CHAPTER VII
THE MID-VICTORIAN NOVEL
At about the very middle of the nineteenth century--say from 1845 to1855 in each direction, but almost increasingly towards the actualdividing line of 1850--there came upon the English novel a veryremarkable wind of refreshment and new endeavour. Thackeray and Dickensthemselves are examples of it, with Lever and others, before thisdividing line: many others yet come to join them. A list of bookswritten out just as they occur to the memory, and without any attempt tomarshal them in strict chronological order, would show this beyond allreasonable possibility of gainsaying. Thackeray's own best accomplishedwork from _Vanity Fair_ (1846) itself through _Pendennis_ (1849) and_Esmond_ (1852) to _The Newcomes_ (1854); the brilliant centre ofDickens's work in _David Copperfield_ (1850)--stand at the head and havebeen already noticed by anticipation or implication, while Lever hadalmost completed the first division of his work, which began with _HarryLorrequer_ as early as the year of _Pickwick_. But such books as _Yeast_(1848), _Westward Ho!_ (1855); as _The Warden_ (1855); as _Jane Eyre_(1847) and its too few successors; as _Scenes of Clerical Life_ (1857);as _Mary Barton_ (1848) and the novels which followed it, with otherswhich it is perhaps almost unfair to leave out even in this allusivesummary by sample, betokened a stirring of the waters, a rattling amongthe bones, such as is not common in literature. Death removed Thackerayearly and Dickens somewhat less prematurely, but after a period ratherbarren in direct novel work. The others continued and were constantlyreinforced: nor was it till well on in the seventies that any distinctdrop from first- to second-growth quality could be observed in thegeneral vintage of English fiction.
One is not quite driven, on this occasion, to the pusillanimousexplanation that this remarkable variety and number of good novels wassimply due to the simultaneous existence of an equally remarkable numberof good novelists. The fact is that, by this time, the great example ofScott and Miss Austen--the great wave of progress which exemplifieditself first and most eminently in these two writers--had had time towork upon and permeate another generation of practitioners. Thenovelists who have just been cited were as a rule born in the seconddecade of the century, just before, about, or after the time at whichScott and Miss Austen began to publish. They had therefore--as theirelders, even though they may have had time to read the pair, hadnot--time to assimilate thoroughly and early the results which that pairhad produced or which they had first expressed. And they had evengreater advantages than this. They had had time to assimilate, likewise,the results of all the rest of that great literary generation of whichScott and Miss Austen were themselves but members. They profited bythirty years more of constant historical exploration and realising offormer days. One need not say, for it is question-begging, that theyalso _profited_ by, but they could at least avail themselves of, theimmense change of manners and society which made 1850 differ more from1800 than 1800 had differed, not merely from 1750 but from 1700. Theyhad, even though all of them may not have been sufficiently grateful forit, the stimulus of that premier position in Europe which the countryhad gained in the Napoleonic wars, and which she had not yet wholly lostor even begun to lose. They had wider travel, more extended occupationsand interests, many other new things to draw upon. And, lastly, they hadsome important special incidents and movements--the new arrangement ofpolitical parties, the Oxford awakening, and others--to give suggestionand impetus to novels of the specialist kind. Nay, they had not only thegreat writers, in other kinds, of the immediate past, but those of thepresent, Carlyle, Tennyson, latterly Ruskin, and others still tocomplete their education and the machinery of its development.
The most remarkable feature of this _renouveau_, as has been bothdirectly and indirectly observed before, is the resumption, the immenseextension, and the extraordinary improvement of the domestic novel. Notthat this had not been practised during the thirty years since MissAusten's death. But the external advantages just enumerated had failedit: and it had enlisted none of the chief talents which were at theservice of fiction generally. A little more gift and a good deal moretaste might have enabled Mrs. Trollope to do really great things in it:but she left them for her son to accomplish. Attempts and "tries" at ithad been made constantly, and the goal had been very nearly reached,especially, perhaps, in that now much forgotten but remarkable _EmiliaWyndham_ (1846) by Anne Caldwell (Mrs. Marsh), which was wickedlydescribed by a sister novelist as the "book where the woman breaks herdesk open with her head," but which has real power and exercised realinfluence for no short time.
This new domestic novel followed Miss Austen in that it did notnecessarily avail itself of anything but perfectly ordinary life, andrelied chiefly on artistic presentment--on treatment rather than onsubject. It departed from her in that it admitted a much wider range andvariety of subject itself; and by no means excluded the passions andemotions which, though she had not been so prudish as to ignore theirresults, she had never chosen to represent in much actual exercise, orto make the mainsprings of her books.
The first supreme work of the kind was perhaps in _Vanity Fair_ and_Pendennis_, the former admitting exceptional and irregular developmentsas an integral part of its plot and general appeal, the latter doing forthe most part without them. But _Pendennis_ exhibited in itself, andtaught to other novelists, if not an absolutely new, a hitherto littleworked, and clumsily worked, source of novel interest. We have seen how,as early as Head or Kirkman, the possibility of making such a source outof the ways of special trades, professions, employments, and vocationshad been partly seen and utilised. Defoe did it more; Smollett morestill; and since the great war there had been naval and military novelsin abundance, as well as novels political, clerical, sporting, and whatnot. But these special interests had been as a rule drawn upon tooonesidedly. The eighteenth century found its mistaken fondness forepisodes, inset stories, and the like, particularly convenient here: thenaval, military, sporting, and other novels of the nineteenth were aptto rely too exclusively on these differences. Such things as theOxbridge scenes and the journalism scenes of _Pendennis_--both among themost effective and popular, perhaps _the_ most effective and popular,parts of the book--were almost, if not entirely, new. There had beenbefore, and have since been, plenty of university novels, and theirrecord has been a record of almost uninterrupted failure; there havesince, if not before, _Pendennis_ been several "press" novels, and theirrecord has certainly not been a record of unbroken success. But theemployment here, by genius, of such subjects for substantial _parts_ ofa novel was a success pure and unmixed. So, in the earlier book, thesame author had shown how the most humdrum incident and the minutestpainting of ordinary character could be combined with historic tragedylike that furnished by Waterloo, with domestic _drame_ of the mostexciting kind like the discovery of Lord Steyne's relations with Becky,or the at least suggested later crime of that ingenious and ratherhardly treated little person.
Most of the writers mentioned and glanced at above took--not of coursealways, often, or perhaps ever in conscious following of Thackeray, butin consequence of the same "skiey influences" which worked on him--tothis mixed domestic-dramatic line. And what is still more interesting,men who had already made their mark for years, in styles quitedifferent, turned to it and adopted it. We have seen this of Bulwer, andthe evidences of the change in him which are given by the "Caxton"novels. We have not yet directly dealt with another instance of almostas great interest and distinction, Charles Lever, though we have namedhim and glanced at his work.
