also by other rules. The writer may tell much of his story in
conversations, but he may only do so by putting such words into
the mouths of his personages as persons so situated would probably
use. He is not allowed for the sake of his tale to make his characters
give utterance to long speeches, such as are not customarily heard
from men and women. The ordinary talk of ordinary people is carried
on in short, sharp, expressive sentences, which very frequently are
never completed,--the language of which even among educated people
is often incorrect. The novel-writer in constructing his dialogue
must so steer between absolute accuracy of language--which would
give to his conversation an air of pedantry, and the slovenly
inaccuracy of ordinary talkers, which if closely followed would
offend by an appearance of grimace--as to produce upon the ear of
his readers a sense of reality. If he be quite real he will seem
to attempt to be funny. If he be quite correct he will seem to
be unreal. And above all, let the speeches be short. No character
should utter much above a dozen words at a breath,--unless the writer
can justify to himself a longer flood of speech by the specialty
of the occasion.
In all this human nature must be the novel-writer's guide. No doubt
effective novels have been written in which human nature has been
set at defiance. I might name Caleb Williams as one and Adam Blair
as another. But the exceptions are not more than enough to prove
the rule. But in following human nature he must remember that he does
so with a pen in his hand, and that the reader who will appreciate
human nature will also demand artistic ability and literary aptitude.
The young novelist will probably ask, or more probably bethink
himself how he is to acquire that knowledge of human nature which
will tell him with accuracy what men and women would say in this
or that position. He must acquire it as the compositor, who is to
print his words, has learned the art of distributing his type--by
constant and intelligent practice. Unless it be given to him to
listen and to observe,--so to carry away, as it were, the manners
of people in his memory as to be able to say to himself with assurance
that these words might have been said in a given position, and that
those other words could not have been said,--I do not think that
in these days he can succeed as a novelist.
And then let him beware of creating tedium! Who has not felt the
charm of a spoken story up to a certain point, and then suddenly
become aware that it has become too long and is the reverse of
charming. It is not only that the entire book may have this fault,
but that this fault may occur in chapters, in passages, in pages,
in paragraphs. I know no guard against this so likely to be effective
as the feeling of the writer himself. When once the sense that the
thing is becoming long has grown upon him, he may be sure that it
will grow upon his readers. I see the smile of some who will declare
to themselves that the words of a writer will never be tedious to
himself. Of the writer of whom this may be truly said, it may be
said with equal truth that he will always be tedious to his reader.
CHAPTER XIII ON ENGLISH NOVELISTS OF THE PRESENT DAY
In this chapter I will venture to name a few successful novelists
of my own time, with whose works I am acquainted; and will endeavour
to point whence their success has come, and why they have failed
when there has been failure.
I do not hesitate to name Thackeray the first. His knowledge of
human nature was supreme, and his characters stand out as human
beings, with a force and a truth which has not, I think, been
within the reach of any other English novelist in any period. I know
no character in fiction, unless it be Don Quixote, with whom the
reader becomes so intimately acquainted as with Colonel Newcombe.
How great a thing it is to be a gentleman at all parts! How we
admire the man of whom so much may be said with truth! Is there
any one of whom we feel more sure in this respect than of Colonel
Newcombe? It is not because Colonel Newcombe is a perfect gentleman
because he has had the power to describe him as such, and to force
us to love him, a weak and silly old man, on account of this grace
of character. It is evident from all Thackeray's best work that he
lived with the characters he was creating. He had always a story
to tell until quite late in life; and he shows us that this was
so, not by the interest which be had in his own plots,--for I doubt
whether his plots did occupy much of his mind,--but by convincing
us that his characters were alive to himself. With Becky Sharpe,
with Lady Castlewood and her daughter, and with Esmond, with
Warrington, Pendennis, and the Major, with Colonel Newcombe, and
with Barry Lynon, he must have lived in perpetual intercourse.
Therefore he has made these personages real to us.
