New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1883-07-29


| to Cooper and Hawthorne as proofs that IL wa
possible to write a good novel in America, OIL
covering commonplace tale writers with praises
which even their friends felt to be somewhat
too lavish. And besides, it has been made
clear iu the course of the discussion that In
this branch of art our writer's have achieved
some very notable things. Although we have
had no great master of fiction since Haw-
thorne although our best novelists attempt
nothing of the first moment, and Onr more
ambitious novelists never quite succeed when
they aim hioh, yet in the writers OF the
second and third rank we find, mixed with
many imperfectons and never effectively
combined, some of the rarest of literary quail
tiles In one OF another we recognize nearly
all the merits that q good novel requires
originality of the most positive character
imagination, poetical sensIbility, humor, wit,
dramatic force, keen Observat on, narrative
and descriptive power analytical subtlety,
vivid portraiture Unfortunately nobody has
more than one or two OF these qualities, and
in most cases excellence of conception or of
STYLE is marred by lack of that constructive
skill which resembles the aptitude of trained
workman, and is SO common in the minor
English DOVeUsis. DuJ even WITCH dcCVuH'
is made of all defects, the fact remains that
American fiction has lately exhibited vitality
and richness which must soon attract the re-
mark of the literary world.
A writer in one of our leading magazines
has recently taken the war as the dividing
period between the new and the old American
novel, and the discrimination is just one.
1t has often been said that the conditions OF
life IN this country have been uniavorable to
the growth of literature and that our ex-
perence is certain to be that of other conn
tries, in which the creative imagination
SAUNDERS until il is aroused by the shock OF
some great moral and political disturbance.
The rebellion was our inspiring turmoil; and
when the material cares of the period of re-
construction and speculation were over. we
mieht look for the intellectual awakening.
Most of us have placed this renascence far in
the future. Have we not some reason to be-
lieve that it has begun alreadyP Are there
not indications that the spirit is breathing at
last in our literature, and that It's first BRILL
liant manifestations will be made, not IN
poetry, where we have been inclined to ex-
pect it, but in the novel and the romance
American society already abounds with
themes for the novelist. 1t is full of strange
contrasts and effective types 1t offers an
endless variety of eccentric character and dra-
matte situation. IL has become complex, viva
cious and picturesque. 1t moves In the midst
of superb scenery. 1t is in contact with ali
the world; and it combines the freedom aud
the limitations, the personal independence and
some of the conventional restrictions OF the
old civilization and its new product. Many OF
our writers have discovered that it is a much
more tempting field than any they can find
abroad, and have perceived also the mode of
trea mrnt which promises the most striking
and Immediate results. That is satire. There
is no modern life which Offers such tempta-
tons to n caustic pen as ours, because there is
none whose faults and foilies are so open and
so general, and touch so easily rhe springs of
laughter. And the picture which the true
satirist draws of as is not the repulsive dis
closure Of hopeless corruption and decay, but
the exhibition, half humorous and half angry,
of absurdties and weakness which spring
rather from sudden prosperity and other
transient material conditions, than from any
essential loss of National character.