business of life; it is a recreation, to amuse a mind overstrained by money-making or by political affairs. We leave it to women, who are supposed to have more leisure for trifles.
For this reason, English novelists have generally felt compelled to treat their public as a tired mother treats a restless child. Our novelists have been in mortal terror lest the attention of their audience should wander; and instead of taking their work and their readers seriously, they continually hand us lollipops. Their attitude is at once apologetic and insulting. They do not dare to believe that a great work of Art—without personal comment—has in itself moral greatness, and they do not dare trust the intelligence of spectators, but must forsooth constantly break the illusion by soothing or explanatory remarks. The fact that in our greatest writers this is often presented from the standpoint of humour, does not prevent the loss of illusion; and in writers who are not great, the reader feels nothing but indignation. In the first chapter of the third book of Amelia, we find the following advice:—
"He then proceeded as Miss Matthews desired; but, lest all our readers should not be of her opinion, we will, according to our usual custom, endeavour to accommodate ourselves to every taste, and shall, therefore, place this scene in a chapter by itself, which we desire all our readers who do not love, or who, perhaps, do not know the pleasure of tenderness, to pass over; since they may do this without any prejudice to the thread of the narrative."
In the first chapter of Shirley, Charlotte Brontë prologises as follows:—
"If you think … that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. … Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; … It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps toward the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic—ay, even an Anglo-Catholic—might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week; it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb."
William Black once wrote a novel called Madcap Violet, which he intended for a tragedy, and in which, therefore, we have a right to expect some artistic dignity. About midway in the volume we find the following:—
"At this point, and in common courtesy to his readers, the writer of these pages considers himself bound to give fair warning that the following chapter deals solely and wholly with the shooting of mergansers, curlews, herons, and such like fearful wild fowl; therefore, those who regard such graceless idling with aversion, and are anxious to get on with the story, should at once proceed to chapter twenty-three."
At the beginning of the second chapter of Dr. Thorne, one of the best of Trollope's novels, we are petted in this manner:—
"A few words must still be said about Miss Mary before we rush into our story; the crust will then have been broken, and the pie will be open to the guests."
At the three hundred and seventy-second page of the late Marion Crawford's entertaining story, The Prima Donna, the course of the narrative is thus interrupted:—
"Now at this stage of my story it would be unpardonable to keep my readers in suspense, if I may suppose that any of them have a little curiosity left. Therefore, I shall not narrate in detail what happened Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, seeing that it was just what might have been expected to happen at a week-end party during the season when there is nothing in the world to do but to play golf, tennis, or croquet, or to write or drive all day, and to work hard at bridge all the evening; for that is what it has come to."
Finally, in the first chapter of Mr. Winston Churchill's novel, Coniston, the author pleads with his reader in this style:—
"The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters, come to an end; and not to a happy end—otherwise there would be no book. Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page, it is only fair to tell him that there is another and much longer love-story later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may not be disappointed."
Imagine Turgenev or Flaubert scribbling anything similar to the interpolations quoted above! When a great French novelist does condescend to speak to his reader, it is in a tone, that so far from belittling his own art, or sugaring the expectation of his listener, has quite the contrary effect. On the second page of Père Goriot, we find the following solemn warning:—
"Ainsi ferez-vous, vous qui tenez ce livre d'une main blanche, vous qui vous enfoncez dans un molleux fauteuil en vous disant: 'Peut-être ceci va-t-il m'amuser.' Après avoir lu les secrètes infortunes du père Goriot, vous dînerez avec appétit en mettant votre insensibilité sur le compte de l'auteur, en le taxant d'exagération, en l'accusant de poésie. Ah! sachez-le: ce drame n'est ni une fiction ni un roman. All is true, il est si véritable, que chacun peut en reconnaître les éléments chez soi, dans son cœur peut-être."
The chief objection to these constant remarks to the reader, so common in great English novels, is that they for the moment destroy the illusion. Suppose an actress in the midst of Ophelia's mad scene should suddenly pause and address the audience in her own accents in this wise: "I observe that some ladies among the spectators are weeping, and that some men are yawning. Allow me to say to those of you who dislike tragic events on the stage, that I shall remain here only a few moments longer, and shall not have much to say; and that if you will only be patient, the grave-diggers will come on before long, and it is probable that their conversation will amuse you."
The two reasons given above, the fear that a novel unexplained by author's comment will not justify itself morally, and that at all hazards the gentle reader must be placated and entertained, undoubtedly partly explain a long tradition in the course of English fiction. But while we may protest against this sort of thing in general, it is well to remember that we must take our men of genius as we find them, and rejoice that they have seen fit to employ any channel of expression. There are many different kinds of great novels, as there are of great poems. The fact that Tennyson's poetry belongs to the first class does not in the least prevent the totally different poetry of Browning from being ranked equally high. Joseph Vance is a very different kind of novel from The Return of the Native, but both awaken our wonder and delight. There are some books that inspire us by their art, and there are others that inspire us by their ideas. Turgenev was surely a greater artist than Tolstoi, but Anna Karenina is a veritable piece of life.
I do not say that William De Morgan is not a great artist, because, if I should say it, I should not know exactly what I meant. But the immense pleasure that his books give me is another kind of pleasure than I receive from The Scarlet Letter. Joseph Vance is not so much a beautifully written or exquisitely constructed novel as it is an encyclopædia of life. We meet real people, we hear delightful conversation, and the tremendously interesting personality of the author is everywhere apparent. The opinion of many authors concerning immortality is not worth attention; but I should very much like to know Mr. De Morgan's views on this absorbing subject. And so I turn to the fortieth chapter of Joseph Vance with great expectations. The reader is advised to skip this chapter, a sure indication of its importance. For, like all humorists, Mr. De Morgan is a bit shamefaced when he talks about the deepest things, the things that really interest him most. It surely will not do to have Dr. Thorpe talk like the Reverend Mr. Capstick, although they both eagerly discuss what we call the supernatural. Capstick is an ass, but he has one characteristic that we might, to a certain extent, imitate; he sees no reason to apologise for conversing on great topics, or to break up such a conversation with an embarrassed laugh. Most of us are horribly afraid of being taken for sanctimonious persons, when there is really not the slightest danger. We are always pleasantly surprised when we discover that our friends are at heart just as serious as we are, and that they, too, regret the mask of flippancy that our Anglo-Saxon false modesty compels us to wear. But, as some one has said, you cannot expect your audience to take your views seriously unless you express them with seriousness. Mr. De Morgan, like Robert Browning, would doubtless deny that Dr. Thorpe spoke only the author's thoughts; but just as you can hear Browning's voice all through those "utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine," so I feel