It is nearly twenty years since I proposed to myself to write
a history of English prose fiction. I shall never do it now, but
the subject is so good a one that I recommend it heartily to some
man of letters, who shall at the same time be indefatigable and
light-handed. I acknowledge that I broke down in the task, because
I could not endure the labour in addition to the other labours of
my life. Though the book might be charming, the work was very much
the reverse. It came to have a terrible aspect to me, as did that
proposition that I should sit out all the May meetings of a season.
According to my plan of such a history it would be necessary
to read an infinity of novels, and not only to read them, but so
to read them as to point out the excellences of those which are
most excellent, and to explain the defects of those which, though
defective, had still reached sufficient reputation to make them
worthy of notice. I did read many after this fashion,--and here
and there I have the criticisms which I wrote. In regard to many,
they were written on some blank page within the book; I have not,
however, even a list of the books so criticised. I think that the
Arcadia was the first, and Ivanhoe the last. My plan, as I settled
it at last, had been to begin with Robinson Crusoe, which is the
earliest really popular novel which we have in our language, and
to continue the review so as to include the works of all English
novelists of reputation, except those who might still be living
when my task should be completed. But when Dickens and Bulwer died,
my spirit flagged, and that which I had already found to be very
difficult had become almost impossible to me at my then period of
life.
I began my own studies on the subject with works much earlier than
Robinson Crusoe, and made my way through a variety of novels which
were necessary for my purpose, but which in the reading gave me no
pleasure whatever. I never worked harder than at the Arcadia, or
read more detestable trash than the stories written by Mrs. Aphra
Behn; but these two were necessary to my purpose, which was not only
to give an estimate of the novels as I found them, but to describe
how it had come to pass that the English novels of the present
day have become what they are, to point out the effects which they
have produced, and to inquire whether their great popularity has on
the whole done good or evil to the people who read them. I still
think that the book is one well worthy to be written.
I intended to write that book to vindicate my own profession as
a novelist, and also to vindicate that public taste in literature
which has created and nourished the profession which I follow.
And I was stirred up to make such an attempt by a conviction that
there still exists among us Englishmen a prejudice in respect
to novels which might, perhaps, be lessened by such a work. This
prejudice is not against the reading of novels, as is proved by their
general acceptance among us. But it exists strongly in reference
to the appreciation in which they are professed to be held; and it
robs them of much of that high character which they may claim to
have earned by their grace, their honesty, and good teaching.
No man can work long at any trade without being brought to consider
much, whether that which he is daily doing tends to evil or to
good. I have written many novels, and have known many writers of
novels, and I can assert that such thoughts have been strong with
them and with myself. But in acknowledging that these writers have
received from the public a full measure of credit for such genius,
ingenuity, or perseverance as each may have displayed, I feel that
there is still wanting to them a just appreciation of the excellence
of their calling, and a general understanding of the high nature
of the work which they perform.
By the common consent of all mankind who have read, poetry takes
the highest place in literature. That nobility of expression, and
all but divine grace of words, which she is bound to attain before
she can make her footing good, is not compatible with prose. Indeed
it is that which turns prose into poetry. When that has been in
truth achieved, the reader knows that the writer has soared above
the earth, and can teach his lessons somewhat as a god might teach.
He who sits down to write his tale in prose makes no such attempt,
nor does he dream that the poet's honour is within his reach;--but
his teaching is of the same nature, and his lessons all tend to
the same end. By either, false sentiments may be fostered; false
notions of humanity may be engendered; false honour, false love,
false worship may be created; by either, vice instead of virtue
may be taught. But by each, equally, may true honour, true love;
true worship, and true humanity be inculcated; and that will be
the greatest teacher who will spread such truth the widest. But
at present, much as novels, as novels, are bought and read, there
exists still an idea, a feeling which is very prevalent, that novels
at their best are but innocent. Young men and women,--and old men
and women too,--read more of them than of poetry, because such reading
is easier than the reading of poetry; but they read them,--as men
eat pastry after dinner,--not without some inward conviction that
the taste is vain if not vicious. I take upon myself to say that
it is neither vicious nor vain.