Lever, who was born as early as 1806, had, it has been said, begun towrite novels as early as his junior, Dickens, and had at once developed,in _Harry Lorrequer_, a pretty distinct style of his own. This style wasa kind of humour-novel with abundant incident, generally with a somewhat"promiscuous" plot and with lively but externally drawn characters--thehumours being furnished partly by Lever's native country, Ireland, andpartly by the traditions of the great war of which he had collected astore in his capacity of physician to the Embassy at Brussels. He hadkept up t
his style, the capital example of which is _Charles O'Malley_(1840), with unabated _verve_ and with great popular success for a dozenyears before 1850. But about that time, or rather earlier, the general"suck" of the current towards a different kind (assisted no doubt by thefeeling that the public might be getting tired of the other style) madehim change it into studies of a less specialised kind--of foreigntravel, home life, and the like--sketches which, in his later daysstill, he brought even closer to actuality. It is true that in the longrun his popularity has depended, and will probably always depend, on theearly "rollicking" adventure books: not only because of their naturalappeal, but because there is plenty of the other thing elsewhere, andhardly any of this particular thing anywhere. To almost anybody, forinstance, except a very great milksop or a pedant of construction,_Charles O'Malley_ with its love-making and its fighting, itshorsemanship and its horse-play, its "devilled kidneys"[23] and itsdevil-may-care-ness, is a distinctly delectable composition; and if areasonable interval be allowed between the readings, may be read overand over again, at all times of life, with satisfaction. But the fact ofthe author's change remains not the less historically andsymptomatically important, in connection with the larger change of whichwe are now taking notice, and with the similar phenomena observable inthe work of Bulwer. At the same time it has been pointed out that thefollowing of Miss Austen by no means excluded the following of Scott:and that the new development included "crosses" of novel and romance,sometimes of the historical kind, sometimes not, which are of thehighest, or all but the highest, interest. Early and good examples ofthese may be found in the work of the Brontes, Charlotte and Emily (thethird sister Anne is but a pale reflection of her elders), and ofCharles Kingsley. Charlotte (b. 1816) and Charles (b. 1819) wereseparated in their birth by but three years, Emily (b. 1818) andKingsley by but one.
[23] Edgar Poe has a perfectly serious and very characteristic explosion at the prominence of these agreeable viands in the book.
The curious story of the struggles of the Bronte girls to get publishedhardly concerns us, and Emily's work, _Wuthering Heights_,[24] is one ofthose isolated books which, whatever their merit, are rather ornamentsthan essential parts in novel history. But this is not the case with_Jane Eyre_ (1847), _Shirley_ (1849), _Villette_ (1852), and _TheProfessor_ (1857) (but written much earlier). These are all examples ofthe determination to base novels on actual life and experience. Fewnovelists have ever kept so close to their own part in these asCharlotte Bronte did, though she accompanied, permeated, and to acertain extent transformed her autobiography and observation by astrong romantic and fantastic imaginative element. Deprive Thackeray andDickens of nearly all their humour and geniality, take a portion only ofthe remaining genius of each in the ratio of about 2 _Th_. to 1 _D_.,add a certain dash of the old terror-novel and the German fantastictale, moisten with feminine spirit and water, and mix thoroughly: andyou have something very like Charlotte Bronte. But it is necessary toadd further, and it is her great glory, the perfume and atmosphere ofthe Yorkshire moors, which she had in not quite such perfection as hersister Emily, but in combination with more general novel-gift. Heractual course of writing was short, and it could probably in no casehave been long; she wanted wider and, perhaps, happier experience, moreliterature, more man-and-woman-of-the-worldliness, perhaps a sweeter andmore genial temper. But the English novel would have been incompletewithout her and her sister; they are, as wholes, unlike anybody else,and if they are not exactly great they have the quality of greatness.Above all, they kept novel and romance together--a deed which is greatwithout any qualification or drawback.
[24] Some will have it that this was really Charlotte's: but not with much probability.
Charles Kingsley is one of the most precious documents for the cynicswho say that while, if you please the public in only one way, you maypossibly meet with only tolerable ingratitude; if you attempt to pleaseit in more ways than one, you are certain to be suspected, and stillmore certain to have the defects of your weakest work transferred toyour best. He was a novelist, a poet, an essayist, a preacher, ahistorian, and a critic. His history, though less positively inaccuratethan the "dead set" against him of certain notorious persons chose torepresent it, was uncritical: and his criticism, sometimes acute andluminous, was decidedly unhistorical. But he was a preacher ofremarkable merit, a charming and original essayist, a poet of no widerange but of true poetical quality, and a novelist of great variety andof almost the first class. He let his weakest qualities go in with hisstrongest in his novels, and had also the still more unfortunatetendency to "trail coats" of the most inconceivably different coloursfor others to tread upon. Liberals, Radicals, and Tories; RomanCatholics, High Churchmen, Low Churchmen, and No-Churchmen;sentimentalists and cynics; people who do not like literary andhistorical allusion, and people who are meticulous about literary andhistorical accuracy--all these and many others, if they cannot disregardflings at their own particular tastes, fancies, and notions, are sure tolose patience with him now and then. Accordingly, he has met with someexacerbated decriers, and with very few thorough-going defenders.
Yet _almost_ thoroughing-going defence is, as far as the novels (ouronly direct business) are concerned, far from difficult; and the presentwriter, though there are perhaps not a dozen consecutive pages ofKingsley's novels to which, at some point or other, he is not preparedto append the note, "This is Bosh," is prepared also to exalt him milesabove writers whose margins he would be quite content to leave without asingle annotation of this--or any other--kind. In particular the varietyof the books, and their vividness, are both extraordinary. And perhapsthe greatest notes of the novel generally, as well as those in which thenovel of this period can most successfully challenge comparison withthose of any other, are, or should be, vividness and variety. His booksin the kind are seven; and the absence of _replicas_ among them is oneof their extraordinary features. _Yeast_, the first (1848), and _AltonLocke_, the second (next year), are novels of the unrest of thoughtwhich caused and accompanied the revolutionary movement of the periodthroughout Europe. But they are quite different in subject andtreatment. The first is a sketch of country society, uppermost andlowermost:[25] the second one of town-artisan and lower-trade life withpassages of university and other contrast. Both are young and crudeenough, intentionally or unintentionally; both, intentionally beyondall doubt, are fantastic and extravagant; but both are full of genius.Argemone Lavington, the heroine of _Yeast_, is, though not of the mostelaborately drawn, one of the most fascinating and real heroines ofEnglish fiction; an important secondary character of the second book,the bookseller Sandy Mackaye, is one of its most successful"character-parts." Both, but especially _Yeast_, are full of admirabledescriptive writing, not entirely without indebtedness to Mr. Ruskin,but very often independently carried out, and always worthy of a "placeon the line" in any gallery. There is much accurate and real dialogue,not a little firm character-drawing. Above all, both are full ofblood--of things lived and seen, not vamped up from reading orday-dreaming--and yet full of dreams, day and other, and full ofliterature. Perhaps "the malt was a little above the meal," the yeastpresent in more abundant quality than the substances for fermentation,but there was no lack even of these.
