The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-03-21
NOVELS A. WEAPONS.
They are Powerful AIDS in Promulgat-
ing Ideas Upon Popular Subjects.

| ing 4d6dS u pOH EOPQldE SuDJSCLS.
Gold,oia Smith in the Independent.
The sensation caused by Robert Elsmert
shows what a powerful engine the move
may be made in propagating ideas on any
subject that vitality interests people. The
! facility with which novelists can supply
| facts to prove their conclusions make .
| PROF. agandist novel aboat as dangerous as
scythe blade slung round in crowd. The
author Of the above article makes some
| timely remarks on the subject
The great masters of fiction are true to
their calling. Trey, like the great drama
fists, simply hold the mil ror up to nature.
! They never pervert their art to any mar
tistic object. There is nothing in them
polemical or propagaudist This is notably
true of him who is the greatest of them all.
Walter Scott, in real life, was an ardent
and active partisan, and this at a time when
party feeling ran very high. He said be
should like to cleave the heads of radicals
with his yeomanry saber; he contributed
to violent party journal; he was suffi-
GENTLY blinded by his toryism to worship
George ". and he falls into astonishing
ecsJasies at the coronation of that august
being But when he dons the novelist he
doffs the partisan; and though he introduces
political characters and events in abun-
Dance it would be hardly possible to tell
from anything in "Waverly," "Old Mo-
rality y The Bride of Lammermoor, :" or
the Legend Of Montrose," whether the
author was a wing or a tory. Rousseau is
the first grand master of this trick of liter
airy ventrloquism, since become 50
common, by which a moral, social
or religious innovator or partisan
gives utterance to his own ideas
through the imaginary characters who
are at the same time inves ed with fictitious
authority bv his art H. was the first who
learned to suborn moral beauty to become
his minister IN his dissemination Of ques-
tionable opinions. Burse incluled the
au hor of the Nouvelle Heloiss among the
philosophers when lie protested agains5
'the endeavor to interest the heart in favor
of immoral irregular and illegal actions on
account of the particular touching circum-
stances thar may happen to attend the con-
mission or the punis lnent of them"
Il have Observed" he says, that the
philosophers in order to insinuats their
polluted atheism into young minds, yste-
matically aatter all their passions, natural
and unnatural. They explode or render
odious Or contemplate that class # virtues
which restrain the appetite. These are at
least nine out Of ten ct the virtues. In the
place of all this they substitute a virtue
which Fey call humanity or benevolence.
By these means their morality has no idea
i'll it of morality OF restraint, or indeed Of
a distinct set led principle of any kind.
When their disciples are thus left free and
guided only by present feeling, they are
no longer to be depended upoa for good or
evil The men who to-day snatch the worst
criminals from justice will murder the most
innocent perSo7 tomorrow.
Bulwer may be classed in this respect
with r Jsseau. The author Of Pelham"
Night and Morning" and Eugene Aram"
was hailed by the moral and social revolu-
florists of his day as the apostle of more
liberal philosophy of character Of his
merits as a philosopher Burke has pro-
nouncad Judgment III advance. He was q
faithful imiJator of RoSseau in his COM
biuation of high-pitched sentiment with
conduct by no means high-pitched. We
had decisive and scandalJus proof of the
sort of moral beauty which this man #
exquisite sentiment before the world pre-
seuted in his own home
Dickens, in his exposure of Stig2ius, can
hardly be said to be more polenlcal than
Moliere in his exposure of Tartuffe, though
this part Of PIckwck was bitterly resented
at the time by the class against whom it
was supposed to be eveled: but he is deci-
dedly p0iemicl in his attacks upon tha
poor law and model prison syste n. In both
cases he fully exemplifies the dangerous
license of controversial fiction, which can
coin facts in support of its case without
DeIuS IeSJIdlucu DH Uue rules OF VefaclCy,
and freely fabricates the evidence upon
which it claims the readers verdict
in the cause. Whistler the new
poor law was the best that
could be devised or not, it was unque,-
tioi ably great improvement on the pre-
vious state of things. 1t had the approval
OF men whose humanity was as uuque ition-
able as their good sense, and Dickens
description of its adminst ration is a libel
Nor is the companion ayes of the model
prison as system Of codling, less at vari-
auce with facts. 8 me of Charles Reade's
novels are pamphlets under thin disguise
In the one relating to the model
prison system he gets upon the same
ground as Dickens, and it is instructive to
compare the two versions Of the same thing.
Dickens paints The model prison IS place
in which maudlin philanthrophy trea
hypercrltical rascality with fetuoIs indul-
gence; Raade paints it as torture house
presided over by tiend. Each of them has
given the reins to his imagination, and has
been carried by it far beyond the bounds of
fact aid sense, though they have been run
away in opposite directions"