But all writers of fiction who have desired to think well of their
own work, will probably have had doubts on their minds before they
have arrived at this conclusion. Thinking much of my own daily
labour and of its nature, I felt myself at first to be much afflicted
and then to be deeply grieved by the opinion expressed by wise and
thinking men as to the work done by novelists. But when, by degrees,
I dared to examine and sift the sayings of such men, I found them
to be sometimes silly and often arrogant. I began to inquire what
had been the nature of English novels since they first became common
in our own language, and to be desirous of ascertaining whether they
had done harm or good. I could well remember that, in my own young
days, they had not taken that undisputed possession of drawing-rooms
which they now hold. Fifty years ago, when George IV. was king, they
were not indeed treated as Lydia had been forced to treat them in
the preceding reign, when, on the approach of elders, Peregrine
Pickle was hidden beneath the bolster, and Lord Ainsworth put away
under the sofa. But the families in which an unrestricted permission
was given for the reading of novels were very few, and from many
they were altogether banished. The high poetic genius and correct
morality of Walter Scott had not altogether succeeded in making men
and women understand that lessons which were good in poetry could
not be bad in prose. I remember that in those days an embargo was
laid upon novel-reading as a pursuit, which was to the novelist
a much heavier tax than that want of full appreciation of which I
now complain.
There is, we all know, no such embargo now. May we not say that
people of an age to read have got too much power into their own
hands to endure any very complete embargo? Novels are read right
and left, above stairs and below, in town houses and in country
parsonages, by young countesses and by farmers' daughters, by old
lawyers and by young students. It has not only come to pass that
a special provision of them has to be made for the godly, but that
the provision so made must now include books which a few years since
the godly would have thought to be profane. It was this necessity
which, a few years since, induced the editor of Good Words to apply
to me for a novel,--which, indeed, when supplied was rejected, but
which now, probably, owing to further change in the same direction,
would have been accepted.
If such be the case--if the extension of novel-reading be so wide
as I have described it--then very much good or harm must be done
by novels. The amusement of the time can hardly be the only result
of any book that is read, and certainly not so with a novel, which
appeals especially to the imagination, and solicits the sympathy of
the young. A vast proportion of the teaching of the day,--greater
probably than many of us have acknowledged to ourselves,--comes
from these books, which are in the hands of all readers. It is from
them that girls learn what is expected from them, and what they
are to expect when lovers come; and also from them that young men
unconsciously learn what are, or should be, or may be, the charms
of love,--though I fancy that few young men will think so little
of their natural instincts and powers as to believe that I am right
in saying so. Many other lessons also are taught. In these times,
when the desire to be honest is pressed so hard, is so violently
assaulted by the ambition to be great; in which riches are the
easiest road to greatness; when the temptations to which men are
subjected dull their eyes to the perfected iniquities of others;
when it is so hard for a man to decide vigorously that the pitch,
which so many are handling, will defile him if it be touched;--men's
conduct will be actuated much by that which is from day to day
depicted to them as leading to glorious or inglorious results. The
woman who is described as having obtained all that the world holds
to be precious, by lavishing her charms and her caresses unworthily
and heartlessly, will induce other women to do the same with
theirs,--as will she who is made interesting by exhibitions of
bold passion teach others to be spuriously passionate. The young
man who in a novel becomes a hero, perhaps a Member of Parliament,
and almost a Prime Minister, by trickery, falsehood, and flash
cleverness, will have many followers, whose attempts to rise in
the world ought to lie heavily on the conscience of the novelists
who create fictitious Cagliostros. There are Jack Sheppards other
than those who break into houses and out of prisons,--Macheaths,
who deserve the gallows more than Gay's hero.