[25] It is curious to compare this (dealing as it does largely with sport) and the "Jorrocks" series of Robert Surtees (1803-1864). Kingsley was nearly as practical a sportsman as Surtees: but Surtees's characters and manners have the old artificial-picaresque quality only.
_Hypatia_--which succeeded after some interval (1853) and when thewriter's Christian Socialist, Churchman-Chartist excitement had somewhatclarified itself--is a more substantial, a more ambitious, but certainlyalso an even more successful book. It has something of--and perhaps,though in far transposed matter, owes something to--_Esmond_ in itsdaring blend of old and new, and it falls short of that wonderfulcreation. But it is almost a second to it: and, with plenty of faults,is perhaps the only classical or semi-classical novel of much
value inEnglish.
But it was in the next year, 1854, that Kingsley's work reached itsgreatest perfection in the brilliant historical novel of _Westward Ho!_where the glories of Elizabethan adventure and patriotism were treatedwith a wonderful kindred enthusiasm, with admirable narrative faculty,with a creation of character, suitable for the purpose, which is hardlyinferior to that of the greatest masters, and with an even enhanced andcertainly chastened exercise of the descriptive faculty above noticed.The book to some extent invited--and Kingsley availed himself of theopportunity in a far more than sufficient degree--that "coat-trailing"which, as has been said, inevitably in its turn provokes "coat-treading":and it has been abused from various quarters. But that it is one ofthe very greatest of English novels next to the few supreme, impartialand competent criticism will never hesitate to allow. Of his remainingbooks of novel kind one was of the "eccentric" variety: the others,though full of good things, were perhaps on the whole failures. Thefirst referred to (the second in order of appearance), _The WaterBabies_ (1863), is a half Rabelaisian though perfectly inoffensive_fatrasie_ of all sorts of things, exceedingly delightful to fit tastes.But _Two Tears Ago_ (1857), though containing some fine and even reallyexquisite things, shows a relaxing hand on the crudity andpromiscuousness which had been excusable in his two first books and hadbeen well restrained in _Hypatia_ and _Westward Ho!_ by central andactive interests of story and character. "Spasmodic" poetry, the CrimeanWar, Pre-Raphaelitism, Tractarianism, the good and bad sides of science,and divers other things make a mixture that is not sufficientlyconcocted and "rectified." While in the much later _Hereward the Wake_(1866), though the provocation offered to the Dryasdust kind ofhistorian is no matter, there is a curious relapse on the old fault ofincorporating too much history or pseudo-history, and the same failureas in _Two Tears Ago_, or perhaps a greater one in degree, to concoctthe story (which is little more than a chronicle) together with acertain neglect to conciliate the sympathies of the reader. But thewhole batch is a memorable collection; and it shows, ratherexceptionally, the singular originality and variety of the novel at thistime.
This remarkable pair may be supplemented by an in some ways moreremarkable trio, all of them pretty close contemporaries, but, fordifferent reasons in each case, coming rather late into the novelfield--Charles Reade (b. 1814), Anthony Trollope (b. 1815), and Mary AnnEvans (b. 1819). It would be difficult to find three persons moredifferent in temperament; impossible to find more striking instances ofthe way in which the new blend of romance and novel lent itself to themost various uses and developments. Reade--who thought himself adramatist and wasted upon drama a great deal of energy and an almostideal position as a possessor of an unusually rich fellowship atMagdalen College, Oxford, with no duties--came rather closer to Dickensthan to any novelist previously named, not merely in a sort ofnon-poetic but powerful imagination, but also in the mania for attackingwhat seemed to him abuses--in lunatic asylums (on which point he wasvery nearly a monomaniac himself), prisons, and many other things. Buthe is almost more noteworthy, from our point of view, because of hisuse--it also must, one fears, be called an abuse--of a process obviouslyinvited by the new demand for truth to life, and profitable up to acertain point. This was the collection, in enormous scrapbooks, ofnewspaper cuttings on a vast variety of subjects, to be worked up intofiction when the opportunity served. Reade had so much genius--he hadperhaps the most, in a curious rather incalculable fashion, of the wholegroup--that he very nearly succeeded in digesting these "marine stores"of detail and document into real books. But he did not always, andcould not always, quite do it: and he remains, with Zola, the chiefexample of the danger of working at your subject too much as if you weregetting up a brief, or preparing an article for an encyclopedia. Still,his greatest books, which are probably _It is Never too Late to Mend_(1856) and _The Cloister and the Hearth_ (1861), have immense vigourand, in the second case, an almost poetic attraction which Dickens neverreaches, while over all sparks and veins of genius are scattered.Moreover, he is interesting because, until his own time, he would havebeen quite impossible; and, even at that time, without the generalmovement which we are describing, very unlikely.
There is not so much object here in discussing the much discussedquestion of the merits and defects of "George Eliot" (Mary Ann Evans orMrs. Cross) as a novelist, as there is in pointing out her relations tothis general movement. She began late, and almost accidentally; andthere is less unity in her general work than in some others herementioned. Her earliest and perhaps, in adjusted and "reduced"judgments, her best work--_Scenes of Clerical Life_ (1857-1858), _AdamBede_ (1859), _The Mill on the Floss_ (1860), _Silas Marner_(1861)--consists of very carefully observed and skilfully renderedstudies of country life and character, tinged, especially in _Adam Bede_and _The Mill on the Floss_, with very intense and ambitious colours ofpassion. The great popularity of this tempted her into still moreelaborate efforts of different kinds. Her attempt in quasi-historicalromance, _Romola_ (1865), was an enormous _tour de force_ in which thewriter struggled to get historical and local colour, accurate andirreproachable, with all the desperation of the most conscientiousrelater of actual history. _Felix Holt the Radical_ (1866), _MiddleMarch_ (1872), and _Daniel Deronda_ (1876) were equally elaboratesketches of modern English society, planned and engineered with thesame provision of carefully laboured plot, character, and phrase.Although received with enthusiasm by the partisans whom she had createdfor herself, these books have seemed to some _over_-laboured, and if notexactly unreal, yet to a certain extent unnatural. But the point for usis their example of the way in which the novel--once a light and almostfrivolous thing--had come to be taken with the utmost seriousness--hadin fact ceased to be light literature at all, and begun to requirerigorous and elaborate training and preparation in the writer, perhapseven something of the athlete's processes in the reader. Its state mayor may not have advanced in grace _pari passu_ with the advance ineffort and in dignity: but this later advance is at least there.Fielding himself took novel-writing by no means lightly, and Richardsonstill less so: but imagine either, imagine Scott or even Miss Austen,going through the preliminary processes which seemed necessary, indifferent ways, to Charles Reade and to Mary Ann Evans!
