Part 8 (2/2)

Very much of a novelist's workwomen It is ad or successful without love Soht be named, but even in those the attempt breaks down, and the softness of love is found to be necessary to complete the story _Pickwick_ has been named as an exception to the rule, but even in _Pickwick_ there are three or four sets of lovers, whose little aive a softness to the work I tried it once with _Miss Mackenzie_, but I had to make her fall in love at last In this frequent allusion to the passion which er Of that the writer of fiction is probably well aware

Then the question has to be asked, whether the danger ood may be the result,--and to be answered

In one respect the necessity of dealing with love is advantageous,--advantageous from the very circumstance which has made love necessary to all novelists It is necessary because the passion is one which interests or has interested all Every one feels it, has felt it, or expects to feel it,--or else rejects it with an eagerness which still perpetuates the interest If the novelist, therefore, can so handle the subject as to do good by his handling, as to teach wholesoood which he does will be very wide If I can teach politicians that they can do their business better by truth than by falsehood, I do a great service; but it is done to a li men and women believe that truth in love will s be popular, I shall have a very large class of pupils No doubt the cause for that fear which did exist as to novels arose from an idea that the enerally unwholesomelibrary in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge It blossoh the year; and depend on it, Mrs Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last” Sir Anthony was no doubt right But he takes it for granted that the longing for the fruit is an evil The novelist rites of love thinks differently, and thinks that the honest love of an honest irl ht to wish only for that, she will have been taught to entertain only wholesoirl should be taught to wish to love by reading how Laura Bell loved Pendennis Pendennis was not in truth a very worthy irl's love was so beautiful, and the wife's love when she became a wife so womanlike, and at the same time so sweet, so unselfish, so wifely, so worshi+pful,--in the sense in which wives are told that they ought to worshi+p their husbands,--that I cannot believe that any girl can be injured, or even not benefited, by reading of Laura's love

There once used to be ht, and probably there still are soirl should hear nothing of love till the time come in which she is to be married That, no doubt, was the opinion of Sir Anthony Absolute and of Mrs Malaprop

But I am hardly disposed to believe that the old system was uish, though she was constrained by fear of her aunt to hide the book, yet had _Peregrine Pickle_ in her collection While human nature talks of love so forcibly it can hardly serve our turn to be silent on the subject ”Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret” There are countries in which it has been in accordance with the ht to marry the man almost out of the nursery--or rather perhaps out of the convent--without having enjoyed that freedo of novels and of poetry will certainly produce; but I do not know that the ht to be happier than our own

Alish novelists, a great division is made There are sensational novels and anti-sensational, sensational novelists and anti-sensational, sensational readers and anti-sensational The novelists who are considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic

I aenerally supposed to be sensational The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character Those who hold by the other are charradual development of a plot

All this is, I think, a mistake,--which mistake arises from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the saood novel should be both, and both in the highest degree If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in art Let those readers who believe that they do not like sensational scenes in novels think of soreat novelists which have charmed them most:--of Rebecca in the castle with Ivanhoe; of Burley in the cave with Morton; of thethe veil of the expectant bride, in _Jane Eyre_; of Lady Castlewood as, in her indignation, she explains to the Duke of Hae of his Grace with Beatrix;--may I add, of Lady Mason, as she rine Ores have sinned in being over-sensational? No doubt, a string of horrible incidents, bound together without truth in detail, and told as affecting personages without character,--wooden blocks, who cannot make themselves known to the reader as men and women,--does not instruct or amuse, or even fill the mind with awe Horrors heaped upon horrors, and which are horrors only in thenised and known person, are not tragic, and soon cease even to horrify And such would-be tragic elements of a story may be increased without end, and without difficulty I may tell you of a woman murdered,--murdered in the same street with you, in the next house,--that she was a wife murdered by her husband,--a bride not yet a week a wife I may add to it for ever I may say that the murderer roasted her alive There is no end to it I may declare that a former as treated with equal barbarity; and may assert that, as the murderer was led away to execution, he declared his only sorrow, his only regret to be, that he could not live to treat a third wife after the sa so easy as the creation and the cumulation of fearful incidents after this fashi+on

If such creation and cu and the end of the novelist's work,--and novels have been written which see can be more dull or more useless

But not on that account are we averse to tragedy in prose fiction

As in poetry, so in prose, he who can deal adequately with tragic eleher aim than the writer whose efforts never carry him above the mild walks of everyday life

The _Bride of Lahout, in spite of its comic elements The life of Lady Castlewood, of whoedy Rochester's wretched thraldoedy But these stories charic, but because we feel that men and women with flesh and blood, creatures e can sy a, for the purposes either of coedy, unless the reader can syes

Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his ell Truth let there be,--truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational

I did intend when I lish fiction to include within its pages soht perhaps say, with more modesty, to offer so to take advantage of the experience of an old hand But thefor this episode, and I aot the rules quite settled in my own mind I will, however, say a feords on one or two points which my own practice has pointed out to me

