went a little nearer to each other, and stood watching. The scent of the fresh spring air filled the room. The sunshine was passing over the house. There was the clear note of a bird, but not another sound. The bird ceased, and all was still-so still that Florence looked up, with a questioning look of fear upon her face. Walter bent over the bed for a moment, then gently put his arm round his wife's shoulder. Aunt Anne had journeyed on. From The National Review. BY ANDREW LANG. more potently among ancient Persians and modern English, less potently among ancient Greeks and modern Frenchmen. On the whole, in England at least, we do not wish or expect novelists to dilate on experiences from which we instinctively turn away our eyes and avert our thoughts, just as the very Hottentots do; so they told Kolbe. Yet even this is, no doubt, a geographical morality; and that is permitted, or encouraged, on one side of the Channel which is forbidden, or at least disliked, on the other. However, we have to do here with other proposed limitations, or taboos, such as the assumed rule that religious and moral discussion and criticism is not fair matter for the art of fiction. Here Mrs. Ward does seem to establish her case. Moral and religious discussion influences and interests many lives. The novelist, therefore, has a right to work in these elements of interest. He has also, if he chooses to exercise it, right to try to reform so REPLIES to critics are not usually judicious. A critic dispraises a book, as a rule, because he dislikes it, because there is a pre-established want of harmony and correspondence between his mind and the author's, because the contact of their in-ciety; there is no law of the land, or of telligences is not agreeable, but clashing and discordant. He then seeks for the reasons of his antipathy, and states them in the form of general law, or taboos; but, at bottom, he is in the position of the poet who did not care for Dr. Fell. Thus, there is no possibility of converting the critic by a reply. You cannot persuade him that you have humor if you do not make him smile, nor that you excel in pathos if at your pathos he only grunts indignantly. So far, then, replies to reviewers are destined to be failures; but they may instruct the public, and illustrate the principles of criticism, and of literary art, these evanescent, these intangible principles. Thus, in a recent " Reply," the accomplished author of "David Grieve defends most successfully the novelist's right to use all the materials that make up life, among them, moral, and theological, and social discussion. It is not possible, in common fairness, to deny her thesis, that speculation about religion and morals does make a great part of some lives, and consequently, just as much as love, or war, or business, is the legitimate material of the novelist. Indeed, one cannot properly restrict an art which is also, and inevitably, a "criticism of life" to any set of topics which are elements of life, except by generally regarding some themes as barred by the universal rules of human modesty. Even on this matter there may be argument; and we might discuss, at great length, the sources of the sense of shame, which everywhere exists, though literature, against the endeavor. We can only collect the law from the ruling practice, as the laws of epic poetry were collected by the Greek critics out of the practice of Homer. That practice was adopted as the canon by Aristotle, though he hints an opinion that all epics need not be quite so very long as the great origi nals. If, then, we seek to gather the law, in the case of fiction and of literary art generally, out of the classics of fiction, we certainly find that the best and most famous writers allowed themselves, in some degree, the license pleaded for by Mrs. Ward. But it is emphatically to be noted that the question is one of degree. The most eminent authors of the past never pretended to make art the only object of art; they were always asserting their privilege to be didactic if they choose. Take the example of Molière. He wrote "Tartuffe" as a criticism of religious hypocrisy; really to avenge himself on hypocrites, no doubt; but he also persuaded himself that he was and ought to be didactic. Then, as he says in his preface to the play, "these gentlemen try to insinuate that the theatre has no business to meddle with such matters." But this, he remarks, is an arbitrary taboo of their own, which they never succeed in proving. He points to the religious origin of the drama, and insists that the stage is a corrective of human errors. So far, then, Molière set himself about "reform. ing the world," though, on the whole, he was fortunately much more addicted to amusing it. Still, he claims his right; | cussing Religion under