Thinking of all this, as a novelist surely must do,--as I certainly
have done through my whole career,--it becomes to him a matter of
deep conscience how he shall handle those characters by whose words
and doings he hopes to interest his readers. It will very frequently
be the case that he will be tempted to sacrifice something for
effect, to say a word or two here, or to draw a picture there,
for which he feels that he has the power, and which when spoken or
drawn would be alluring. The regions of absolute vice are foul and
odious. The savour of them, till custom has hardened the palate and
the nose, is disgusting. In these he will hardly tread. But there
are outskirts on these regions, on which sweet-smelling flowers
seem to grow; and grass to be green. It is in these border-lands
that the danger lies. The novelist may not be dull. If he commit
that fault he can do neither harm nor good. He must please, and the
flowers and the grass in these neutral territories sometimes seem
to give him so easy an opportunity of pleasing!
The writer of stories must please, or he will be nothing. And
he must teach whether he wish to teach or no. How shall he teach
lessons of virtue and at the same time make himself a delight to
his readers? That sermons are not in themselves often thought to
be agreeable we all know. Nor are disquisitions on moral philosophy
supposed to be pleasant reading for our idle hours. But the novelist,
if he have a conscience, must preach his sermons with the same
purpose as the clergyman, and must have his own system of ethics.
If he can do this efficiently, if he can make virtue alluring and
vice ugly, while he charms his readers instead of wearying them,
then I think Mr. Carlyle need not call him distressed, nor talk
of that long ear of fiction, nor question whether he be or not the
most foolish of existing mortals.
I think that many have done so; so many that we English novelists
may boast as a class that has been the general result of our own
work. Looking back to the past generation, I may say with certainty
that such was the operation of the novels of Miss Edgeworth, Miss
Austen, and Walter Scott. Coming down to my own times, I find such
to have been the teaching of Thackeray, of Dickens, and of George
Eliot. Speaking, as I shall speak to any who may read these words,
with that absence of self-personality which the dead may claim, I
will boast that such has been the result of my own writing. Can any
one by search through the works of the six great English novelists
I have named, find a scene, a passage, or a word that would teach
a girl to be immodest, or a man to be dishonest? When men in their
pages have been described as dishonest and women as immodest, have
they not ever been punished? It is not for the novelist to say,
baldly and simply: "Because you lied here, or were heartless there,
because you Lydia Bennet forgot the lessons of your honest home,
or you Earl Leicester were false through your ambition, or you
Beatrix loved too well the glitter of the world, therefore you shall
be scourged with scourges either in this world or in the next;" but
it is for him to show, as he carries on his tale, that his Lydia,
or his Leicester, or his Beatrix, will be dishonoured in the estimation
of all readers by his or her vices. Let a woman be drawn clever,
beautiful, attractive,--so as to make men love her, and women
almost envy her,--and let her be made also heartless, unfeminine,
and ambitious of evil grandeur, as was Beatrix, what a danger is
there not in such a character! To the novelist who shall handle it,
what peril of doing harm! But if at last it have been so handled
that every girl who reads of Beatrix shall say: "Oh! not like
that;--let me not be like that!" and that every youth shall say:
"Let me not have such a one as that to press my bosom, anything
rather than that!"--then will not the novelist have preached his
sermon as perhaps no clergyman can preach it?
Very much of a novelist's work must appertain to the intercourse
between young men and young women. It is admitted that a novel
can hardly be made interesting or successful without love. Some few
might be named, but even in those the attempt breaks down, and the
softness of love is found to be necessary to complete the story.
Pickwick has been named as an exception to the rule, but even
in Pickwick there are three or four sets of lovers, whose little
amatory longings give a softness to the work. I tried it once with
Miss Mackenzie, but I had to make her fall in love at last. In this
frequent allusion to the passion which most stirs the imagination
of the young, there must be danger. Of that the writer of fiction
is probably well aware. Then the question has to be asked, whether
the danger may not be so averted that good may be the result,--and
to be answered.
