CHAPTER XI

THE NOVEL AS A FORM OF LITERATURE

EACH year the returns of the booksellers and the reports of the librarians testify afresh to the predominance of the novel in the world of books; and this evidence is supported by the every-day experience of each one of us. But, although the popularity of the novel has become a matter of common knowledge, the reasons for the predominance of this form of literature are not so well understood. And therefore, in an attempt to explain what is certainly a striking characteristic of nineteenth-century literature, it is desirable to have before us some statement which will show more precisely in what this predominance consists. Such a statement is afforded by a passage in Sir Walter Besant's Art of Fiction, in which he focusses the diffused impressions of common experience and observation to a clear conception.

'The modern novel,' he writes, 'converts abstract ideas into living models; it gives ideas, it strengthens faith, it preaches a higher morality than is seen in the actual world; it commands the emotions of pity, admiration, and terror; it creates and keeps alive the sense of sympathy; it is the

universal teacher; it is the only book which the great mass of reading mankind ever do read; it is the only way in which people can learn what other men and women are like; it redeems their lives from dulness, puts thoughts, desires, knowledge, and even ambitions into their hearts; it teaches them to talk, and enriches their speech with epigrams, anecdotes, and illustrations. It is an unfailing source of delight to millions, happily not too critical. Why, out of all the books taken down from the shelves of the public libraries, four-fifths are novels, and of all those that are bought ninetenths are novels. Compared with this tremendous engine of popular influence, what are all the other arts put together? Can we not alter the old maxim, and say with truth, Let him who pleases make the laws if I may write the novels?' 1

Without endorsing every expression in this panegyric we may take this much as establishedthat in the novel we have a great informing agency, a power which has already been used in the past, and which will be used in an increasing degree in the future, to affect human character for both good and evil. What is not yet determined is its literary value. Is it more than an informing agency? As a form of literature, has it attained to artistic merit? Or, failing this now, is it capable of such artistic development in the future as will win it a secure place in the circle of the Arts?

Sir Walter Besant has already made up his mind on the point, for he commences his address with the proposition, that 'Fiction is an Art in every way

1 Art of Fiction, a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, 1884.

worthy to be called the sister and the equal of the arts of Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Poetry.' But there are many who do not share this confidence. They point out that the very circumstance which gives the novel its vogue-its adaptability to the needs of contemporary thought, its sensitiveness to the influence of Science and Democracy, the dominant forces of the nineteenth century-tends to prevent it from becoming amenable to the exclusive tests of art. Its very popularity, in short, prevents it from assuming an artistic form, and thereby takes it out of the category of genuine poetic literature.

It is with a view of contributing to the solution of this question that I propose to discuss the nature and capacity of the novel as a form of literature. And in order to prevent any possible misconception I would declare without delay that in criticism I adopt the idealistic standpoint in its entirety: the standpoint, that is, of Plato and his modern disciple, Victor Cousin, that in literature thought is prior to form, and that excellence in art and literature is inseparably connected with the moral worth of the artist. Further, if I confine my inquiry to English novels, I would suggest that this limitation of the area of observation is not so injurious as it might seem at first sight. For the English novel has a special significance at the present time. In the first place, the growth of the English-speaking communities has made the English book-market the

largest in the world; and in the second, the English novel retains a moral purpose among its aims.

A review of the field of creative literature in the nineteenth century reveals two tendencies which have contributed to give the novel its present importance, and which promise to maintain or increase its importance in the future.

The first of these is the tendency of the modern stage to develop in the direction of actuality. The drama is, and always has been, a composite art; but of the three elements which go to make up the effect produced by this composite art-literature, stage-presentation, and the actor's interpretation of his part by gesture and intonation-the first, the poet's contribution, has plainly declined in importance as compared with the two latter. This cause, and the increased vigour of other agencies for the presentation of serious thought, such as the pulpit, the press and the novel, have decreased the significance of the drama as a factor in the life of the community. For these reasons the drama has ceased to be, what it was in the Elizabethan era, the chosen vehicle of the highest intellects for the conveyance of thought to their contemporaries.

The second tendency is a gradual decrease of the importance of the element of 'action' in poetry, strictly so-called-that is, creative literature in verse. When 'thought' became dominant over 'form,' and, as the critics recognized, the chief merit of poetry came to be its 'interpretative power,' the presenta

tion of human action tended to become of less importance; and from the end of the last century onwards poetry has devoted itself in an increasing degree to recording phases of human consciousness, and discovering the spiritual principles which underlie the material phenomena of nature. No one who has watched the motives of modern poetry in England, and in Germany and France, and who has compared these motives with the motives of the classical and Elizabethan poets, can have failed to notice that 'action' has ceased to possess the exceptional importance which it once possessed. Such an importance as it held in the Greek theory of poetry, for example, the theory which inspired the words which Matthew Arnold writes in his Irish Essays: What are the eternal objects of poetry among all nations and at all times? They are actions, human actions, possessing an inherent interest in themselves, and which are to be communicated in an interesting manner by the art of the poet.'

The novel, then, has gathered importance in two respects. It has taken the place of the drama as the chief vehicle for conveying serious thought by imagined pictures of life; and its special capacity for the portrayal of contemporary human action has been emphasized by the fact that poetry in verse has manifested an increasing tendency to become reflective rather than dramatic.

Moreover, as a species of literature, the novel is