The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1874-05-03
Fiction.
Criticism Of Smollet and Other Old
Writers.
EulOgies of Scott, Dickens and Thackary
A CenSure of Bnlwer and
Tribute to George Eliot.

exceedingly entertaining Lecture in Boston
on "Fiction and Its Eminent Authors" the
following synopsis Of which we clip from
the Boston Post:
1t is never too early or late in life to make
the acquaintance of a really good novel
Fiction never goes out Of fashion. Imagina-
ton Will always have its votares, and its
temples will be thronged by all ages, in
every land, as long as the earth stands and
day follows night A class of literature that
includes III it such universally beloved books
as The lgrm's Progress. Robinson Crlsoe
and Vicar of Wakefield, can never be lightly
estimated. We read these three volumes
over aud over again, without thinking they
are novels and novels, too, of tue most ex
citing character. A good old lady once told
NE that she wouldn't have "a story book in
her hOnse, but l found her one day peeriny
through her spectacles over well thumbed
copy of Pilgrims Progress; she had been
reading fiction all her life and had not
known it. Let us see who began tie writ
ing OF hctlon, who kept it going, and who,
IN our time, rule supreme in its pleasant
Kingdom. Child-like, this world began very
| carry IN It's career to cry ont. Give us a
story"
| Kings i'll their palaces and peasants in
their cots called for a story. And so there
| were stories m1Ae for them of impossible
wars and adventures. Then in due time
Cervantes walked into the story world and
gave it - Don QniXote." Sir Philip Sdney's
Arcadia" came later still, and then came
the product of far greater imagination
than his, the work of a Baptist preacher,
whose name was John Bunyan, and his
work "Pilgrims Progress" Some said.
John, print it, others said NO" object
ing that it was an unhaIlowed method
of intoxicating good; but John had
strong Will of his own, and soon as he
got out of jail he went into print. That
work was the Uncle Toms Cabin of the
seventeenth century, and Bunyan had the
satisfaction of knowing thai it was sold as
largely i'll the colonies in England itself
At length Daniel Detoe steps boldly into the
ring with his g Robinson Crusoe" and made
our fiction more precious than ever. Field
ing. Smollett and Sterne followed, and each
poured the treasures of their Imagination
into the nations lap. We read MANY of
their works now with very dry eyes; the
majority OF them have Stagslated long ago
and there is no water in them to quench the
thirst of the modern novel reader. Purer
streams have sprung up, and there is no eX-
cusc now for drawing up the noisome and
unwhoesome things of the past. Now, the
class of fiction | most dislike is that which
sprung into existence under the shadow of
the honor and dignity of woman. | cannot
laugh at their obscene wit, their tests are Ito
mel insult and mockery. which no man
ought to accept or forgive. For IA long time
the deadly nightshade school of fiction held
sway nothing was too sOmbre for their
pens, and they We're like that widow whom
Dickens describes, dressed in black so deep
that yon couldn't light her up with gas after
dark. Laughter. Then there was a class
OF old noveliSts which might be called the
idotic school, for the reason that there was
no thought and no result in their writings ::
which recalls the answer of a little girl |
questioned as to what scandal was and who |
said that it was where nobody did nothing
and everybody went about telling of it, |
Then there are the authors who oVer-ilus- |
trated, who modest us with dates and suffo- |
cate us with pedgrees.
1t was recently said in England of Sir
John Duke c lerdge, that he was the best
terty-day speaker in the country. SO it NAV
be said OF Richardson, that he is the best |
ten volume novelist, but when some time
ago they tried to cut him down and repub- |
lish him, it was found an impossiblity. 1t |
was rumored i'll Boston lately that man |
had been reading . Ciari,sa Harlow and |
was yet alive and well. 1t was discovered |
that he gave i'll at the fifth
volume, and he is now in Mount Auburn.
[ Laughter. We have decided long ago that /
bulklness is not immortality. The titles of
these old works are very suggestive of their
vacuity, such as = Selestina,' .'Amarantina"
and the like. They remind us of that bibll-
cal old woman who saidlshe found such com
fort in that blessed word Mesopotama."
The oid-time novelist would leave nothing
to the imagination, but vert on PROFOUND
ing and eNpounding to the end. In many
old tlctionS again, there was scarcely a char
acter that was not more or less booty: every
body III the story seems to be perpetually |
taking something out of an old. dirty black |
bottle l remember once an incident re-
counted in one Of Smolett's novels, where
everybody was drunk that among them
the house was burned down. That these
stories could ever have been read as late as
the reigns Of the Georges seems almost in
credible. The ribaldry and obscenity of them
are such as can scarce be alluded to before
IA modern audience.
During Garbaldis visit to London few
years ago, it was suggested that a noble
and richly-endowed widow lady, well known
in society, should marry him. The only alb
lection was that he had wife still living.
but that was answered by the assertion that
they could get Garibald to explain her
away. Laughter. There were plenty of
that class OF noveists in the olden time who
could explain anything immoral away.
otlll, many OF the mnsty volumes of old
authors that lie neglected on the shelves are
worthy of better company. The people who
died before the 9TH of July, 1917, were nm
fortunate in at least one respect On that
day the first of the Waverley novels was
published. world without Walter Scott
must have ben dull place. Mr.. Rufus
Choatc once told me that he remembered a
bookseller. iii Salem, in the year 1914.
putting mp "A show bill: "Ths dav pub
Iished, new novel, 'Waverley or It's Sixty
Years Since" Afterwards, when he came
10 read those vivid remances which followed
m successlon, he characterized them as
microscope, telescope and Kaleidoscope in
me. Bunsen declares that every new TO-
nance should be a new Iliad OF ODYSSEY.
Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, in 5
Iced all the greater novelists, are eminentlv
gifted with the divine ficuty of poetry. {
me OF SCOTS contemporaries said it was |
m llnS IA Ia