well-known limita and every author has always claimed it, tions? "When I mention religion, I and exerted it as he thought desirable. mean the Christian Religion, and not only Fiction, in our age, holds much the same place as the drama held in the reign of Louis XIV.; it is the most popular and accessible form of literary art, and assuredly it may be as didactic as it likes, taking the risks upon its own head. hill and down dale. But then he is a preacher with the saving gifts of humor and knowledge of human nature. Thus, his preaching does not bore and fatigue, it comes in its place; it holds its due proportion in that great happy current of his tales. the Christian Religion, but the Protestant Religion, and not only the Protestant Religion, but the Church of England." And so Fielding goes on always; he sets apart chapters for disquisition in general, and his whole heart is bent on "reforming the Though the opposite opinion - namely, world," and, especially, on reforming the that art exists for art's sake alone is condition of the poor. The author rarely now so popular with critics, and really has forgets that he is also the just and humane so much, of a kind, to say for itself, it has magistrate. "Be a good man, my dear," never been accepted by the public, nor by were the last words of Walter Scott; it is artists in literature. They have always, the first and last word of Fielding, though in practice and theory, asserted their hu- he is more than need be lenient to the man privilege of discussion-of preach- adventurousness of youth. Thus, his charing, if you please. The greatest novelists acter is not high with those who restrict of the last century, Fielding and Richard- the term "morality" to one point of conson, are deliberate and incorrigible preach- | duct. Yet, as he understood morality, he ers. Richardson started on his voluminous is an unceasing moralist, a preacher up career - not as an artist, but — as one who wished, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says, "to suggest proper sentiments to handsome servant-girls." As for Fielding, he declares, "The provision which we have here made is no other than HUMAN NATURE," wherein "is such prodigious Variety, that a cook will have sooner gone through all the several Species of animal and vegetabie Food in the World, than an Author will be able to exhaust so extensive a Subject." He most emphatically does not deny himself any side of human nature, nor stint himself in social and moral discussion. For example, take the discourses on charity, in "Tom Jones" (vol. I, p. III, ed. 1749). Here Captain Blifil and Mr. Allworthy argue about charity, as inculcated by Christianity, and are in the very thick of matter which some modern reviewers would taboo against the modern novelist. Captain Blifil suggests that one should not give alms, for one may be imposed on by the undeserving. Mr. Allworthy, on the other side, maintains that Charity consists in Action, and that "giv-tue with temporal prosperity. Such is ing Alms constituted at least one Branch of that Virtue." Mr. Allworthy held that charity was a duty, and asserted for it no merit, except, perhaps, when in a spirit of Christian love "we bestow on another what we really want ourselves," when we give "what even our own necessities cannot very well spare." On the other hand, to give only at the expense of our coffers, to save a family from misery rather than hang up an extraordinary picture in our houses, "this seems to be only being Christians, nay, indeed, only being human Creatures." With hardly an interval, do we not find the Philosopher Square dis Of all novelists Scott gave himself most frankly to the task of entertaining. Yet even his novels are unmistakably didactic. A man cannot but bring his own reasoned theory of human life into his work in fiction; and what is this but teaching? What is this but criticising? Sometimes he admits his set purpose. For example, he was blamed for making Rebecca the victim of an unhappy love; and we have all regretted it; we all are on Rebecca's side, not Rowena's, we all know which of them Ivanhoe loved in his heart. But Sir Walter says, in his preface: "The author may, in passing, observe that he thinks character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward vir not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of principle and of conduct are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or the attainment of our wishes." Here be morals, indeed; and here, in a regular boy's book like "Ivanhoe," we find Sir Walter practically in accord with modern doctrines about the "happy ending "— about the satisfactory dénoûment. The ending of "Ivanhoe " was not happy and satisfactory enough has their sun gone down behind the western wave, as Miss Squeers observed