Among all our novelists his style is the purest, as to my ear it is
also the most harmonious. Sometimes it is disfigured by a slight
touch of affectation, by little conceits which smell of the oil;--but
the language is always lucid. The reader, without labour, knows what
he means, and knows all that he means. As well as I can remember,
he deals with no episodes. I think that any critic, examining
his work minutely, would find that every scene, and every part of
every scene, adds something to the clearness with which the story
is told. Among all his stories there is not one which does not
leave on the mind a feeling of distress that women should ever
be immodest or men dishonest,--and of joy that women should be so
devoted and men so honest. How we hate the idle selfishness of
Pendennis, the worldliness of Beatrix, the craft of Becky Sharpe!--how
we love the honesty of Colonel Newcombe, the nobility of Esmond,
and the devoted affection of Mrs. Pendennis! The hatred of evil
and love of good can hardly have come upon so many readers without
doing much good.
Late in Thackeray's life,--he never was an old man, but towards the
end of his career,--he failed in his power of charming, because he
allowed his mind to become idle. In the plots which he conceived,
and in the language which he used; I do not know that there is any
perceptible change; but in The Virginians and in Philip the reader
is introduced to no character with which he makes a close and undying
acquaintance. And this, I have no doubt, is so because Thackeray
himself had no such intimacy. His mind had come to be weary of
that fictitious life which is always demanding the labour of new
creation, and he troubled himself with his two Virginians and his
Philip only when he was seated at his desk.
At the present moment George Eliot is the first of English novelists,
and I am disposed to place her second of those of my time. She
is best known to the literary world as a writer of prose fiction,
and not improbably whatever o
f permanent fame she may acquire will
come from her novels. But the nature of her intellect is very far
removed indeed from that which is common to the tellers of stories.
Her imagination is no doubt strong, but it acts in analysing rather
than in creating. Everything that comes before her is pulled
to pieces so that the inside of it shall be seen, and be seen if
possible by her readers as clearly as by herself. This searching
analysis is carried so far that, in studying her latter writings,
one feels oneself to be in company with some philosopher rather
than with a novelist. I doubt whether any young person can read
with pleasure either Felix Holt, Middlemarch, or Daniel Deronda.
I know that they are very difficult to many that are not young.
Her personifications of character have been singularly terse and
graphic, and from them has come her great hold on the public,--though
by no means the greatest effect which she has produced. The lessons
which she teaches remain, though it is not for the sake of the
lessons that her pages are read. Seth Bede, Adam Bede, Maggie and
Tom Tulliver, old Silas Marner, and, much above all, Tito, in Romola,
are characters which, when once known, can never be forgotten. I
in them the philosopher so greatly overtops the portrait-painter,
that, in the dissection of the mind, the outward signs seem to
have been forgotten. In her, as yet, there is no symptom whatever
of that weariness of mind which, when felt by the reader, induces
him to declare that the author has written himself out. It is not
from decadence that we do not have another Mrs. Poyser, but because
the author soars to things which seem to her to be higher than Mrs.
Poyser.
It is, I think, the defect of George Eliot that she struggles too
hard to do work that shall be excellent. She lacks ease. Latterly
the signs of this have been conspicuous in her style, which has always
been and is singularly correct, but which has become occasionally
obscure from her too great desire to be pungent. It is impossible
not to feel the struggle, and that feeling begets a flavour
of affectation. In Daniel Deronda, of which at this moment only a
portion has been published, there are sentences which I have found
myself compelled to read three times before I have been able to
take home to myself all that the writer has intended. Perhaps I
may be permitted here to say, that this gifted woman was among my
dearest and most intimate friends. As I am speaking here of novelists,
I will not attempt to speak of George Eliot's merit as a poet.
There can be no doubt that the most popular novelist of my
time--probably the most popular English novelist of any time--has
been Charles Dickens. He has now been dead nearly six years, and the
sale of his books goes on as it did during his life. The certainty
with which his novels are found in every house--the familiarity of
his name in all English-speaking countries--the popularity of such
characters as Mrs. Gamp, Micawber, and Pecksniff, and many others
whose names have entered into the English language and become
well-known words--the grief of the country at his death, and the
honours paid to him at his funeral,--all testify to his popularity.
Since the last book he wrote himself, I doubt whether any book
has been so popular as his biography by John Forster. There is
no withstanding such testimony as this. Such evidence of popular
appreciation should go for very much, almost for everything,
in criticism on the work of a novelist. The primary object of a
novelist is to please; and this man's novels have been found more
pleasant than those of any other writer. It might of course be
objected to this, that though the books have pleased they have been
injurious, that their tendency has been immoral and their teaching
vicious; but it is almost needless to say that no such charge has
ever been made against Dickens. His teaching has ever been good.