In a certain sense, however, the last of the three, though he may giveless impression of genius than the other two (or even the other fourwhom we have specially noticed), is the most interesting of all: andqualms may sometimes arise as to whether genius is justly denied to him.Anthony Trollope, after a youth, not exactly _orageuse_, but apparentlycharacterised by the rather squalid yet mild dissipation which he hasdescribed in _The Three Clerks_ (1858) and _The Small House atAllington_ (1864), attained a considerable position in the Post Officewhich he held during great part of his career as a novelist. For sometime that career did not look as if it were going to be a successfulone, though his early (chiefly Irish) efforts are better than issometimes thought. But he made his mark first with _The Warden_ (1855),and then, much more directly and triumphantly, with its sequel_Barchester Towers_ (1857). When the first of these was publishedDickens had been a successful novelist for nearly twenty years andThackeray had "come to his own" for nearly ten. _The Warden_ might havebeen described at the time (I do not know whether it was, but Englishreviewing was only beginning to be clever again) as a partial attempt atthe matter of Dickens in a partial following of the manner of Thackeray.An "abuse"--the distribution in supposed unjust proportion of the fundsof an endowed hospital for aged men--is its main avowed subject. ButTrollope indulged in no tirades and no fantastic-grotesquecaricature--in fact he actually drew a humorous sketch of a novel _a laDickens_ on the matter. His real object was evidently to sketchfaithfully, but again not without humour, the cathedral society of"Barchester" as it actually spoke, dressed, thought, and lived: and hedid it. The first book had a little too much talk about the nominalsubject, and not enough actual action and conversation. _BarchesterTowers_ remedied this, and presented its readers with one of theliveliest books in E
nglish fiction. There had been nothing like it (forThackeray had been more discursive and less given to small talk) sinceMiss Austen herself, though the spirits of the two were extremelydifferent. Perhaps Trollope never did a better book than this, forvariety and vigour of character drawing. The masterful wife of BishopProudie, the ne'er-do-weel canon's family (the Stanhopes), and othersstand out against an interest, not intense but sufficient, of story, agreat variety of incident, and above all abundant and lifelikeconversation. For many years, and in an extraordinary number ofexamples, he fell little below, and perhaps once or twice went above,this standard. It was rather a fancy of his (one again, perhaps,suggested by Thackeray) to run his books into series or cycles--thechief being that actually opened as above, and continuing through othersto the brilliant _Last Chronicle of Barset_ (1867), which in somerespect surpasses _Barchester Towers_ itself, with a second series, notquite disconnected, dealing with Lady Glencora Palliser as centre, andyet others. His total production was enormous: it became in factimpossibly so, and the work of his last _lustrum_ and a little more (say1877-1882), though never exactly bad or painful to read, was obvioushack-work. But between _The Warden_ and _The American Senator_,twenty-two years later, he had written nearer thirty than twenty novels,of which at least half were much above the average and some quitecapital.[26] Moreover, it is a noteworthy thing, and contrary to somecritical explanations, that, as his works drop out of copyright and arereprinted in cheap editions, they appear to be recovering veryconsiderable popularity. This fact would seem to show that the manners,speech, etc., represented in them have a certain standard quality whichdoes not--like the manner, speech, etc., of novels such as those of Hookand Surtees--lose appeal to fresh generations; and that the artist whodealt with them must have had not a little faculty of fixing them in thepresentation. In fact it is probably not too much to say that of the_average_ novel of the third quarter of the century--in a more thanaverage but not of an extraordinary, transcendental, or quintessentialcondition--Anthony Trollope is about as good a representative as can befound. His talent is individual enough, but not too individual: systemand writer may each have the credit due to them allotted withoutdifficulty.
[26] His most ambitious studies in strict _character_ are the closely connected heroines of _The Bertrams_ (1859) and _Can you Forgive Her?_ (1864-1865). But the first-named book has never been popular; and the other hardly owes its popularity to the heroine.
A novelist who might have been in front of the first flight of these inpoint of time, and who is actually put by some in the first flight inpoint of merit, is Mrs. Gaskell. Born in 1810, she accumulated thematerial for her future _Cranford_ at Knutsford in Cheshire: but did notpublish this till after Dickens had, in 1850, established _HouseholdWords_, where it appeared in instalments. She had a little earlier, in1848, published her first novel, _Mary Barton_--a vivid but distinctlyone-sided picture of factory life in Lancashire. In the same year withthe collected _Cranford_ (1853) appeared _Ruth_, also a "strife-novel"(as the Germans would say) though in a different way: and two yearslater what is perhaps her most elaborate effort, _North and South_. Ayear or two before her death in 1865 _Sylvia's Lovers_ was warmlywelcomed by some: and the unfinished _Wives and Daughters_, which wasactually interrupted by that death, has been considered her maturestwork. Her famous and much controverted _Life of Charlotte Bronte_ doesnot belong to us, except in so far as it knits the two noveliststogether.
From hints dropped already, it may be seen that the present writer doesnot find Mrs. Gaskell his easiest subject. There is much in her workwhich, in Hobbes's phrase, is both "an effect of power and a cause ofpleasure": but there appears to some to be in her a pervading want ofactual success--of _reussite_--absolute and unquestionable. The sketchesof _Cranford_ are very agreeable and very admirable performances in themanner first definitely thrown out by Addison, and turned to consummateperfection in the way of the regular novel (which be it remembered_Cranford_ is not) by Miss Austen. But the mere mention of the lastname kills them. The author of _Emma_ would have treated Miss Matty andthe rest much less lovingly, but she would have made them persons. Mrs.Gaskell has left them mere types of amiable country-townishness inrespectable if not very lively times. Excessive respectability cannot becharged against _Mary Barton_ and _Ruth_, but here the "problem"--the"purpose"--interposes its evil influence: and we have got to take a sidewith men or with masters, with selfish tempters of one class and deludedmaidens of another. _North and South_ is perhaps on the whole the bestplace in which to study Mrs. Gaskell's art: for _Wives and Daughters_ isunfinished and the books just named are tentatives. It begins by layinga not inconsiderable hold on the reader: and, as it is worked out atgreat length, the author has every opportunity of strengthening andimproving that hold. It is certain that, in some cases, she does not dothis: and the reason is the same--the failure to project and keep inaction definite and independent characters, and the attempt to makeweight and play with purposes and problems. The heroine's father--whoresigns his living and exposes his delicate wife and only daughter, ifnot exactly to privation, to discomfort and, in the wife's case, fatallyunsuitable surroundings, because of some never clearly defineddissatisfaction with the creed of the Church (_not_ apparently withChristianity as such or with Anglicanism as such), and who dies"promiscuously," to be followed, in equally promiscuous fashion, by afriend who leaves his daughter Margaret a fortune--is one of thosenearly contemptible imbeciles in whom it is impossible to take aninterest. In respect to the wife Mrs. Gaskell commits the curiousmistake of first suggesting that she is a complainer about nothing, andthen showing her to us as a suffering victim of her husband's folly andof hopeless disease. The lover (who is to a great extent a replica ofthe masterful mill-owner in _Shirley_) is uncertain and impersonal: andthe minor characters are null. One hopes, for a time, that Margaretherself will save the situation: but she goes off instead of coming on,and has rather less individuality and convincingness at the end of thestory than at the beginning. In short, Mrs. Gaskell seems to me one ofthe chief illustrations of the extreme difficulty of the domesticnovel--of the necessity of exactly proportioning the means at command tothe end to be achieved. Her means were, perhaps, greater than those ofmost of her brother-and-sister-novelists, but she set them to looseends, to ends too high for her, to ends not worth achieving: end thusproduced (again as it seems to me) flawed and unsatisfactory work. She"means" well in Herbert's sense of the word: but what is meant is notquite done.