in a moment of lyrical effusion. It is not the thing done, but the manner of the doing it, that seems to count in this art. If we turn to the modern French, do we not see M. Zola writing his temperance tale, and generally reforming society, albeit with a muck-rake? Does not every novelist inevitably criticise life, and preach his peculiar moral with more or for Thackeray, who converted Rebecca, as we know, from the Hebrew error. Scott might have killed Rowena, or married her to Athelstane; he might have converted Rebecca; or he might have made her leap into the Templar's saddle from the stake, flee to some hold with him, and set forth to find and found a new kingdom in the mysterious East, as the Templar gallantly proposed. But Scott had his moral in his eye; he denied himself and his readers. So, in "The Heartless explicitness and insistence? Is not of Midlothian," he makes goodness, in a simple mind, in a body not more than ordinarily comely, far more attractive than the beauty and passion of Effie Deans. So he constantly inculcates his own loyal theory of life. He makes Frank Osbaldistone swallow down his excessive passion; at that last meeting with Di Vernon on the moonlit moor he makes him conquer his extreme emotion and take heart of manhood. Again, as Mr. Ruskin has noted, Scott makes, invariably, the most searching analysis of the effects of various degrees and forms of religion, in the characters of those who hold them; on fanatics, on half hypocrites, on men of the world, or on saints like Bessie Maclure in "Old Mortality." To this extent, and this effect, or, again, when he illustrates the temper begotten of black poverty in the hags of the "Bride of Lammermoor,' ," he is always a teacher, and one who denies himself no element in human nature, though he prefers the large and ringing fields of life and war. It is needless to illustrate the same distinctive tendency in Thackeray. He is pre-occupied with the anomalies and absurdities of society; he is always insisting on the excellence of goodness, of a pure and kind heart. Mr. Howells says that he lounges about the stage among his characters, talking, with his hands in his pockets. I, for one, am glad to meet him on that stage, in these moods, in that familiar attitude. M. Taine also has reproached Thackeray with his preaching; his modern versions of "the weary King Ecclesiast." In places, when he is tired and already old, the manner becomes a mannerism. But we take him as we find him, and are thankful for him. Dickens, of course, wrote plenty of his novels "with a purpose to expose Yorkshire schools, or the Court of Chancery, or the Circumlocution Office. Now it is ill done, and a weariness; now it is as admirably and humorously done as in the pictures of the immortal Squeerses, whose coat of arms is never really "tore," nor VOL. LXXIX. 4098 66 LIVING AGE. M. Guy de Maupassant practically saying always that life is a gloomy Sahara, with oases of pleasure and of grimy humor? Does not M. Pierre Loti find life a weariness, tempered by scenery and the emotions? Is not M. Bourget's "Le Disciple" a long didactic tract on Determinism, if that be the right name of modern psychological fatalism? Then, as Mrs. Ward says, did not Rousseau, in "La Nouvelle Héloïse," and Goethe, in "Wilhelm Meister," take all discussion for their province ? They did it, — and they overdid it. They made their effort, made their mark, their impression, and their success. But the "Nouvelle Héloïse" had become rococo, as Lady Louisa Stuart found, when Scott was in his prime; and who reads it now as a novel? "Wilhelm " is partly saved by Philina the delightful, and by Mignon; but it is sad æsthetic reading, taken as a whole. This brings us to the gist of the matter. A book cast in the outward form of a novel may be a successful pamphlet, and may reach and influence persons who can read nothing which does not bear that outward form. But its permanent value, and all its value as art, must be due to something else than preaching, howsoever earnest, eloquent, and learned. It is the human nature, the humor, the pathos, the action of Richardson, Fielding, Sir Walter, Thackeray, that keep them alive, howsoever assiduously American literary sextons and parish clerks may dig their graves, and toll their knells. They survive by their power of entertaining, not by their didactic element, howsoever good, howsoever enduring it may be, as criticism of life." Art, and not morality, is the salt of such literature; if it is to live, the preaching must not be to the amusement as Falstaff's bread to his monstrous deal of sack. Naturally, this is especially obvious when the preaching is "topical," and is meant to hit a moment in human thought and belief. A novel, in brief, is not better, but worse, in the ratio in