Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-04-18
THURSDAY, APRIL IS, 1889.
why They Fail to Interest.

2 why They Fail to Interest.
The later school of English literature,
both in America and England, fails to
take that strong grasp upon the reader
which has characterized all the schools,
both of fiction and poetry, since the
opening of this century. There is nicely
of workmanship about it, plenty OF
epigrammatic art, often downright wick
edness, which is of itself inviting to
poor, perverted humanity, but even the
wit and the wickedness fail to hold the
reader to-day, whether with antenne or
fentacle. The "fieshly" writer has sue
.ceeded the author of imagination, but
whether it be the poetry of Swinburne
or the prose of Saltus or Mrs. Atheiton
the charm has ceased to work.
In the United States we have no Uncle
Toms Cabins, questionable as that work
is from an intellectual point of view; in
England we have had no Henry Es-
monds. Dickens and Thackeray have
given us the latest types of vitalizing
novels, and they are dead. We have
had no Colonel Newcombes, we have
not even had Becky Sharps, while the
Cheeryble Brothers are extinct types.
The novels of the day fail because they
are devoid OF Imagination and human
interest.
The great point in all works which ap-
peal to human nature is that something
human shall be depicted. Men and
women, however they may vary in
fashion, still come staunchly back to
propositions which have heart and soul
for their basis.aa If they do not find one
or the other, they retire, cold and unin-
terested. Nobody can take any sort Of
interest in character of Howells, James,
Saltus or Mrs. Atherton because they
have created nothing. AS to the first
two there is nothing but the colorless
dialogue of milksops and as to the last
two, only opportunities which any of the
designation houses Of the country could
furnish for the qualification of unbridled
lust.
How ia it with the novelists of the
heart and soul, in whose work imagina-
ton and wholesome sentiment are the
pervading impulses? We defy any one
to point to single passage in the works
of Tn ackeray, Dickens, Bulwer and the
whole illustrious tribe of English novel
lists, or in their congeners of the Ameri-
caa school, Cooper, Irving or Hawthorne,
which might be relegated to the "feshly"
school of literature. There is not, from
beginning TO end, in all the range of the
legitimate English or American litera-
ture OF this century, preceding this Pc
.culiar school, anything which smacks of
the cocotte suggestiveness and prur-
iency of this offensive develop
ment. In all the so-called
creations of this school there is not sin
gle personality. In all its wretched and
arid wastes there are only opportunities
for vicious and imbecile imaginiDgs.
How different is it with the great mas
sers of romance-Sir Walter Scott, for
instance? Take his novel of Ivanhoe
From the opening page to the last, one
feels personal and affectionate interest
in the personages. The characters
justify this, while the scenic &C
ceseories heighten it. From Cedric the
Saxon, and his lovely daughter, to
Gurth, the Thrall, We are confronted
with real beings, whose career one
Siatches with never intermitted inter-
est. When the delightful Rebecca comes
on tho scene every reader of the book
watches her career with breathless
attention. Then, when the lists open at
Ashby de la Zouche. how absorbing the
hold on one, felt because Ivanhoe is to
meet Sir Brian de Bois Gilbert. And
then the magical interposition of Richard
Occur de Lion There is no possibility
of deadening in ones self the alb
sorbing interest one takes in the whole |
glorious pageant.
Then, when Richard Ceur de Lion |
and Robin Hood and Frisr Tuck meet in
the forest, what human interest is there
in all the fence of body and words? The
reader feels as if he had been transported |
from Paynim lands to Christian strug-
gle, and as If every page of the book con-
aimed keynotes to his soul.
We might take up Henry Esmond and
,ther books of Thackeray, and still other
books of Dickens, and read a similar
lecture. But we have said enough to in
licate our meaning.
The new books lack interest, because
hey have no lovable individualities.
They are distractions without person
llity. The personalities do not exist,
md, il they did, nobody would like
hem or be edited or ennobled by them.
After all the straining after effect by the
modern school OF novelists-and this is
true in the United States
no average reader feels that the super
ine hero OF, heroine is really inferior
o himself. At no stage Of the evolution
4 the plot does be care deuce aces what