To mention special books and special writers is not the first object ofthis survey, though it would be very easy to double and redouble itssize by doing this, even within the time-limits of this, the last, andthe next chapters. It may, however, be added that in this remarkablecentral period, and in the most central part of it from 1840 to 1860,there appeared the first remarkable novel of Mr. George Meredith, _TheOrdeal of Richard Feverel_ (1859), first of a brilliant series that wasto illustrate the whole remaining years of the century; and the isolatedmasterpiece of _Phantastes_, which another prolific writer, GeorgeMacdonald, was never to repeat; while Mrs. Oliphant and Mrs. Craik, bothof whom will also reappear in the next chapter, began as early as 1849.In 1851 appeared the first of two remarkable books, _Lavengro_ and _TheRomany Rye_, in which George Borrow, if he did not exactly create,brought to perfection from some points of view what may be called theautobiographic novel.
Indeed the memory of the aged and the industry of the young could recallor rediscover dozens and scores of noteworthy books, some of which havenot lost actual or traditional reputation, such as the _Paul Ferroll_(1855) of Mrs. Archer Clive, a well-restrained crime-novel, the story ofwhich is indicated in the title of its sequel, _Why Paul Ferroll killedhis Wife_. Henry Kingsley, George Alfred Lawrence, Wilkie Collins, andothers began their careers at this time. The best book ever writtenabout school, _Tom Brown's School Days_ (1857), and the best book inlighter vein ever written about Oxford, _Mr. Verdant Green_ (1853-1856),both appeared in the fifties.
Alth
ough, indeed, the intenser and more individual genius of the greatnovelists of this time went rather higher than the specialist novel, itwas, in certain directions, well cultivated during this period. Menlikely to write naval novels of merit were dying out, and though Levertook up the military tale, at second hand, with brilliant results, thesame historical causes were in operation there. But a comparatively newkind--the "sporting" novel--developed itself largely and in some caseswent beyond mere sport. Such early books as Egan's _Tom and Jerry_(1821) can hardly be called novels: but as the love of sport extendedand the term itself ceased to designate merely on the one side thepleasures of country squires, and on the other the amusements (sometimesrather blackguard in character) of men about town, the general subjectmade a lodgment in fiction. One of its most characteristic practitionerswas Robert Smith Surtees, who, before Dickens and perhaps acting assuggester of the original plan of _Pickwick_ (_not_ that which Dickenssubstituted), excogitated (between 1831 and 1838) the remarkablefictitious personage of "Mr. Jorrocks," grocer and sportsman, whoseadventures, and those of other rather hybrid characters of the samekind, he pursued through a number of books for some thirty years. These(though in strict character, and in part of their manners, deficient asabove noticed) were nearly always readable--and sometimes veryamusing--even to those who are not exactly Nimrods: and they weregreatly commended to others still by the admirable illustrations ofLeech. There is not a little sound sport in Kingsley and afterwards inAnthony Trollope: while the novels of Frank Smedley, _Frank Fairlegh_(1850), _Lewis Arundel_ (1852), and _Harry Coverdale's Courtship_(1855), mix a good deal more of it with some good fun and some ratherrococo romance. The subject became, indeed, very popular in the fifties,and entered largely into, though it by no means exclusively occupied,the novels of George John Whyte-Melville, a Fifeshire gentleman, anEtonian, and a guardsman, who, after retiring from the army, servedagain in the Crimean War, and, after writing a large number of novels,was killed in the hunting field. Some of Whyte-Melville's books, such as_Market Harborough_ (1861), are hunting novels pure and simple, so muchso that it has been said (rashly) that none but hunting men and womencan read them. Others, such as _Kate Coventry_ (1856), a very lively andagreeable book, mix sport with general character and manners-painting.Others, such as _Holmby House_ (1860), _The Queen's Maries_ (1862),etc., attempt the historical style. But perhaps this mixed novel ofsport, society, and a good deal of love-making reached its most curiousdevelopment in the novels of George Alfred Lawrence, from the oncefamous _Guy Livingstone_ (1857) onwards--a series almost typical, whichwas developed further, with touches of original but uncritical talent,which often dropped into unintentional caricature, by the late "Ouida"(Louise de La Ramee). All the three last writers mentioned, however,especially the last two, made sport only an ingredient in their novelcomposition ("Ouida," in fact, knew nothing about it) and at leastendeavoured, according to their own ideas and ideals, to grapple withlarger parts of life. The danger of the kind showed less in them than insome imitators of a lower class, of whom Captain Hawley Smart was thechief, and a chief sometimes better than his own followers. Some even ofhis books are quite interesting: but in a few of them, and in more ofother writers, the obligation to tell something like a story and toprovide something like characters seems to be altogether forgotten. Arun (or several runs) with the hounds, a steeplechase and itspreparations and accidents, one at least of the great races and thetraining and betting preliminary to them--these form the real and almostthe sole staple of story; so that a tolerably intelligent office-boycould make them up out of a number or two of the _Field_, a sufficientlist of proper names, and a commonplace book of descriptions. This, infact, is the danger of the specialist novel generally: though perhaps itdoes not show quite so glaringly in other cases. Yet, even here, thatnote of the fiction of the whole century--its tendency to "accaparate"and utilise all the forms of life, all the occupations and amusements ofmankind--shows itself notably enough.
So, too, one notable book has, here even more than elsewhere, often setgoing hosts of imitations. _Tom Brown's School Days_, for instance(1857), flooded the market with school stories, mostly very bad. Butthere is one division which did more justice to a higher class ofsubject and produced some very remarkable work in what is called thereligious novel, though, here as elsewhere, the better examples did notmerely harp on one string.
