The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-24

cultivated by much practice can run, say, through a score of novels. and find that he can divide them into three or four sec tions with unmistakable labels. The crop of this seasons novels is raised from the seed of last season's; certain formulars are popular and innumerable pens restate these formulars with no more variation than simple reshuffiing implies. We open book after book to find ourselves con fronted with the very ghosts of familiar ity.
 .'The conclusion to which we are forced is plain--many of our novelists go to books for inspiration and ideas instead of going to life. It is much easier to go to books, but that is not the way to pro- duce work which may here and there stir a reader to actual emotion, here and there touch some hidden or subconscious spring of the soul. It is, no doubt, given to few writers to unvail even the smallest mys- teries of the terrible and beautiful spirit of man, but 1t is the business of the writ CT to strive after the highest that Is in him. He may not have much to say, but he should at least endeavor to say 1t well, and he should not attempt to say it at all unless from some impulsion of knowledge or temperament This is a hard saying, but it represents the only way of art. Take up half d dozen of these novels at random and you will find misrepresenta- tiOn blatant; misrepresentation of every class of society misrepresentation of the most ordinary affairs of existence. It may not be conscious misrepresentation. but there it is; the servant girl stands in as impossible a light and as ruinous a per- spective as the countless men and women who trail titles across the page. There comes upon us at times positive yearn- ing for anything vital, anything truly and personally observed. were it only sideling tramp or garbage-sodden gutter.
 Tt is well now and then to recall what Ruskin wrote of books in Kings Treasu- ries. A book is written. he said, because the author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or help fully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it. so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously. if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things manifest to him; this, the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever; engrave it on rock, if he could, saying: This is the best of me: for the rest, I ate and drank. and slept. loved and hated. like another; my life was as the vapor. and is not; but this l saw and knew: this, if anything of mine. is worth your memory That it may be said is a counsel of perfection, but it has the right spirit. If it at all consorted with the spirit of the age, we should have fewer and better novels, which would not mean that the novel-reading public would go empty but that it would have more to think about. The average novel, to put the matter briefly, is concerned neither with real ideas nor with real life; it is a ant pr sentimental friV- olous-upon what never existed. It is a kind of ineffective phantasm, blurred, in choate, remote. And the tendency is to level all to this average. Our greatest writers as we said the other day are si- lent. The call is for leaders; of followers in every kind we have rank and file enough"