respect the necessity of dealing with love is advantageous,--advantageous
from the very circumstance which has made love necessary to
all novelists. It is necessary because the passion is one which
interests or has interested all. Every one feels it, has felt it,
or expects to feel it,--or else rejects it with an eagerness which
still perpetuates the interest. If the novelist, therefore, can
so handle the subject as to do good by his handling, as to teach
wholesome lessons in regard to love, the good which he does will
be very wide. If I can teach politicians that they can do their
business better by truth than by falsehood, I do a great service;
but it is done to a limited number of persons. But if I can make
young men and women believe that truth in love will make them
happy, then, if my writings be popular, I shall have a very large
class of pupils. No doubt the cause for that fear which did exist
as to novels arose from an idea that the matter of love would be
treated in an inflammatory and generally unwholesome manner. "Madam,"
says Sir Anthony in the play, "a circulating library in a town is
an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the
year; and depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of
handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last." Sir Anthony
was no doubt right. But he takes it for granted that the longing
for the fruit is an evil. The novelist who writes of love thinks
differently, and thinks that the honest love of an honest man is
a treasure which a good girl may fairly hope to win,--and that if
she can be taught to wish only for that, she will have been taught
to entertain only wholesome wishes.
I can easily believe that a girl should be taught to wish to love
by reading how Laura Bell loved Pendennis. Pendennis was not in
truth a very worthy man, nor did he make a very good husband; but
the girl's love was so beautiful, and the wife's love when she became
a wife so womanlike, and at the same time so sweet, so unselfish,
so wifely, so worshipful,--in the sense in which wives are told
that they ought to worship their husband,--that I cannot believe
that any girl can be injured, or even not benefited, by reading of
Laura's love.
There once used to be many who thought, and probably there still
are some, even here in England, who think that a girl should hear
nothing of love till the time come in which she is to be married.
That, no doubt, was the opinion of Sir Anthony Absolute and of Mrs.
Malaprop. But I am hardly disposed to believe that the old system
was more favourable than ours to the purity of manners. Lydia
Languish, though she was constrained by fear of her aunt to hide
the book, yet had Peregrine Pickle in her collection. While human
nature talks of love so forcibly it can hardly serve our turn
to be silent on the subject. "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque
recurret." There are countries in which it has been in accordance
with the manners of the upper classes that the girl should be brought
to marry the man almost out of the nursery--or rather perhaps out
of the convent--without having enjoyed that freedom of thought
which the reading of novels and of poetry will certainly produce;
but I do not know that the marriages so made have been thought to
be happier than our own.
Among English novels of the present day, and among English
novelists, a great division is made. There are sensational novels
and anti-sensational, sensational novelists and anti-sensational,
sensational readers and anti-sensational. The novelists who are
considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic.
I am realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is generally supposed
to be sensational. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to
take delight in the elucidation of character. Those who hold by
the other are charmed by the continuation and gradual development
of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake,--which mistake arises
from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time
realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in
the highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure
in art. Let those readers who believe that they do not like
sensational scenes in novels think of some of those passages from
our great novelists which have charmed them most:--of Rebecca in
the castle with Ivanhoe; of Burley in the cave with Morton; of the
mad lady tearing the veil of the expectant bride, in Jane Eyre; of
Lady Castlewood as, in her indignation, she explains to the Duke
of Hamilton Henry Esmond's right to be present at the marriage of
his Grace with Beatrix;--may I add of Lady Mason, as she makes her
confession at the feet of Sir Peregrine Orme? Will any one say that
the authors of these passages have sinned in being over-sensational? No
doubt, a string of horrible incidents, bound together without truth
in detail, and told as affecting personages without character,--wooden
blocks, who cannot make themselves known to the reader as men
and women, does not instruct or amuse, or even fill the mind with
awe. Horrors heaped upon horrors, and which are horrors only in
themselves, and not as touching any recognised and known person,
are not tragic, and soon cease even to horrify. And such would-be
tragic elements of a story may be increased without end, and
without difficulty. I may tell you of a woman murdered,--murdered
in the same street with you, in the next house,--that she was a
wife murdered by her husband,--a bride not yet a week a wife. I may
add to it for ever. I may say that the murderer roasted her alive.