From all which, there arises to the critic a question whether, with
such evidence against him as to the excellence of this writer, he
should not subordinate his own opinion to the collected opinion of
the world of readers. To me it almost seems that I must be wrong
to place Dickens after Thackeray and George Eliot, knowing as I do
that so great a majority put him above those authors.
My own peculiar idiosyncrasy in the matter forbids me to do so. I
do acknowledge that Mrs. Gamp, Micawber, Pecksniff, and others have
become household words in every house, as though they were human
beings; but to my judgment they are not human beings, nor are any
of the characters human which Dickens has portrayed. It has been
the peculiarity and the marvel of this man's power, that he has
invested, his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense
with human nature. There is a drollery about them, in my estimation,
very much below the humour of Thackeray, but which has reached the
intellect of all; while Thackeray's humour has escaped the intellect
of many. Nor is the pathos of Dickens human. It is stagey and
melodramatic. But it is so expressed that it touches every heart
a little. There is no real life in Smike. His misery, his idiotcy,
his devotion for Nicholas, his love for Kate, are all overdone and
incompatible with each other. But still the reader sheds a tear.
Every reader can find a tear for Smike. Dickens's novels are like
Boucicault's plays. He has known how to draw his lines broadly, so
that all should see the colour.
He, too, in his best days, always lived with his characters;--and
he, too, as he gradually ceased to have the power of doing so,
ceased to charm. Though they are not human beings, we all remember
Mrs. Gamp and Pickwick. The Boffins and Veneerings do not, I think,
dwell in the minds of so many.
Of Dickens's style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky,
ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules--almost
as completely as that created by Carlyle. To readers who have taught
themselves to regard language, it must therefore be unpleasant. But
the critic is driven to feel the weakness of his criticism, when
he acknowledges to himself--as he is compelled in all honesty to
do--that with the language, such as it is, the writer has satisfied
the great mass of the readers of his country. Both these great
writers have satisfied the readers of their own pages; but both
have done infinite harm by creating a school of imitators. No young
novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens. If such
a one wants a model for his language, let him take Thackeray.
Bulwer, or Lord Lytton,--but I think that he is still better known
by his earlier name,--was a man of very great parts. Better educated
than either of those I have named before him, he was always able to
use his erudition, and he thus produced novels from which very much
not only may be but must be learned by his readers. He thoroughly
understood the political status of his own country, a subject
on which, I think, Dickens was marvellously ignorant, and which
Thackeray had never studied. He had read extensively, and was always
apt to give his readers the benefit of what he knew. The result
has been that very much more than amusement may be obtained from
Bulwer's novels. There is also a brightness about them--the result
rather of thought than of imagination, of study and of care, than
of mere intellect--which has made many of them excellent in their
way. It is perhaps improper to class all his novels together, as
he wrote in varied manners, making in his earlier works, such as
Pelham and Ernest Maltravers, pictures of a fictitious life, and
afterwards pictures of life as he believed it to be, as in My Novel
and The Caxtons. But from all of them there comes the same flavour
of an effort to produce effect. The effects are produced, but it
would have been better if the flavour had not been there.
I cannot say of Bulwer as I have of the other novelists whom I have
named that he lived with his characters. He lived with his work,
with the doctrines which at the time he wished to preach, thinking
always of the effects which he wished to produce; but I do not
think he ever knew his own personages,--and therefore neither do
we know them. Even Pelham and Eugene Aram are not human beings to
us, as are Pickwick, and Colonel Newcombe, and Mrs. Poyser.
In his plots Bulwer has generally been simple, facile, and successful.
The reader never feels with him, as he does with Wilkie Collins,
that it is all plot, or, as with George Eliot, that there is no plot.
The story comes naturally without calling for too much attention,
and is thus proof of the completeness of the man's intellect. His
language is clear, good, intelligible English, but it is defaced
by mannerism. In all that he did, affectation was his fault.
How shall I speak of my dear old friend Charles Lever, and
his rattling, jolly, joyous, swearing Irishmen. Surely never did
a sense of vitality come so constantly from a man's pen, nor from
man's voice, as from his! I knew him well for many years, and
whether in sickness or in health, I have never come across him
without finding him to be running over with wit and fun. Of all the