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung froht cause Some series of events, or some developination,--and this he feels so strongly that he thinks he can present his picture in strong and agreeable language to others He sits down and tells his story because he has a story to tell; as you,which has at once tickled your fancy or moved your pathos, will hurry to tell it to the first person you raciously by the public and hasthat the writing of novels is within his grasp, looks about for soels his brains, not always successfully, and sits down to write, not because he has so which he burns to tell, but because he feels it to be incu As you,of that first story, will beco, and will look out for anecdotes,--in the narration of which you will not improbably sometimes distress your audience

So it has been with ood work, perhaps after very ood work, have distressed their audience because they have gone on with their work till their work has become si that it would contain the nareatest in the art of British novel-writing? They have at last become weary of that portion of a novelist's hich is of all the rows old should feel the labour of writing to be a fatigue is natural enough But a h he be fatigued But the weary novelist refuses any longer to give his mind to that work of observation and reception from which has come his poithout which work his power cannot be continued,--which work should be going on not only when he is at his desk, but in all his walks abroad, in all his h the world, in all his intercourse with his fellow-creatures

He has become a novelist, as another has become a poet, because he has in those walks abroad, unconsciously for thein matter from all that he has seen and heard But this has not been done without labour, even when the labour has been unconscious Then there comes a time when he shuts his eyes and shuts his ears When we talk ofof eyes and ears that we s around cease to interest us, and we cannot exercise our minds upon them To the novelist thus wearied there comes the demand for further novels He does not know his own defect, and even if he did he does not wish to abandon his own profession He still writes; but he writes because he has to tell a story, not because he has a story to tell What reader of novels has not felt the ”woodenness” of this ?

The characters do not live and ainst the wall The incidents are arranged in certain lines--the arrange as palpable to the reader as it has been to the writer--but do not follow each other as results naturally demanded by previous action The reader can never feel--as he ought to feel--that only for that flary word, only for that ht have been different The course of the tale is one piece of stiff mechanism, in which there is no room for a doubt

These, itan old novelist,my work, but can hardly be needed by those tyros of whom I have spoken That they are applicable to myself I readily adinners Some of us who are old fail at last because we are old It would be well that each of us should say to himself,

”Solve senescentem mature sanus equu fail also, because they endeavour to tell stories when they have none to tell And this comes from idleness rather than from innate incapacity The mind has not been sufficiently at hen the tale has been commenced, nor is it kept sufficiently at work as the tale is continued I have never troubled myselfspecially on thoroughness in a branch of work in which I h I am not sure that the construction of a perfected plot has been at any period within my power But the novelist has other aims than the elucidation of his plot He desires to make his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the creatures of his brain should be to the, human creatures

This he can never do unless he know those fictitious personages himself, and he can never know them unless he can live with them in the full reality of established intimacy They must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreaue with theive them, and even submit to them He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate, whether true or false, and how far true, and how far false The depth and the breadth, and the narrowness and the shallowness of each should be clear to him And, as here, in our outer world, we know that e,--becouide thee should be noted by him On the last day of each month recorded, every person in his novel should be a month older than on the first If the would-be novelist have aptitudes that way, all this will co;--but if it do not come, I think he can only make novels of wood

It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence has coallery of theallery I may say that I know the tone of the voice, and the colour of the hair, every flame of the eye, and the very clothes they wear Of each man I could assert whether he would have said these or the other words; of every woman, whether she would then have smiled or so have frowned When I shall feel that this intimacy ceases, then I shall know that the old horse should be turned out to grass That I shall feel it when I ought to feel it, I will by no means say I do not know that I am at all wiser than Gil Blas' canon; but I do know that the power indicated is one without which the teller of tales cannot tell thee in which the novelist is to put forth his story, the colours hich he is to paint his picture, must of course be to him matter of ifts,--iination, observation, erudition, and industry,--they will avail hi for his purpose, unless he can put forth his work in pleasant words If he be confused, tedious, harsh, or unhar of a volume of history or on science h the duty reeable, the conscientious reader will perhaps perfor Any reader may reject his ithout the burden of a sin It is the first necessity of his position that he make himself pleasant To do this, much more is necessary than to write correctly Hecorrect,--as I think can be proved by the works of ible,--intelligible without trouble; and he must be harmonious

Any writer who has read even a little will knohat is ible It is not sufficient that there be athat e should be so pellucid that theshould be rendered without an effort of the reader;--and not only so, but the very sense, no more and no less, which the writer has intended to put into his words What Macaulay says should be remembered by all writers: ”How little the all-i pellucid is studied now! Hardly any popular author except e used should be as ready and as efficient a conductor of the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader as is the electric spark which passes from one battery to another battery In all written ; but in matters recondite the recipient will search to see that heaway too much The novelist cannot expect that any such search will be e the truth of what I a, will often feel hie to tell hile collocation of words, which is not quite what it ought to be, will not e oes on The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself

As to that harmonious expression which I think is required, I shall find it ranted, I think, by readers that a style ible; but it will seldoh style will be popular,--and less often that a novelist who habitually uses such a style will become so The harmony which is required must come from the practice of the ear There are few ears naturally so dull that they cannot, if time be allowed to them, decide whether a sentence, when read, be or be not harrows on the ear, when the intelligence has once informed itself as to what is, and what is not harmonious