Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-03-14

NOVELS As WEAkONS.
They are Powerful Aids in Promulgst.
Ing Ideas Upon Popular Subjects.
Goodwin Smith in the Independent
The sensation caused by Robert Elsmere
shows what powerful engine the novel 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 propagandiss novel about
as dangerous ~ a scythe blade slung round In
q crowd. The author Of the above article
makes some timely remarks on the subject:
The great masters of fiction are true to their
calling. They, like the great dramatists, sim
ply hold the mirror up to nature. They never
pervert their art to any inartistic object
There il nothing in them poiemicai or propa-
gandist. This is notably true of him who il
still the greatest Of them all. Walter Scott, in
real life. was an ardent and active partisan. and
this at time when party feeling ran very high.
He said that he should like to cleave the heads
of radicals with his yeomanry saber; he con-
tributed to violent party journal; he was suf-
fciently blinded by his toryism to worship
George Nv, and he falls into astonishing
ecstasies 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 abundance, it
would be hardly possible to tell from any
thing in Waverly, Old Mortality, 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 literary ventriloquism, since become 80 COM
mon, by which a moral, social or religious in
novator or partisan gives utterance to his own
ideas through the imaginary characters who
are at the same time invested with fictitious
authority by his art. He was the first who
learned to suborn moral beauty to become his
minister in his dissemination of questionable
opinions. Burke included the author Of the
Nouvelle Heloise among the philosophers when
he protested against 1.-The endeavor to interest
the heart in favor of immoral, irregular and
illegal actions on account OF the particular
touching circumstances that may happen to
attend the commission or the punishment Of
them"
Il have observed" he says, ..''that the phil
osophers, in order to insinuate their polluted
atheism into young minds, systematically flatter
all their passions, natural and unnatural. They
explode or render odious or contemplate that
class OF virtues which restrain the appetite.
These are at least nine out of ten Of the vir-
tues In the place of all this they substitute a
virtue which they call humanity or benevo-
ience. By these means their morality has
no idea in it of morality or restraint,
or indeed Of distinct settled principle
of any kind. When their disciples are thus left
free and guided only by present feeling, they
are no longer to be depended upon for good or
evil. The men who to-day snatch the worst
criminals from justice will murder the most in
nOcent person tomorrow"
Bulwer may be classed in this respect with
ROsseau. The author of Pelham, Night and
Morning and Eugene Aram was hailed by the
moral and social revolutionists of his day as
the apostle of a more liberal philosophy of
character. OF his merits as q philosopher
Burke has pronounced Judgment in advance.
He was a faithful imitator Of Rosseau in his
combination Of high-pitched sentiment with
conduct by no means high-pitched. We had
decisive and scandalous proof OF the sort of
moral beauty which this man of exquisite senti-
ment before the world presented in his own
home
'Dickins, in his exposure of Stiggins, can
hardly be said to be more polemical than Mo-
iere in his exposure of Tartuffe, though this
part OF Pickwick was bitterly resented at the
time by the class against whom it was supposed
to be leveled but he is decidedly polemical in
his attacks upon the poor law and model prison
system. In both cases he fully exemplifies the
dangerous license of controversial fiction,
which can coin facts in support of its case with
out being restrained by the rules of veracity,
and freely fabricates the evidence upon which
1t claims the readers verdict in the cause.
Whether the new poor law was the best that
could be devised or not it was unquestionably
great improvement on the previous state of
things; it had the approval of men whose hui
mainly was as unquestionable as their good
sense. and Dickens description of its ad-
ministration is libel. Nor is the COM
panion travesty Of the model prison as q sys-
tenn of codling, less at variance with facts.
Some 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 COM
pare the two versions of the same thing.
Dickens paints the model prison as a place in
which maudlin philanthropy treats hyper
critical rascality with fatuous indulgence;
Reade paints it az torture house presided over
by iend. Each of them has given the reins
to his imagination and has been carried by it
far beyond the bounds Of fact and sense
though they have been run away with in oppo-
site directions.
Memorable above all political and social
novels is Uncle Toms Cabin, which had no
small share in bringing on civil war. The
ashes Of that civil war still glow too warm for a
cool and final estimate Of the good or evil done
by the novel. or the effects which may be
sometimes produced by writings of this class
and the Importance Of bringing them under
the rules and restraints OF morality. Uncle
Toms Cabin is, at all events, a tremendous
proof