A very interesting off-shoot of the domestic novel, ignored or despisedby the average critic and rather perfunctorily treated even by those whohave taken it as a special subject, is the "Tractarian" or High-Churchnovel, which, originating very shortly after the movement itself hadbegan, had no small share in popularising it. The earlier Evangelicalshad by no means neglected fiction as a means of propagating their views,especially among the young. Mrs. Sherwood in _Little Henry and hisBearer_ and _The Fairchild Family_ (1818) and "Charlotte Elizabeth"(Browne or Tonna) are examples. But the High-Church party, in accordancewith its own predecessors and patterns in the seventeenth century,always maintained, during its earlier and better period, a higherstandard of scholarship and of general literary culture. Its earlyefforts in fiction--according to the curious and most interesting lawwhich seems to decree that every subdivision of a kind shall go throughsomething like the vicissitudes of the kind at large--were not strictlynovels but romance, and romance of the allegorical kind. In the latethirties and early forties the allegorists, the chief of whom wereSamuel Wilberforce and William Adams, were busy and effective. Thefuture bishop's _Agathos_ (before 1840) is a very spirited andwell-written adaptation of the "whole armour of God" theme so oftenre-allegorised: and Adams's _Shadow of the Cross_ is only the best ofseveral good stories--of a rather more feminine type, but graceful,sound enough in a general way, and combining the manners of Spenser andBunyan with no despicable skill. If, however, the Tractarianfiction-writers had confined themselves to allegory there would be nonecessity to do more than glance at them, for allegory, on the obviousBiblical suggestion, has been a constant instrument of combinedreligious instruction and pastime. But they went much further afield.Sometimes the excursions were half satirical, as in the really amusing_Owlet of Owlstone Edge_ and _The Curate of Cumberworth and the Vicar ofRoost_ of Francis Paget, attacking, the slovenly neglect and supinenesswhich, quite as much as unsound doctrine, was the _bete noire_ of theearly Anglo-Catholics. William Gresley and others wrote stories mostlyfor the young. But the distinguishing feature of the school, and thatwhich gives it an honourable and more than an honorary place here, wasthe shape which, before the middle of the century, it took in the handsof two ladies, Elizabeth Sewell and Charlotte Mary Yonge.
The first, who was the elder but survived Miss Yonge and died at a verygreat age quite recently, had much less talent than her junior: butundoubtedly deserves the credit of setting the style. In her novels(_Gertrude, Katharine Ashton_, etc.) she carried, even farther than MissAusten, the principle of confining herself rigidly to the events ofordinary life. Not that she eschews the higher middle or even the higherclasses: though, on the other hand, Katharine Ashton, evidently one ofher favourite heroines, is the daughter of a shopkeeper. But the law ofaverage and ordinary character, incident, atmosphere, is observed almostinvariably. Unfortunately Miss Sewell (she was actually aschoolmistress) let the didactic part of her novels get rather too muchthe upper hand: and though she wrote good English, possessed no specialgrace of style, and little faculty of illustration or ornament fromhistory, literature, her own fancy, current fashions, even of the mostharmless kind, and so forth. The result is that her books have a certaindead-aliveness--that the characters, though actually alive, are neitherinterestingly alive nor, as Miss Austen had made hers, interesting intheir very uninterestingness. Sometimes, for a scene or two, her truthto nature and fact is rewarded by that curious sense of recognitionwhich the reader feels in the presence of actual _mimesis_--of creationof fictitious fact and person. But this is not common: and the epithet"dull," which too commonly only stigmatises the person using it, mayreally suggest it
self not seldom in reference to Miss Sewell. A "successof esteem" is about the utmost that can be accorded her.
With Miss Yonge the case was very different. She was a lady of widereading and, even according to the modern rather arbitrary restrictionsof the term, something of an historical scholar; she had humour, ofwhich there was scarcely a particle in Miss Sewell's composition; shehad a very considerable understanding, and consequently some tolerationof the infinite varieties, and at least the more venial foibles, ofhuman temperament. She possessed an inexhaustible command of dialoguewhich was always natural and sometimes very far from trivial; and if shehad no command of the greater novelists' imagination in the creation ofcharacter and story, she had an almost uncanny supply of invention, ofwhat may be called the second or third class, in these respects. Shewrote too much and too long; but it cannot be said that she ever merelyrepeated herself. And her best books--the famous _Heir of Redclyffe_(1853), which captivated William Morris and his friends at Oxford, andwhich, with a little unnecessary sentimentality and a little"unco-guidness," is full of cleverness, nature, good sense, good taste,and good form; _Heartsease_ (1854), perhaps the best of all; _DynevorTerrace_ (1857), less of a general favourite but full of good things;and the especially popular _Daisy Chain_ (1856), with not a fewothers--are things which no courageous and catholic critic of fictionwill ever be tired of defending or (which is not always the same thing)of reading. Some of her early tales, before these, were a little "raw":and most of her later work showed (as did Anthony Trollope's and that ofother though not all very prolific novelists) that the field had beenovercropped. But she was hardly ever dull: and she always had thatquality--if not of the supreme artist, of the real craftsman--whichprevents a thing from being a failure. What is meant is done: thoughperhaps it might have been meant higher.
The comparison, backwards and forwards, of this great company of novelsis of endless interest; perhaps one of many aspects of that interest maybe touched on specially, because it connects itself with much else thathas been said. If we read, together or in near sequence, three suchbooks as, say, _Emilia Wyndbam, Pendennis_, and _Yeast_, all of whichappeared close together, between 1846 and 1849, the differences, inquality and volume of individual genius, will of course strike every oneforcibly. But some will also be struck by something else--the differencebetween the first and the other two in _style_ or (as that word isalmost hopelessly ambiguous) let us perhaps say _diction_. BothThackeray and Kingsley are almost perfectly modern in this. We may notspeak so well to-day, and we may have added more slang and jargon to ourspeech, but there is no real difference, except in these respects,between a speech of Pen's (when not talking book) or one of ColonelBracebridge's, and the speech of any gentleman who is a barrister or aguardsman at this hour. The excellent Mrs. Marsh had not arrived at thatpoint; what some people call the "stilted" forms and phrases of fifty oralmost a hundred years earlier clung to her still. The resulting lingois far better than that part of the lingo of to-day where literary andlinguistic good manners have been forgotten altogether: but it isdistinctly deficient in _ease_. There are endless flourishes andperiphrases--the colloquialisms which Swift and others had denounced(and quite properly) in their ugliest and vulgarest forms are not evenpermitted entrance in improved and warranted varieties. You must neversay "won't" but always "will not," whereas the ability to use the twoforms adds infinite propriety as well as variety to the dialogue. Yousay, "At length a most unfortunate accident aggravated (if aggravationwere possible) the unfortunate circumstances of the situation." Youaddress your own characters in the oratorical manner of Mr. Burke andother great men, "Ah, Mr. Danby! if instead, etc." In short, instead ofreserving the grand manner (and a rather different grand manner) forgrand occasions, you maintain a sort of cheap machine-made kind of itthroughout. The real secret of the novel was not found out till this wasdiscarded. Perhaps that real secret does not lie so much anywhere elseas here.