There is no end to it. I may declare that a former wife was treated
with equal barbarity; and may assert that, as the murderer was led
away to execution, he declared his only sorrow, his only regret
to be, that he could not live to treat a third wife after the same
fashion. There is nothing so easy as the creation and the cumulation
of fearful incidents after this fashion. If such creation and cumulation
be the beginning and the end of the novelist's work,--and novels have
been written which seem to be without other attractions,--nothing
can be more dull or more useless. But not on that account are we
averse to tragedy in prose fiction. As in poetry, so in prose, he
who can deal adequately with tragic elements is a greater artist
and reaches a higher aim than the writer whose efforts never carry
him above the mild walks of everyday life. The Bride of Lammermoor
is a tragedy throughout, in spite of its comic elements. The life
of Lady Castlewood, of whom I have spoken, is a tragedy. Rochester's
wretched thraldom to his mad wife, in Jane Eyre, is a tragedy.
But these stories charm us not simply because they are tragic, but
because we feel that men and women with flesh and blood, creatures
with whom we can sympathise, are struggling amidst their woes. It
all lies in that. No novel is anything, for the purposes either
of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the
characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so
tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears,
and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be,--truth
of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and
women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be
too sensational.
I did intend when I meditated that history of English fiction to
include within its pages some rules for the writing of novels;--or
I might perhaps say, with more modesty, to offer some advice on
the art to such tyros in it as might be willing to take advantage
of the experience of an old hand. But the matter would, I fear,
be too long for this episode, and I am not sure that I have as yet
got the rules quite settled in my own mind. I will, however, say
a few words on one or two points which my own practice has pointed
out to me.
I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down
to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell
a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first
novel will generally have sprung from the right cause. Some series
of events, or some development of character, will have presented
itself to his imagination,--and this he feels so strongly that he
thinks he can present his picture in strong and agreeable language
to others. He sits down and tells his story because he has a story
to tell; as you, my friend, when you have heard something which
has at once tickled your fancy or moved your pathos, will hurry
to tell it to the first person you meet. But when that first novel
has been received graciously by the public and has made for itself
a success, then the writer naturally feeling that the writing of
novels is within his grasp, looks about for something to tell in
another. He cudgels his brains, not always successfully, and sits
down to write, not because he has something which he burns to
tell, but because be feels it to be incumbent on him to be telling
something. As you, my friend, if you are very successful in
the telling of that first story, will become ambitious of further
storytelling, and will look out for anecdotes,--in the narration
of which you will not improbably sometimes distress your audience.
So it has been with many novelists, who, after some good work,
perhaps after very much good work, have distressed their audience
because they have gone on with their work till their work has become
simply a trade with them. Need I make a list of such, seeing that
it would contain the names of those who have been greatest in the
art of British novel-writing? They have at last become weary of
that portion of a novelist's work which is of all the most essential
to success. That a man as he grows old should feel the labour of
writing to be a fatigue is natural enough. But a man to whom writing
has become a habit may write well though he be fatigued. But the
weary novelist refuses any longer to give his mind to that work of
observation and reception from which has come his power, without
which work his power cannot be continued,--which work should
be going on not only when he is at his desk, but in all his walks
abroad, in all his movements through the world, in all his intercourse
with his fellow-creatures. He has become a novelist, as another has
become a poet, because he has in those walks abroad, unconsciously
for the most part, been drawing in matter from all that he has seen
and heard. But this has not been done without labour, even when
the labour has been unconscious. Then there comes a time when he
shuts his eyes and shuts his ears. When we talk of memory fading
as age comes on, it is such shutting of eyes and ears that we mean.
The things around cease to interest us, and we cannot exercise
our minds upon them. To the novelist thus wearied there comes the
demand for further novels. He does not know his own defect, and
even if he did he does not wish to abandon his own profession. He
still writes; but he writes because he has to tell a story, not
because he has a story to tell. What reader of novels has not felt
the "woodenness" of this mode of telling? The characters do not
live and move, but are cut out of blocks and are propped against the
wall. The incidents are arranged in certain lines--the arrangement
being as palpable to the reader as it has been to the writer--but
do not follow each other as results naturally demanded by previous
action. The reader can never feel--as he ought to feel--that only
for that flame of the eye, only for that angry word, only for that
moment of weakness, all might have been different. The course of
the tale is one piece of stiff mechanism, in which there is no room
for a doubt.
