Forster's preferences, as far as fiction is concerned, are European, and Andr Gide is singled out for praise for his novel Les Faux-Monnayeurs . No English novelist is as great as Tolstoy - that is to say has given so complete a picture of man's life, both on its domestic and heroic side. No English novelist has explored man's soul as deeply as Dostoevsky. And no novelist anywhere has analysed the modern consciousness as successfully as Marcel Proust. Before these triumphs we must pause.
English poetry fears no one - excels in quality as well as quantity.
However such a judgement, when it turns to look at fiction in English tells us that it is second rate. Consequently the result is that Scott is pushed further down the literary scale, as any British novel will ever leave the second division. Aspects of the Novel . Edward Arnold, 1941.