Morning journal and courier., 1882-12-29
English NoveIists.


 The work of the novelist CT the poet sell dom leads man into the front ranks of the worlds affairs and in those countries where 6e5Ies Eettres have been the recognized road to office neither literature nor politics have prof tied by the connection between them. But, in revenge, the tiDae honored arts of imagina- tive literature penetrate and influence life iu ways which all their own. The poet who puts into words our best thoughts and our happiest moments the novelist who peoples our leisure with world of imagina ry acquaintances and makes rejoice sorrow in their joys and griefs-these rule us with u sway which is unlike any other, and when they die our regret has an intimate personal note, touch of gratitude and af lection, hardly due from us to any other kind of benefactor, however great And if ever a novelist had claim to this kind of widespread affectionate remembrance 1t Is Mir. Erollope. He will scarcely rank in the future beside the great novelists of the cen tury. Scott, Bslzac, Dickens Georges Sand, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Thsekeray, Turguenieff, these at least must be put in a first class to which posterity will hesitate to admit him in spite of his range and facility Neither, we believe, will it admit Miss Aus ten, great as she is She and Mir. Trollope. and, perhaps Mrs. Gaskell stand at thehead of the second order. From their labor has sprung tribe of novels in which the ways of the English middle class described with an ease, humor and a tenderness of feeling which are only not the best of what the nov elist's art can produce because there are cer- tain rare and inborn gifts of geuius which as it were take the heaven of our praise by force and conquer for themselves a place apart whenever they appear. Miss Austen drew the middle class of the England of Napoleons day her country squires. her fashionable ladies, above all her clergymen, are as real as they can be made by tho most delicaEe observation, expressed in style which for its mixture of crispiness, pliancy and kind of rippling gayety has no rival in En- glish. Thirty eventful years or more divide her death from the beginning of MT. Trollope's career as a novelist. But still his world is the heir of Miss Austen's. There is nobody with whom MT. Collins may be better com pared than with Mir. Crawley; and Anne Eliot, Catherine Morland, Emma and the de- lightful Elizabeth Bennett herself, are con- ceived in substantially the same mood, allow ing for the difference of two generations, as Mary Thorne Lucy Robartes or Lady Lupton. The English novel seems at the present time to be entering upon period of decadence The number of novels written is as great as ever and, to judge by the demand, the mum Der of readers would seem to be increasing rather than diminishing. But with very few exceptions, English novels present spectacle of careless writing, insufficient preparation l and commonplace ideas. There are few 1 people who can write at all that suppose { themselves incapable of writing a novel. And l yet at the presen moment there is DO harder task. The old situations, the old plots are perilously familiar, a.4d the work of the best l foreign novelists is training us year by year l to demand an increasing accuracy and subtle | ty of touch in those who would rise high iii l English novel writing.
 nf,s