which it approximates to a tract, or pamphlet, est " of the "Nouvelle Héloïse " has faded into that of an historical document, like "The Conduct of the Allies." But, to persons who prefer their literary sack and bread in the proportion which, personally, I do not prefer, I would sug meant to prove certain points. Thus, if it deals with a momentary stage of religious discussion, to which the criticism of the Old Testament is indispensable, it inevitably becomes a tract, and unfair, like other controversial treatises. Thus, no sooner have Messieurs Kuenen and Wel-gest a charming theme for an Historical hausen reached a given resting-place in Biblical criticism, and afforded what seems foothold for a romance of Doubt, than M. Havet, or some other innovator, comes with a fresh theory, and, I fear, you need a new novel to do it justice. Romance toils after Biblical critics in vain. All these like a sea shall go by, like a fish the New be upon them at last. Romance of Doubt. This is the Life and Death of Thomas Aikenhead. Thomas was born when, in scepticism, there were both peril and romance. He died (on the gallows) in 1697. A Scotch student of eighteen, he made a great Biblical discovery. The Pentateuch was post-exilian! With the haste of a discoverer, rather than with minute critical discrimination, he assigned the authorship of the whole Pentateuch (or perhaps of the Hextateuch) to Esdras. However, he was decidedly advanced and interesting. He said that Christianity would not last till 1800. The Edinburgh ministers insisted that he should instantly be hanged; and hanged Thomas Aikenhead was, "abjuring his errors," his errors, poor boy! He was only a forerunner of M. Havet. Moreover, in a novel of such discussion, no author can be fair. He bowls over the unresisting Christian as the preacher bowls over the unreplying atheist, or he never gives the doubter a chance. I might write a novel on the Homeric controversy; according to the principles here set forth, there is no law of the literary Now, is there any genuine literary taboo game against it. I might take a Sepa- against a novel on the Life and Adventures ratist don of Trinity as my hero, and make of Thomas Aikenhead? If Thomas had my fair Girtonian heroine a believer in run away to sea, and gone a-pirating, if Homeric Unity. One of them must he had been concerned in the discovery of convert the other. "Nitzsch, Nützhorn, a treasure, if he had been mixed up in Sir Monro, Mure," ejaculates my believing heroine. "Bergk, Wolf, Lachmann, Fick, Leaf, Jebb," shouts my sceptical hero, and adds the weighty authority of Peppmüller. But naturally, as the author, I make that controversialist win who espouses my side in this secular dispute. The lady would win, of course, and as, after all, I like a happy ending, the pair would be left editing the Cyclic Fragments in a Bower of Bliss on the Cam. But I should have written a tract, I fear, rather than a novel. I do not intend to produce this romance, from a dread that the public mind is not ripe for the enterprise; but I do maintain that there is no literary law against such an essay, and I believe that it would keenly interest Mr. Gladstone. John Fenwick's conspiracy, every one would admit that Thomas was an appropriate hero of romance. But theology was to Thomas, as to many souls, what adventure was to Mr. David Balfour of Shaws. It was the great central interest of a brief and singularly misspent existence. Why should this interest be tabooed? The taboo is arbitrary and absurd. To a vast number of honorable persons the date of the Pentateuch is a thing infinitely more important and absorbing than the discovery of a whole island of gold, or the glorious restoration of James VII., matters with which Thomas might have concerned himself. No critic has a right to say that serious people shall not have a novel to their liking. In short, as to barring any field of mor- I see the novel from here. Thomas is tal interest against the novelist, it seems the son of one of the lovely yet scattered to me, as it seemed to Molière, a proceed- Remnant, a Cameronian farmer. He is ing quite arbitrary. Can you make people brought up on the sermons of Mr. Peden, read you? That is the practical question. on the Bible, the Shorter and Longer CateBut they will not read you very long, re-chisms. He does not care for them; he is member, if your discussions are "topical," a child of nature. He plays truant from if being "topical" makes their main inter-church, he conceives a youthful scepticism est. About 1840-50 many novels of Prot- about Jonah, or Balaam's ass; he is flogged estant, Anglican, and Catholic controversy by his father, he is preached at by the flourished vastly. They were "topical," minister, he goes to college; he makes, in and they have faded, as