Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1877-11-15
Novels Trash.

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tonishing. The demand creates the
supply. The successful novelist
reaps the largest pecuniary reward
of any of the wielders of the pen
The philosopher and the scholar
may toll for life time in adding tC
the store of useful knowledge, and
never know the luxury of compe
tence. The world demands enter
tainments; il loves ease. To think
is to labor, and to be made to think
differs widely from being amused
Therefore it happens that the in
ducement to produce works of fic
ton has been sufficient TO glut the
market, and the result has been that
general reading loses its dignity, and
we are led to inquire what q great
reader reads before we give him
credit for general information. The
novelist, too, must be something ex'
traordinary to preserve himself from
the contempt of those who employ
their brains in worthier channels.
Fiction taken as whole, it il
claimed, has bad effect. INDUCED
in moderately and with discretion il
has its advantages. Without Colon
ell Newcome, Henry Esmond, the
Cheeryble brothers and Jarndyce
the world would certainly be poorer;
but evsn they are not sufficient to
offset the ridiculous characters made
use of in the emasculating trash
which is weekly or monthly sent
forth through low toned periodicals
and yellow covers. The false views
OIL life which are given fill young
heads with impossible schemes and
, impracticable desires. Even the mild
wishy -washy society novels which
my lady devours, one after another
in her chamber, and which seem &c
harmless, unfit the mind for better
things and tend toward intellectual
imbecility. The effects of obscene
literature are to evident too require
comment. And where are you tC
draw the line? Fielding and Smoll
ct, in a sense, are regarded as class
ical, yet neither of them is fiji to be
seen on respectable family table
and even the widely read "Ouida'
with her brilliant picturing and sen.
suous atmosphere, is tainted almost
enough to bring the blush to the
young lady's checks when alluded
to ; and still "Ouida" is likely to be
one of our young lady's favorites.
The constant desire to glance over
and outside the threshold of decency
and yet to have the reputation OF
remaining within it, characterizes a
large class of novelists. The dam
gerous lowering around the mansion
of the devil possesses a fascination
not to be resisted by either the
writer or the reader of a certain class
of semi-respectable fiction and this
class the bookseller will inform yon
has the largest sale.
The society for the suppression of
obscene literature, as we'll as the So
ciety for the prevention of cruelty to
animals, have a difficult task in de.
Gliding where to draw the line, and
generally are forced to let the de-
batable ground alone, and confne
themselves to fragrant cases. The
other parties meanwhile crowd and
jam that debatable ground to it's full
extent. The opera bouffe, with it's
cannon, and the Black Crook are to
the drama what this kind of fiction
to literature Both draw the
largest audiences, but the latter is
the more iusiduous, being more diff
cult to guard against. The censor
ship over the reading of children in
this country is1amentably lax and
when we consider the immense
number of this species of books
which are turned out of the novel
factories annually and scattered
broadcast over the land, we may be
sure that the effect amounts to some
thing injoursly important. The
mind will partake of the character
of that on which it is fed.
1t is this dubious stuff which works
the most harm. The altogether bad
is rejected by people who have any
just pretensions to decency, while
the good we may proft,by.
Dickens certainly did something
towards amelioratlng the condition
of the poor and oppressed, while
Thackery gave the world lectures on
human nature with life-like ilustra
tions. Thackeray made us know
mankind better, and in what he of
fers US there is an intellectual exhil-
Grafton which tends to strengthen
rather than weaken the understand
ing. He is the Shakespeare of nov
eIists, careful student of humanity
and a faithful delineator-a philos-
opher and genius-whose mission
was to lift the veil and expose the
hollowness of much that is called so.
ciety, while goodness suffers nothing
at his hands. Thaokery, Dickens
and too few others save the novel
lists from the wholesale denun-
citation. Such men shed fattering
light over the field of fiction that
shields the profession, and prevents
the moralist rom tabooing the whole
as a whole. Sir Walter Scott taught,
to many, lessons in history which
would have been learned in no other
way. Mrs. Stowe illuminated his
tory as it was never illuminated be-
fore. Fiction must be given credit
for It's good side. Its abuses are to
be guarded against, and they seem
to be especially prominent and num-
erous now. The current trash
of the day may be con-
sidered as follows: What
may be called the harmless society
novel acts in negative way, by re-
Taxing the intellectual muscles and
keeping them relaxed, until in most
cases they become too enerved TO
grasp any serious subject. Ladies
and gentlemen whose intellectual
growth has already been stunted
hopelessly in this way, and there are
a great many of them, are advised to
continue to kill time as usual till the
end comes. This prevents them from
boring other people; and there are