competent hands, greater fertility of
invention and resource, or so high an average proficiency in the art
of writing. The vastly increased demand for amusement in modern life
has stimulated the production of light literature, which is now
cultivated far more widely than heretofore, like tea, and the market
is flooded with an article of sound moderate quality. At this moment
we have in very truth a democracy of letters, for while no mighty
masters overtop the rest, the number of writers who stand on an
equality of merit, who can produce one or more excellent stories, is
very large. Their field has widened with the expansion of British
enterprise; they can draw their plots, descriptions, and characters
from the colonies, from Africa, from the South Sea Islands, or from
India; and it will be observed that not only the tale of adventure,
but also the quiet story of domestic interiors and family troubles, is
easily acclimatised, and gains something from a sparing use of variety
of dialect and landscape. As for the Novel of Adventure, it is drawing
copious sustenance from these outlying regions. For although it is
only from first favourites that the home-keeping reader will tolerate
an elaborate romance about Africa or the Pacific, he has taken a very
strong liking to short stories of scenes and actions strictly
contemporaneous, written in a rough, vigorous, and utterly
unconventional style, which convey to his mind impressions as
distinctly as a set of pictorial sketches.
We believe that this style, which retains a strong flavour of its
American origin (it can hardly be dated earlier than Bret Harte), may
be reckoned to be peculiar to the light literature of the English
language. We are not aware that it prevails to any extent in other
countries; for although the short story of love, intrigue, and manners
in general has flourished from mediaeval times, and at this moment is
almost exclusively confined to these subjects in France, the class of
works to which we are now referring differs entirely in subject and
style. In England and America the roving life of the colonies, the
backwoods, the Western States, and the Indian frontiers has created an
unique school of realistic fiction in which Mr. Kipling is at this
moment the chief professor. There is moreover a manifest affinity
between these short prose narratives and the strain of racy strenuous
versification upon the quaint unvarnished notions and hardy exploits
of the bush, the prairie, or the frontier, by which Bret Harte,
Lindsay Gordon, and again Kipling have attained celebrity. As these
poems echo the far-off ring of the ancient ballad, so we may venture
to surmise that the short prose story of adventure, which appeals to
modern taste by its vivid reality, its terseness of style, and its
picturesque outline, represents the latest form reached by Romance in
its long evolution. Such a tale will squeeze into fifty or a hundred
pages what Fenimore Cooper or G. P. R. James would have distended into
three volumes of slow-moving narrative, whereby infinite labour is
saved to the hasty and indolent reader of these railroad days.
Here, in short, we perceive the influence of that very characteristic
school of contemporary art, which we know to have always existed, but
to which men have recently given the exceedingly modern title of
Impressionist,--the school of authors who desire to strike the
imagination vividly and with a few sharp strokes, grouping their
figures in a strong light, rounding off their compact story upon a
small canvas, and rejecting every detail that is not strictly
accessory to the main purpose. Already it is beginning to be said in
France that Zola with his laborious particularism has passed his
climacteric of fashion, and that the swift impressionist is sailing in
on a fair wind of spreading popularity. Now in France, though no
longer in England, the critics still do their duty; they are not
merely, to borrow a phrase from Coleridge, the eunuchs who guard the
temple of the Muses; they are often prolific authors who exercise
great influence upon public opinion, so that their forecast of the
course and tendencies of fiction is worth bearing in mind. We
ourselves are ever a restless, bustling, far-wandering folk, great
lovers of fiction and travel, who not only carry forth the English
language into the uttermost parts of the earth, to be moulded in
strange dialects to queer uses, but also bring back fresh ideas and
incidents, and various aspects of a many-sided world-ranging life. If,
as has been often asserted, literature be the collective expression of
the ideas and aspirations, the tastes, feelings, and habits of the
generation which produces it, we may not be altogether wrong in
treating the short highly finished story, whether of adventure or
manners, as the impress and reflection of modern English society. But
no operation is more delicate than the endeavour to trace the subtle
connection between constant modifications of literary form and the
pressure of its ever-changing moral and material environment.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The list of these contributions at page 477 of his _Life_ is not
complete.
[2] (1) _The English Novel._ By Walter Raleigh. Being a short Sketch
of its History from the Earliest Times to the Appearance of
'Waverley.' London, 1894. (2) _Aventures de Guerre au temps de la
Republique et du Consulat._ Par A. Moreau de Jonnes. Preface de M.
Leon Say. Paris, Guillaumin et Cie., 1893.--_Quarterly Review_,
October 1894.
[3] Now Sir Walter Raleigh.
[4] Page 179.
[5] _Sense and Sensibility._
[6] _The Art of Illustration_, by Henry Blackburn, 1894.
ENGLISH LETTER-WRITING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY[7]
The preservation and posthumous publication of private correspondence
has supplied modern society with one of its daintiest literary
luxuries. The art of letter-writing is, of course, no recent
invention; it reached a high level of excellence, like almost every
other branch of refined expression in prose or verse, in the older
world of Rome. Nevertheless, the exceeding rarity of the specimens
that have come down to us from those times is an important element of
their value; while in our own day the letters of eminent persons fill
many book-shelves in every decent library, and their quantity
increases out of all proportion to their quality.
It may be said, generally, of fine letter-writing that it is a
distinctive product of a high civilisation, denoting the existence of
a cultured and leisurely class, implying the conditions of secure
intercourse, confidence, sociability, many common interests, and that
peculiar delight in the stimulating interchange of ideas and feelings
which is one characteristic of modern life. The language of a country
must have thrown off its archaic stiffness, must have acquired
suppleness and variety; the writer's instrument must be a style that
combines familiarity with distinction, correctness of thought with
easy diction. It is from the lack of these conditions that the Asiatic
world has given us no such letters; the material as well as the
intellectual environment has been wanting. For similar reasons the
middle ages of Europe produced us none of the kind with which we are
now dealing; the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries have left us
very few samples of them; and since in this article we propose to
treat only of English letter-writers, we may affirm that the art did
not flourish in England until the eighteenth century, when according
to certain authorities it rose to something like perfection. It is a
notable observation of Hume's that Swift is the first Englishman who
wrote polite prose; and Swift is one of the earliest, as he is still
one of the pleasantest, writers of private correspondence that has
taken a permanent place in our literature.
We can understand without difficulty why the eighteenth century was a
period favourable to the growth of excellent letter-writing. There
were very few newspapers, and those which appeared were low in tone
and ill-informed--political pamphleteers abounded and the essayists on
morals and manners were numerous--but it was chiefly by private hands
that accurate information and ideas were circulated in a small and
highly cultivated society with an exquisite taste in literature, with
a keen interest in public affairs, and a very strong appetite for
philosophic discussion. Side by side with the intellectual conditions
we may take into account the national circumstances of that age. The
post was expensive, with a slow and intermittent circulation, so that
letters, being infrequent, were worth writing carefully and at
length; while correspondents were nevertheless not separated by
distances of time and space sufficient to weaken or extinguish the
desire of interchanging thoughts and news. For it is within the
experience of most of us that the difficulty of keeping up regular
correspondence increases with distance; that friends who meet seldom
write to each other rarely; and that, although letters are most valued