Masters of the English Novel Part 9

"Janet's Repentance," with its fine central character of the unhappy wedded wife, is strong, sincere, appealing; and much of the local color admirable. But--perhaps because there is more attempt at story-telling, more plot--the narrative falls below the beautiful, quiet chronicle of the days of Amos: an exquisite portrayal of an average man who yet stands for humanity's best.

The tale is significant as a prelude to Eliot's coming work, containing, in the seed, those qualities which were to make her noteworthy. Perusing the volume to-day, we can hardly say that it appears an epoch-making production in fiction, the declaration of a new talent in modern literature. But much has happened in fiction during the half century since 1857, and we are not in a position to judge the feeling of those who then began to follow the fortunes of the Reverend Amos.

But it is not difficult for the twentieth century reader, even if blase, to understand that "Adam Bede," published when its author was forty, aroused a furore of admiration: it still holds general attention, and many whose opinion is worth having, regard it with respect, affection, even enthusiasm.

The broader canvas was exactly what the novelist needed to show her power of characterization, her ability to build up her picture by countless little touches guided by the most unflinching faith in detail and given vibrancy by the sympathy which in all George Eliot's fiction is like the air you breathe.

Then, too, as an appeal to the general, there is more of story interest, although neither here nor in any story to follow, does plot come first with a writer whose chief interest is always character, and its development. The autobiographic note deepens and gives at once verity and intensity to the novel; here, as in "The Mill on the Floss" which was to follow the next year, Eliot first gave free play to that emotional seizure of her own past to which reference has been made. The homely material of the first novel was but part of its strength. Readers who had been offered the flash-romantic fiction of Disraeli and Bulwer, turned with refreshment to the placid annals of a village where, none the less, the human heart in its follies and frailties and n.o.bilities, is laid bare. The skill with which the leisurely moving story rises to its vivid moments of climactic interest--the duel in the wood, Hetty's flight, the death of Adam's father--is marked and points plainly to the advance, through study and practice, of the novelist since the "Clerical Scenes"; constructive excellencies do not come by instinct. "Adam Bede"

is preeminently a book of belief, written not so much in ink as in red blood, and in that psychic fluid that means the author's spiritual nature. She herself declared, "I love it very much,"

and it reveals the fact on every page. Aside from its indubitable worth as a picture of English middle-cla.s.s country life in an earlier nineteenth century than we know--the easy-going days before electricity--it has its highest claim to our regard as a reading in life, not conveyed by word of mouth didactically, but carried in scene and character. The author's tenderness over Hetty, without even sentimentalizing her as, for example, Dumas sentimentalizes his Camille, suggests the mood of the whole narrative: a large-minded, large-hearted comprehension of humankind, an insistence on spiritual tests, yet with the will to tell the truth and present impartially the darkest shadows. It is because George Eliot's people are compounded with beautiful naturalness of good and bad--not hopelessly bad with Hetty, nor hopelessly good with Adam--that we understand them and love them. Here is an element of her effectiveness. Even her Dinah walks with her feet firmly planted upon the earth, though her mystic vision may be skyward.

With "Adam Bede" she came into her own. The "Clerical Scenes"

had won critical plaudits: d.i.c.kens, in 1857 long settled in his seat of public idolatry, wrote the unknown author a letter of appreciation, so warm-hearted, so generous, that it is hard to resist the pleasure of quoting it: it is interesting to remark that in despite the masculine pen-name, he attributed the work to a woman. But the public had not responded. With "Adam Bede"

this was changed; the book gained speedy popularity, the author even meeting with that mixed compliment, a bogus claimant to its authors.h.i.+p. And so, greatly encouraged, and stimulated to do her best, she produced "The Mill on the Floss," a novel, which, if not her finest, will always be placed high on her list of representative fiction.

This time the story as such was stronger, there was more substance and variety because of the greater number of characters and their freer interplay upon each other. Most important of all, when we look beyond the immediate reception by the public to its more permanent position, the work is decidedly more thoroughgoing in its psychology: it goes to the very core of personality, where the earlier book was in some instances satisfied with sketch-work. In "Adam Bede" the freshness comes from the treatment rather than the theme. The framework, a seduction story, is old enough--old as human nature and pre-literary story-telling. But in "The Mill on the Floss" we have the history of two intertwined lives, contrasted types from within the confines of family life, bound by kin-love yet separated by temperament. It is the deepest, truest of tragedy and we see that just this particular study of humanity had not been accomplished so exhaustively before in all the annals of fiction. As it happened, everything conspired to make the author at her best when she was writing this novel: as her letters show, her health was, for her, good: we have noted the stimulus derived from the reception of "Adam Bede"--which was as wine to her soul. Then--a fact which should never be forgotten--the tale is carried through logically and expresses, with neither paltering nor evasion, George Eliot's sense of life's tragedy.