These, it may be said, are reflections which I, being an old
novelist, might make useful to myself for discontinuing my work,
but can hardly be needed by those tyros of whom I have spoken. That
they are applicable to myself I readily admit, but I also find that
they apply to many beginners. Some of us who are old fail at last
because we are old. It would be well that each of us should say to
himself,
"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus."
But many young fail also, because they endeavour to tell stories
when they have none to tell. And this comes from idleness rather
than from innate incapacity. The mind has not been sufficiently at
work when the tale has been commenced, nor is it kept sufficiently
at work as the tale is continued. I have never troubled myself much
about the construction of plots, and am not now insisting specially
on thoroughness in a branch of work in which I myself have not been
very thorough. I am not sure that the construction of a perfected
plot has been at any period within my power. But the novelist has
other aims than the elucidation of his plot. He desires to make
his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the
creatures of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living,
human creatures. This he can never do unless he know those fictitious
personages himself, and he can never know them unless he can live
with them in the full reality of established intimacy. They must
be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his
dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them. He must argue
with them, quarrel with them, forgive them, and even submit to them.
He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate,
whether true or false, and how far true, and how far false. The
depth and the breadth, and the narrowness and the shallowness of
each should be clear to him. And, as here, in our outer world, we
know that men and women change,--become worse or better as temptation
or conscience may guide them,--so should these creations of his
change, and every change should be noted by him. On the last day
of each month recorded, every person in his novel should be a month
older than on the first. If the would-be novelist have aptitudes
that way, all this will come to him without much struggling;--but
if it do not come, I think he can only make novels of wood.
It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence has come
whatever success I have obtained. There is a gallery of them, and
of all in that gallery I may say that I know the tone of the voice,
and the colour of the hair, every flame of the eye, and the very
clothes they wear. Of each man I could assert whether he would have
said these or the other words; of every woman, whether she would
then have smiled or so have frowned. When I shall feel that this
intimacy ceases, then I shall know that the old horse should be
turned out to grass. That I shall feel it when I ought to feel it,
I will by no means say. I do not know that I am at all wiser than
Gil Blas' canon; but I do know that the power indicated is one without
which the teller of tales cannot tell them to any good effect.
The language in which the novelist is to put forth his story, the
colours with which he is to paint his picture, must of course be to
him matter of much consideration. Let him have all other possible
gifts,--imagination, observation, erudition, and industry,--they
will avail him nothing for his purpose, unless he can put forth
his work in pleasant words. If he be confused, tedious, harsh, or
unharmonious, readers will certainly reject him. The reading of
a volume of history or on science may represent itself as a duty;
and though the duty may by a bad style be made very disagreeable,
the conscientious reader will perhaps perform it. But the novelist
will be assisted by no such feeling. Any reader may reject his
work without the burden of a sin. It is the first necessity of his
position that he make himself pleasant. To do this, much more is
necessary than to write correctly. He may indeed be pleasant without
being correct,--as I think can be proved by the works of more than
one distinguished novelist. But he must be intelligible,--intelligible
without trouble; and he must be harmonious.
Any writer who has read even a little will know what is meant by
the word intelligible. It is not sufficient that there be a meaning
that may be hammered out of the sentence, but that the language
should be so pellucid that the meaning should be rendered without
an effort of the reader;--and not only some proposition of meaning,
but the very sense, no more and no less, which the writer has intended
to put into his words. What Macaulay says should be remembered by
all writers: "How little the all-important art of making meaning
pellucid is studied now! Hardly any popular author except myself
thinks of it." The language used should be as ready and as efficient
a conductor of the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader
as is the electric spark which passes from one battery to another
battery. In all written matter the spark should carry everything;
but in matters recondite the recipient will search to see that
he misses nothing, and that he takes nothing away too much. The
novelist cannot expect that any such search will be made. A young
writer, who will acknowledge the truth of what I am saying, will
often feel himself tempted by the difficulties of language to
tell himself that some one little doubtful passage, some single
collocation of words, which is not quite what it ought to be, will
not matter. I know well what a stumbling-block such a passage may
be. But he should leave none such behind him as he goes on. The
habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe
critic to himself.