A few words may not improperly be said about some of the circumstancesand details of novel-appearance and distribution, etc., at this palmyday of English fiction. At what time the famous "three-decker" wasconsecrated as the regular novel line-of-battle-ship I have not beenable to determine exactly to my own satisfaction. Richardson hadextended his interminable narrations to seven or eight volumes: MissBurney latterly had not been content with less than five. From thespecimens I have examined, I have an idea that with the "Minerva Press"and its contemporaries and successors at the end of the eighteenth andbeginning of the nineteenth century, _four_ was a very favourite if notthe most usual number. But these volumes were usually small--not muchlarger than those of the Belgian reprints of Dumas which, as oneremembers, used to run into the dozen or something like it in the caseof his longer books. Three, however, has obvious advantages; the chiefof them being the adjustment to "beginning, middle, and end," thoughthere is a corresponding disadvantage which soon developed itself--andin fact, finally, I have no doubt helped to ruin the form--thetemptation to make the _second_ volume a place of mere padding. But theactual popularity of "the old three-decker" continued for quite twogenerations, if not more, and was unmistakable. Library subscriptionswere generally adjusted to it; and any circulating-library keeper wouldtell you that, putting this quite aside, even subscribers to more orfewer volumes than three would take the three-volume by preference. Morethan this, still, there is a curious fact necessarily known tocomparatively few people. Although it was improper of Mr. Bludyer tosell his novel, and dine and drink of the profits before "smashing" it,there were probably not many reviewers who did not get rid of most oftheir books of this kind, if for no other reasons than that no house,short of a palace, would have held them all. And, in the palmy days ofcirculating libraries, the price given by second-hand booksellers fornovels made a very considerable addition to the reviewer's remunerationor guerdon. But these booksellers would not pay, in proportion, for twoor one volume books--alleging, what no doubt was true, that thelibraries had a lower tariff for them. Further, the short story, now sopopular, was very _un_popular in those days: and library customers wouldrefuse collections of them with something like indignation or disgust.Indeed, there are reviewers living who may perhaps pride themselves onhaving done something to drive the dislike out and the liking in.
The circulating library itself, though not the creation of the novel,was very largely extended by it, and helped no doubt very largely toextend the circulation of the novel in turn. Before it, to some extent,and long before so-called "public" or "free" libraries, books in generaland novels in particular had been very largely diffused by clubs,"institutions," and other forms of co-operative individual enterprise,the bookplates of which will be found in many a copy of an old novelnow. Sometimes these were purely private associations of neighbours:sometimes they belonged to more or less extensive establishments, likethat defunct "Russell Institution in Great Coram Street," which a greatauthor, who was its neighbour, once took for an example of desolation;or the still existing and flourishing "Philosophical" examples inEdinburgh and Bath. In these latter cases, of course, novels were notallowed to be the main constituents of the library; in fact in some, butfew, they may have been sternly excluded. On the other hand, theprivate-adventure circulating libraries tended more and more, with fewexceptions, to rely on novels only--"Mudie's" and a few more beingexceptions. Very few people, I suppose, ever bought three-volume novels;and the fact that they went almost wholly to the libraries, and werethere worn to pieces, accounts for the comparative rarity of goodcopies. The circulating library has survived both the decease of thethree-volume novel and the competition of the so-called free library.But it is pretty certain that it was a chief cause--and almost the whole_sustaining_ cause--of the three-volume system itself. Nor was theconnection between nature of form and system of distribution limited toEngland: for the single-volume novel, though older in France than withus, is not so very old.
But a very considerable proportion of these famous books madeappearances previous to that in three volumes, and not di
stantlyconnected with their popularity. For the most part these previousappearances were either in magazines or periodicals of one kind andanother, or else in "parts."
Neither process was exactly new, though both were largely affectedby changed conditions of general literature and life. Themagazine-appearance traces itself, by almost insensible gradations, tothe original periodical-essay of the Steele-Addison type--the smallindividual bulk of which necessitated division of whatsoever was notitself on a very small scale. If you run down the "Contents" of the_British Essayists_ you will constantly find "Continuation of the storyof Alonso and Imoinda" and the like. But when, in the early years of thenineteenth century, the system of newspapers and periodicals branchedout into endless development, coincidently with the increase of demandand supply in regard to the novel, it was inevitable that this lattershould be drawn upon to supply at once the standing dishes and therelishes of the entertainment. _Blackwood_ and the _London_, the firstfruits of the new kind, did not at once take to the novel byinstalments: and the _London_ had no time to do so. But _Blackwood_soon became celebrated--a reputation which it has never lost--for theexcellence of its short stories, and by degrees took to long ones; whileits followers--_Fraser, Bentley's Miscellany, The Dublin UniversityMagazine_, the _New Monthly_, and others--almost from the first batedtheir hooks with this new _appat_. A very large proportion of the workof the novelists mentioned in the last chapter, as well as of Lever,appeared in one or other of these. _Fraser_ in particular wasThackeray's chief refuge in the Days of Ignorance of the public as tohis real powers and merits, while, just as he was going off, the verydifferent work of Kingsley came on there. And the tradition, as is wellknown, has never been broken. The particular magazines may have died insome cases: but the magazine-appearance of novels is nearly as vivaciousas ever.
Publication in parts is nearly as old, but has a less continuoushistory, and has seen itself suffer an interruption of life. There arescattered examples of it pretty far back both in France and England.Marivaux had a particular fancy for it: with the result that he left nota little of his work unfinished. Such volume-publication as that of_Tristram Shandy_, in batches really small in quantity and at fairlyregular if long intervals, is not much different from part-issue. As thetaste for reading spread to classes with not much ready money, andperhaps, in some cases, living at a distance from libraries, this tastespread too. But I do not think there can be much doubt that the immensesuccess of Dickens--in combination with his own very distinctpredilection for keeping the ring himself and being his own editor--hadmost to do with its prevalence during the period under presentconsideration. Thackeray took up the practice from him: as well asothers both from him and from Thackeray. The great illustrators, too, ofthe forties, fifties, and sixties, from Cruikshank and Browne toFrederick Walker, were partly helped by the system, partly helped tomake it popular. But the circulating libraries did not like it forobvious reasons, the parts being fragile and unsubstantial: and thegreat success of cheap magazines, on the pattern of _Macmillan's_ andthe _Cornhill_, cut the ground from under its feet. The last remarkablenovel that I remember seeing in the form was _The Last Chronicle ofBarset. Middlemarch_ and _Daniel Deronda_ came out in parts which wererather volumes than parts.
