Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-01-23
DIR. McCOSH ON NOVELS.
"A Criticism on His Assertion that the
Best are Written by Women.
From the Boston Gazette.

From the Boston Gazette.
DIR. McCosh does not intend to be very COM
plimentary or gallant when he asserts that the
best recent novels have been written by women.
He does not like novels and this is his cynical
way of robbing them of Importance. We do
not share the reverend gentleman's contempt
for fiction; but it cannot reasonably be denied
that the novel, as an art product, has reached
a very low level. It has become democratic.
To gain popularity it has cast aside form and
proportions; il has lost the art of amusing and
has grown dull that it may instruct. The ma
jority of the novelists of to-day lack ideas and
imagination. They sermonize, deal out dry
platitudes with equally dry placidity, always
missing the region of true art. When they
are not Zolas they are Howellses 1t is the ex-
IRENE of nastiness or the extreme OF insipidity.
The only real novelist of the present day is
One chapter of his consummate art is worth
all the Robert Elsmeres and Quick and
Deads ever written. This true artist will
not stoop to humor popular vulgarity,
and a quarter of a centnry's popular neglect
has not changed his art principle. He has not
put money in his purse, but posterity will re-
spect his name when the countless literary
mldgets infesting gutter pools and milliners
parlors are forgotten. We have reached the
curious stage of progress when popularity is no
viable popularity meant vitality and immor-
tality; it now means full purse and speedy
decay. Within half generation hosts of liter
airy mushrooms have sprung up, fOurished Cor
day and then vanished. The author of Called
Back has disappeared; Rider Haggard has
reached the condition of the sere and yellow
leaf; Amelie Rives has ceased to be a startling
novelty to become a wearisome commonplace;
even Mrs. Ward has said her one strong word
and Is fading into insignificance. Novels at
f,t,Ix- uI,a,,
be idiotic, but they are sure of popularity if
they serve out spice instead of ideas; astonish
us by their indecencies their heresies or their
affectation of nursery simplicity. In art. sadly
enough we have reached the era of bald tru-
ism; adding new ornaments to old littlenesses;
saying infinite nothings in voice of frenzied
prophecy and with an earnestness that makes
silence itself a symptom of genius. DIR.
McCosh Is angry with Robert Elsmere,"
unaccountably angry, for he is a man of
sense and should know that taste is a changing
quality, and that what is the spoon to-day may
be the fork tomorrow. Mrs. Ward was for
tunate in putting into words what many people
were thinking silently. Hers is not the in
spiratiOn of genius, but the soul-wearying
CHATTER of machine literature that turns out so
many pages of patented fiction with more or
less skill. Whatever credit may be given Mrs.
Ward, she is not an artist. and she is successful
in argument only because she manipulates
both the attack and the defense Under these
conditions anything may be proved, even that
Fielding was without genius and that lola is
an inspired prophet. Fortunately old-fash-
Toned admirers of real art can refuse to SYM
pathize with the goose-hissing of the new dis
pensation. Their tastes may be wretchedly
bad, but with Shakespeare, Fielding Scott,
Dickens, Thackeray and few other cherished
vuigarians, they can manage to enjoy them
selves, leaving the Sahara of modern litera-
ture to the ambitious cutivators who plant
nothing and yet prosper on their imaginary
crops.