In the other book, on the contrary, a touch of the fict.i.tious was introduced by Lewes; Dinah and Adam were united to make at the end a mitigation of the painfulness of Hetty's downfall.

Lewes may have been right in looking to the contemporary audience, but never again did Eliot yield to that form of the literary lie, the pleasant ending. She certainly did not in "The Mill on the Floss": an element of its strength is its truth. The book, broadly considered, moves slow, with dramatic accelerando at c.u.mulative moments; it is the kind of narrative where this method is allowable without artistic sin. Another great excellence is the superb insight into the nature of childhood, boy and girl; if Maggie is drawn with the more penetrating sympathy, Tom is finely observed: if the author never rebukes his limitations, she states them and, as it were, lifts hands to heaven to cry like a Greek chorus: "See these mortals love yet clas.h.!.+ Behold, how havoc comes! Eheu! this mortal case!"

With humanity still pulling at her heart-strings, and conceiving fiction which offered more value of plot than before, George Eliot wrote the charming romance "Silas Marner," novelette in form, modern romance in its just mingling of truth and idealization: a work published the next year. She interrupted "Romola" to do it, which is suggestive as indicating absorption by the theme. This story offers a delightful blend of homely realism with poetic symbolism. The miser is wooed from his sordid love of gold by the golden glint of a little girl's hair: as love creeps into his starved heart, heartless greed goes out forever: before a soulless machine, he becomes a man. It is the world-old, still potent thought that the good can drive out the bad: a spiritual allegory in a series of vivid pictures carrying the wholesomest and highest of lessons. The artistic and didactic are here in happy union. And as nowhere else in her work (unless exception be made in the case of "Romola") she sees a truth in terms of drama. To read the story is to feel its stage value: it is no surprise to know that several dramatizations of the book have been made. Aside from its central motive, the studies of homely village life, as well as of polite society, are in Eliot's best manner: the humor of Dolly Winthrop is of as excellent vintage as the humor of Mrs.

Poyser in "Adam Bede," yet with the necessary differentiation.

The typical deep sympathy for common humanity--just average folks--permeates the handling. Moreover, while the romance has a happy issue, as a romance should according to Stevenson, if it possibly can, it does not differ in its view of life from so fatalistic a book as "The Mill on the Floss"; for circ.u.mstances change Silas; if the child Eppie had not come he might have remained a miser. It was not his will alone that revolutionized his life; what some would call luck was at work there. In "Silas Marner" the teaching is of a piece with that of all her representative work.

But when we reach "Romola" there is a change, debatable ground is entered upon at once. Hitherto, the story-teller has mastered the preacher, although an ever more earnest soul has been expressing itself about Life. Now we enter the region of more self-conscious literary art, of planned work and study, and confront the possibility of flagging invention. Also, we leave the solid ground of contemporary themes and find the realist with her hang for truth, essaying an historical setting, an entirely new and foreign motive. Eliot had already proved her right to depict certain aspects of her own English life. To strive to exercise the same powers on a theme like "Romola" was a venturesome step. We have seen how d.i.c.kens and Thackeray essayed romance at least once with ringing success; now the third major mid-century novelist was to try the same thing.

It may be conceded at the start that in one important respect this Florentine story of Savonarola and his day is entirely typical: it puts clearly before us in a medieval romantic mis-en scene, the problem of a soul: the slow, subtle, awful degeneration of the man t.i.to, with its foil in the n.o.ble figure of the girl Romola. The central personality psychologically is that of the wily Greek-Italian, and Eliot never probed deeper into the labyrinths of the perturbed human spirit than in this remarkable a.n.a.lysis. The reader, too, remembers gratefully, with a catch of the breath, the great scenes, two of which are the execution of Savonarola, and the final confrontation of t.i.to by his adoptive father, with its Greek-like sense of tragic doom.

The same reader stands aghast before the labor which must lie behind such a work and often comes to him a sudden, vital sense of fifteenth century Florence, then, as never since, the Lily of the Arno: so cunningly and with such felicity are innumerable details individualized, ma.s.sed and blended. And yet, somehow it all seems a splendid experiment, a worthy performance rather than a spontaneous and successful creative endeavor: this, in comparison with the fiction that came before. The author seems a little over-burdened by the tremendousness of her material.

Whether it is because the Savonarola episode is not thoroughly synthetized with the t.i.to-Romola part: or that the central theme is of itself fundamentally unpleasant--or again, that from the nature of the romance, head-work had largely to supplant that genial draught upon the springs of childhood which gave us "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss";--or once more, whether the crowded canvas injures the unity of the design, be these as they may, "Romola" strikes one as great in spots and as conveying a n.o.ble though somber truth, but does not carry us off our feet.

That is the blunt truth about it, major work as it is, with only half a dozen of its kind to equal it in all English literature.