This piece-meal publication, whether in part or periodical, could not bewithout some effects on the character of the production. These wereneither wholly good nor wholly bad. They served to some extent tocorrect the tendency, mentioned above, of the three-volume novel to "goto seed" in the middle--to become a sort of preposterous sandwich withmeat on the outsides and a great slab of ill-baked and insipid breadbetween. For readers would not have stood this in instalments: you hadto provide some bite or promise of bite in each--if possible--indeed toleave each off at an interesting point. But this itself rather tended toa jumpy and ill-composed whole--to that mechanical shift from one partof the plot to another which is so evident, for instance, in Trollope:and there was worse temptation behind. If a man had the opportunity, themeans, the courage, and the artistic conscience necessary to finish hiswork before any part of it appeared, or at least to scaffold itthoroughly throughout in advance, no harm was done. But perhaps there isno class of people with whom the temptation--common enough in everyclass--of hand-to-mouth work is more fatal than with men of letters. Itis said that even the clergy are human enough to put off theirsermon-writing till Saturday, and what can be expected of the profaneman, especially when he has a whole month apparently before him? It ispretty certain that Thackeray succumbed to this temptation: and so did agreat many people who could much less afford to do so than Thackeray.It was almost certainly responsible for part of the astonishingmedley of repetitions and lapses in Lever: and I am by no meanssure that some of Dickens's worst faults, especially the ostentatiousplot-that-is-no-plot of such a book as _Little Dorrit_--the plot whichmarks time with elaborate gesticulation and really does not advance atall--were not largely due to the system.
Let it only be added that these expensive forms of publication by nomeans excluded cheap reprints as soon as a book was really popular. Thevery big people kept up their prices: but everybody else was glad to getinto "popular libraries," yellow-backed railway issues, and the like, assoon as possible.
It will have been seen that the present writer puts the novel of1845-1870 very high: he would indeed put it, in its own compartment,almost on a level with the drama of 1585-1625 or the poems of 1798-1825.Just at the present moment there may be a pretty general tendency toconsider this allowance exaggerated if not preposterous: and to set itdown to the well-known foible of age for the period of its own youth.There is no need to do more than suggest that those who were young whenShakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in theirdotage if, forty years later, they had extolled the literature of theirnonage. One does not care to dwell long on such a point: but it may justbe observed that the present writer's withers are hardly even pinched,let alone wrung, by the strictest application, to his case, of thisrather idle notion. For some of what he is praising as the best novelswere written before he was born; many while he was in the nursery; mostbefore he had left school, and practically all before he had ceased tobe an undergraduate. Now acute observers know that what may be calledthe disease of contemporary partisanship rarely even begins till theundergraduate period, and is at its severest from twenty-five tothirty-five. I would undertake that most of our reviewers who discoverShakespeares and Sainte-Beuves, improved Thackerays and betteredMolieres, week by week or day by day, count their years between theselimits. _Beati illi_ from some points of view, but from others, if theygo on longer, Heaven help them indeed!
But all this is really idle. A critic is not right or wrong because heis young or old as the case may be; because he follows the taste of hisage or runs counter to it; because he likes the past or because he likesthe present. He is right or wrong according as he does or does not likethe right things in the right way. And it is a simple historical fact,capable now of being seen in a proper perspective, and subjected to theproper historical tests, that, in the large sense, the two generationsfrom the appearance of Scott and Miss Austen to the death of Dickens(and considering the ebb which followed Scott and Miss Austenthemselves, specially the latter of these two), supplied the spring tideof the novel-flood, the flower-time of its flowering season, the acme ofits climax.
The comparison, both in the longer and shorter time, to the great summerof the drama may be too complimentary--I do not think it is, except inso far as that drama necessarily involved poetry, a higher thing by farthan either drama itself or novel--but it is certainly not an altogethercomfortable one. For we know that the drama, thereafter, has never had amore than galvanised life, except in the imagination of the gentlemenwho discover Shakespeares and Molieres as aforesaid. And there are thosewho say that, not only at the moment, but for some time past, the stateof the novel is, and has been, not much more promising. The student whois thoroughly broken to the study of literary history is never apessimist, though he
may be very rarely an optimist: for the one thingof which he should be thoroughly convinced is its incalculableness. Buthe might admit--while reserving unlimited trust in the Wind of theSpirit and its power to blow exactly as it listeth, and to awaken thedryest of dry bones--that circumstances are not incompatible withsomething like a decay in the novel: just as they were with a decay inthe drama. The state of society and temper in the late sixteenth andearly seventeenth century--not too well regulated; stirred at once bythe sinking force of the mediaeval and the rising force of the modernspirit; full of religious revival which had happily not gone whollywrong, as it had in some other countries; finding ready to its hand alanguage which had cast most of its sloughs of accidence and prosody,and was fresh, limber, ready for anything; enterprising but not buriedin business--was favourable to the rise and flourishing of thisdisorderly abundance of dramatic creation--tragic, comic, and in all thevarieties that _Hamlet_ catalogues or satirises. The mid-nineteenthcentury had something of the same hot-bed characteristic, thoughsufficiently contrasted and fitted to produce a different growth. Ithad, if at a little distance, the inspiriting memory of a great war,where the country had taken the most glorious part possible. It also hada great religious revival, which had taken no coarse or vulgar form.Although the middle class had seized, and the lower classes werethreatening to seize, the government, even the former had notmonopolised the helm. There was in society, though it was notstrait-laced or puritanical, a general standard of "good form."Scholarship and knowledge of literature had not yet been exchanged for"education" and ignorance of letters. The national fancy for sport wasin about its healthiest condition, emerging from one state ofquestionableness and not yet plunged in another. The chair of the chiefof the kinds of literature--poetry--which always exercises a singularinfluence over the lower forms, was still worthily occupied andsurrounded. And, above all, the appetite for the novel was still eager,fresh, and not in the least sated, jaded, or arrived at that point whenit has to be whetted by asafoetida on the plates or cigarettes betweenthe courses. Few better atmospheres could be even imagined for thecombined novel-romance--the story which, while it did not exclude theadventurous or even the supernatural in one sense, insisted on therational in another, and opened its doors as wide as possible to everysubject, or combination of subjects, that would undertake to beinteresting. That the extraordinary reply made by genius and talent tothe demand thus created and encouraged should last indefinitely couldnot be expected: that the demand itself should lead to overproductionand glut was certain. But, as we shall see, there was no suddendecadence; the period even of best or nearly best production went onwith no important intermission; and was but yesterday still representedby two great names, is still represented by one, among the olderwriters, by more than one or two names of credit among the middle-agedand younger. To these in some degree, and to those who have finishedtheir career in the last thirty years to a greater, we must now turn.