the "novel inter- | a moment of inspiration, the dazzling dis covery that the Pentateuch is not what a vain people supposes; he talks about his discovery, he is informed on, goes into hiding where his Cameronian father had hidden long ago in peril for a different creed; is detected by that stern and Roman parent, is given up to justice and the lord advocate, is hanged, but first prophesies concerning Jean Astruc, M. Renan, Kuenen, Welhausen, and a golden age in which every one shall be quite sure that the Pentateuch is post-exilian. The reviewers in the Edinburgh and the Quarterly may condemn this scenario, they may taboo it, they may say that romance has no call to deal with religion; but I shall still maintain that my subject is thrilling and legitimate. Perhaps Mr. Louis Stevenson might try his hand at it? The early struggles of Thomas with the Shorter Carritch on Effectual Calling would receive every justice from Mr. Stevenson. The more I look at the idea the more I like it. It is a double-barrelled kind of plot; it would bring down at once the modern serious inquirer and the mere lover of "Kidnapped," as with a rightand-left. The young would learn to be early inquirers, and precocious Biblical critics. The old would have some fun for their money. I feel inclined to write "Thomas Aikenhead "myself. And then, if it were popular, as it ought to be, the critics would loom all round, pronouncing a taboo on my Thomas's bright-eyed young researches into the literary supercheries of Esdras. If they were popular, “Hippocleides doesn't care," as that artist remarked when unfavorably criticised. how that amateur proved too much for the rustic and untutored valor of Harry? Then, the tales from the classics were artistically introduced. The didactic element, in Mr. Barlowe, was kept in due subordination, as I do insist it should be, to the romantic interest. A romance should not be all Barlowe. Some romances are. The book had, perhaps has still, a vast and deserved popularity. It was a muscular and sinewy romance, and, even if it stood alone, would burst asunder the superstitious taboo of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly. Were another instance wanted, take "Don Quixote," or take "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Cervantes, according to popular belief, wanted to "reform the world" by laughing Spain's chivalry away. He laughed it away. He reformed his world, as far as that went. He wrote a novel with a purpose. So did Mrs. Henry Beecher Stowe, with what success we all remember, or have heard. A young and flippant critic, like Miss Agnes Repplier, may mock at "Uncle Tom's Cabin," may say that, if it proves anything, it proves the excellencies of negro slavery, which bred such heroes as she no longer finds in Africa's dusky children. But there must be some answer to so unexpected a paradox. Certainly, though a novel with a purpose," Uncle Tom was a wonderfully readable novel. The mere possession of a purpose does not, by itself, make a novel a consummate work of art; so far I do not mind going I can even conceive such a thing as a dull and dismal novel with a purpose. But, on I have succeeded in convincing myself, the other hand, its possession of a purpose and, I hope, the reader (if any), that the does not thrust a novel beyond the pale, Didactic Romance, the Novel with a Pur- does not make it taboo, does not entitle us pose, is in a perfectly legitimate genre. to say, "It's pretty; but is it art?" I feel inclined to embrace Mr. Howells, These are the taboos which critics invent figuratively speaking, and to throw up my when they simply happen not to like a bonnet and shout for a more serious and book, when, as we said, there is a preimproving class of novel. Arguments, ex- established discord between their tastes amples, crowd around me. Think of that and the author's taste. Let us try to be epoch-making fiction, "Sandford and Mer- more honorable and sportsmanlike in critton"! A foolish contempt for Mr. Bar-icism. Let us record our impressions. lowe prevails in priggish aesthetic circles." This book bores me." "This book I have never shared it. Tommy, Harry, amuses me." Nothing else is genuine. and their instructor charmed my boyhood, charm me still. There is life, "go," and humor in the book, with delightful pictures of society. There is adventure. Do you remember Harry being flogged because he would not say where the hare THE JACOBITE LORD AILESBURY. had gone? Harry was quite right in his How little a man may look on the vast dislike of harriers. Do you remember plain and perspective of history, and how the negro and the bull? Do you remem-large he bulks, what a space he fills, in ber the fight with Master Masham, and his own sight' Pepys is hardly more than From Blackwood's Magazine. |