As to that harmonious expression which I think is required, I shall
find it more difficult to express my meaning. It will be granted, I
think, by readers that a style may be rough, and yet both forcible
and intelligible; but it will seldom come to pass that a novel written
in a rough style will be popular,--and less often that a novelist
who habitually uses such a style will become so. The harmony which
is required must come from the practice of the ear. There are few
ears naturally so dull that they cannot, if time be allowed to them,
decide whether a sentence, when read, be or be not harmonious. And
the sense of such harmony grows on the ear, when the intelligence
has once informed itself as to what is, and what is not harmonious.
The boy, for instance, who learns with accuracy the prosody of a
Sapphic stanza, and has received through his intelligence a knowledge
of its parts, will soon tell by his ear whether a Sapphic stanza
be or be not correct. Take a girl, endowed with gifts of music,
well instructed in her art, with perfect ear, and read to her such
a stanza with two words transposed, as, for instance--
Mercuri, nam te docilis magistro
Movit Amphion CANENDO LAPIDES,
Tuque testudo resonare septem
Callida nervis--
and she will find no halt in the rhythm. But a schoolboy with
none of her musical acquirements or capacities, who has, however,
become familiar with the metres of the poet, will at once discover
the fault. And so will the writer become familiar with what is
harmonious in prose. But in order that familiarity may serve him
in his business, he must so train his ear that he shall be able
to weigh the rhythm of every word as it falls from his pen. This,
when it has been done for a time, even for a short time, will become
so habitual to him that he will have appreciated the metrical duration
of every syllable before it shall have dared to show itself upon
paper. The art of the orator is the same. He knows beforehand how
each sound which he is about to utter will affect the force of his
climax. If a writer will do so he will charm his readers, though
his readers will probably not know how they have been charmed.
In writing a novel the author soon becomes aware that a burden
of many pages is before him. Circumstances require that he should
cover a certain and generally not a very confined space. Short novels
are not popular with readers generally. Critics often complain of
the ordinary length of novels,--of the three volumes to which they
are subjected; but few novels which have attained great success in
England have been told in fewer pages. The novel-writer who sticks
to novel-writing as his profession will certainly find that this
burden of length is incumbent on him. How shall he carry his burden
to the end? How shall he cover his space? Many great artists have
by their practice opposed the doctrine which I now propose to
preach;--but they have succeeded I think in spite of their fault
and by dint of their greatness. There should be no episodes in a
novel. Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should
tend to the telling of the story. Such episodes distract the
attention of the reader, and always do so disagreeably. Who has not
felt this to be the case even with The Curious Impertinent and with
the History of the Man of the Hill. And if it be so with Cervantes
and Fielding, who can hope to succeed? Though the novel which you
have to write must be long, let it be all one. And this exclusion
of episodes should be carried down into the smallest details.
Every sentence and every word used should tend to the telling of
the story. "But," the young novelist will say, "with so many pages
before me to be filled, how shall I succeed if I thus confine
myself;--how am I to know beforehand what space this story of mine
will require? There must be the three volumes, or the certain number
of magazine pages which I have contracted to supply. If I may not
be discursive should occasion require, how shall I complete my task?
