The Portland daily press., 1880-12-10
The English Novelist.
[London News.l


Among the numerous, or rather innumerer-
able novel writers of the day, it may seem GU
rious that there should be none, or at thAmost
one, who would be ranked by impartial critics
In the forefront of English literature, even
contemporary English literature. We have
host of incapable, small number of decent
workmen or workwomen four or five whose
names every one would agree on as possessing
remarkable but certainly not supreme merit.
But the last third of the nineteenth century,
unless some new light arises, will have to rely
ON George Eliot alone to match with Scott and
Miss Austen in the first part of the century,
and with Dickens and Thackeray in the middle
of it. For the cause of this several things
might be assigned. Bold theorists have sug-
gested that as the romance of historic incident
was worn out, to that of analysis and observa-
tion of contemporary life is getting worn out
too, and that a new genre must be discovered
if supreme success is to be achieved. Others
have found in the very popularity of the novel
reason for certain mediocrity in it.. With
out going so far as the cynical novelist, who
said, 81 can write four bad novels in year,
and it would take me two or three years to
write good one," it may be granted that the
quality of demand, as well as its amount, tells
on the character of supply. If novelist's
readers for the most part only demand fairly
interesting and well-written matter, lit is to be
doubted whether on the average they demand
as much as this) he may we'll decline to trouble
himself to give them more. Certainly most of
our novelists are very prolific. aud their fami-
lies, if not individually stalwart and full of
character, ars very large. But it is fair to ad-
NIT that the actual average of move. work is
probably higher than it was, though the best
pieces of it may not be so good as some former
times could show. This is not merely charac-
teristic of novel work, but of all contemporary
literature. 1t is, however, more prominent in
novels than in almost any other kind of book.
The critic constantly finds in novels of which
he cannot speak particularly well as a whole
bit of character drawing or a descriptive study
which it would forty or fifty years ago have
been vain to look for anywhere but in the
works Of the masters of the art. 1t is also fair
to say that most of the novels Of to-day are pic
lures, more or less accurate, of actual life, and
thus have value very different from that of
the purely fantastic work Of the schools of the
end of the last century and the beginning of
this, which, unless it was first rate, was value
less. Even in "Ouida" for instance. though it
may shock the directors of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institution to hear it, the mirror
is not unfrequently held up to nature, though
it may be to parts of nature which are not very
happily chosen. A paradoxer who should 60
SO far as to say that ''the proper study of man
kind is novels would not be varying the orig
inal so much as at first sight it may appear
Such a study is nothing unless it be tolerably
wide, and to attempt to limit ii by arbitrary
rules is in every way mistake.