The painter suits the size of his canvas to his subject, and must
I in my art stretch my subject to my canas?" This undoubtedly must
be done by the novelist; and if he will learn his business, may
be done without injury to his effect. He may not paint different
pictures on the same canvas, which he will do if he allow himself
to wander away to matters outside his own story; but by studying
proportion in his work, he may teach himself so to tell his story
that it shall naturally fall into the required length. Though his
story should be all one, yet it may have many parts. Though the
plot itself may require but few characters, it may be so enlarged
as to find its full development in many. There may be subsidiary
plots, which shall all tend to the elucidation of the main story,
and which will take their places as part of one and the same
work,--as there may be many figures on a canvas which shall not to
the spectator seem to form themselves into separate pictures.
There is no portion of a novelist's work in which this fault of
episodes is so common as in the dialogue. It is so easy to make
any two persons talk on any casual subject with which the writer
presumes himself to be conversant! Literature, philosophy, politics,
or sport, may thus be handled in a loosely discursive style; and
the writer, while indulging himself and filling his pages, is apt
to think that he is pleasing his reader. I think he can make no
greater mistake. The dialogue is generally the most agreeable part
of a novel; but it is only so as long as it tends in some way to
the telling of the main story. It need not seem to be confined to
that, but it should always have a tendency in that direction. The
unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe.
When a long dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind, he at
once feels that he is being cheated into taking something which he
did not bargain to accept when he took up that novel. He does not
at that moment require politics or philosophy, but he wants his
story. He will not perhaps be able to say in so many words that at
some certain point the dialogue has deviated from the story; but
when it does so he will feel it, and the feeling will be unpleasant.
Let the intending novel-writer, if he doubt this, read one of
Bulwer's novels,--in which there is very much to charm,--and then
ask himself whether he has not been offended by devious conversations.
And the dialogue, on which the modern novelist in consulting the
taste of his probable readers must depend most, has to be constrained
also by other rules. The writer may tell much of his story in
conversations, but he may only do so by putting such words into
the mouths of his personages as persons so situated would probably
use. He is not allowed for the sake of his tale to make his characters
give utterance to long speeches, such as are not customarily heard
from men and women. The ordinary talk of ordinary people is carried
on in short, sharp, expressive sentences, which very frequently are
never completed,--the language of which even among educated people
is often incorrect. The novel-writer in constructing his dialogue
must so steer between absolute accuracy of language--which would
give to his conversation an air of pedantry, and the slovenly
inaccuracy of ordinary talkers, which if closely followed would
offend by an appearance of grimace--as to produce upon the ear of
his readers a sense of reality. If he be quite real he will seem
to attempt to be funny. If he be quite correct he will seem to
be unreal. And above all, let the speeches be short. No character
should utter much above a dozen words at a breath,--unless the writer
can justify to himself a longer flood of speech by the specialty
of the occasion.
In all this human nature must be the novel-writer's guide. No doubt
effective novels have been written in which human nature has been
set at defiance. I might name Caleb Williams as one and Adam Blair
as another. But the exceptions are not more than enough to prove
the rule. But in following human nature he must remember that he does
so with a pen in his hand, and that the reader who will appreciate
human nature will also demand artistic ability and literary aptitude.
The young novelist will probably ask, or more probably bethink
himself how he is to acquire that knowledge of human nature which
will tell him with accuracy what men and women would say in this
or that position. He must acquire it as the compositor, who is to
print his words, has learned the art of distributing his type--by
constant and intelligent practice. Unless it be given to him to
listen and to observe,--so to carry away, as it were, the manners
of people in his memory as to be able to say to himself with assurance
that these words might have been said in a given position, and that
those other words could not have been said,--I do not think that
in these days he can succeed as a novelist.
And then let him beware of creating tedium! Who has not felt the
charm of a spoken story up to a certain point, and then suddenly
become aware that it has become too long and is the reverse of
charming. It is not only that the entire book may have this fault,
but that this fault may occur in chapters, in passages, in pages,
in paragraphs. I know no guard against this so likely to be effective
as the feeling of the writer himself. When once the sense that the
thing is becoming long has grown upon him, he may be sure that it
will grow upon his readers. I see the smile of some who will declare
to themselves that the words of a writer will never be tedious to
himself. Of the writer of whom this may be truly said, it may be
said with equal truth that he will always be tedious to his reader.