It falls distinctly behind both "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Esmond." It is a book to admire, to praise in many particulars, to be impressed by: but not quite to treasure as one treasures the story of the Tullivers. It was written by George Eliot, famous novelist, who with that anxious, morbid conscience of hers, had to live up to her reputation, and who received $50,000 for the work, even to-day a large sum for a piece of fiction. It was not written by a woman irresistibly impelled to self-expression, seized with the pa.s.sionate desire to paint Life. It is, in a sense, her first professional feat and performance.

Meanwhile, she was getting on in life: we saw that she was seven and thirty when she wrote the "Clerical Scenes": it was almost a decade later when "Felix Holt, Radical" appeared, and she was nearing fifty. I believe it to be helpful to draw a line between all her fiction before and after "Felix Holt," placing that book somewhat uncertainly on the dividing line. The four earlier novels stand for a period when there is a strong, or at least sufficient story interest, the proper amount of objectification: to the second division belong "Middlemarch" and "Daniel Deronda," where we feel that problem comes first and story second. In the intermediate novel, "Felix Holt," its excellent story places it with the first books, but its increased didactic tendency with the latest stories. Why has "Felix Holt" been treated by the critics, as a rule, as of comparatively minor value? It is very interesting, contains true characterization, much of picturesque and dramatic worth; it abounds in enjoyable first-hand observation of a period by-gone yet near enough to have been cognizant to the writer. Her favorite types, too, are in it. Holt, a study of the advanced workman of his day, is another Bede, mutatis mutandis, and quite as truly realized.

Both Mr. Lyon and his daughter are capitally drawn and the motive of the novel--to teach Felix that he can be quite as true to his cause if he be less rough and eccentric in dress and deportment, is a good one handled with success. To which may be added that the encircling theme of Mrs. Transome's mystery, grips the attention from the start and there is pleasure when it is seen to involve Esther, leading her to make a choice which reveals that she has awakened to a truer valuation of life--and of Felix. With all these things in its favor, why has appreciation been so scant?

Is it not that continually in the narrative you lose its broader human interest because of the narrower political and social questions that are raised? They are vital questions, but still, more specific, technical, of the time. Nor is their weaving into the more permanent theme altogether skilful: you feel like exclaiming to the novelist: "O, let Kingsley handle chartism, but do you stick to your last--love and its criss-cross, family sin and its outcome, character changed as life comes to be more vitally realized." George Eliot in this fine story falls into this mistake, as does Mrs. Humphry Ward in her well-remembered "Robert Elsmere," and as she has again in the novel which happens to be her latest as these words are written, "Marriage a la Mode." The thesis has a way of sticking out obtrusively in such efforts.

Many readers may not feel this in "Felix Holt," which, whatever its shortcomings, remains an extremely able and interesting novel, often underestimated. Still, I imagine a genuine distinction has been made with regard to it.

The difference is more definitely felt in "Middlemarch," not infrequently called Eliot's masterpiece. It appeared five years later and the author was over fifty when the book was published serially during 1871 and 1872. Nearly four years were spent in the work of composition: for it the sum of $60,000 was paid.

"Middlemarch," which resembles Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" in telling two stories not closely related, seems less a Novel than a chronicle-history of two families. It is important to remember that its two parts were conceived as independent; their welding, to call it such, was an afterthought. The tempo again, suiting the style of fiction, is leisurely: character study, character contrast, is the princ.i.p.al aim. More definitely, the marriage problem, ill.u.s.trated by Dorothea's experience with Casaubon, and that of Lydgate with Rosamond, is what the writer places before us. Marriage is chosen simply because it is the modern spiritual battleground, a condition for the trying-out of souls. The greatness of the work lies in its breadth (subjective more than objective), its panoramic view of English country life of the refined type, its rich garner of wisdom concerning human motive and action. We have seen in earlier studies that its type, the chronicle of events as they affect character, is a legitimate one: a successful genus in English-speaking fiction in hands like those of Thackeray, Eliot and Howells. It is one accepted kind, a distinct, often able, sympathetic kind of fiction of our race: its worth as a social doc.u.ment (to use the convenient term once more) is likely to be high. It lacks the close-knit plot, the feeling for stage effect, the swift progression and the sense of completed action which another and more favored sort of Novel exhibits. Yet it may have as much chance of permanence in the hands of a master. The proper question, then, seems to be whether it most fitly expresses the genius of an author.

Perhaps there will never be general agreement as to this in the case of "Middlemarch." The book is drawn from wells of experience not so deep in Eliot's nature as those which went to the making of "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss," It is life with which the author became familiar in London and about the world during her later literary days. She knows it well, and paints it with her usual n.o.ble insistence upon truth. But she knows it with her brain; whereas, she knows "The Mill on the Floss" with her blood. There is surely that difference. Hence, the latter work has, it would seem, a better chance for long life; for, without losing the author's characteristic interpretation, it has more story-value, is richer in humor (that alleviating ingredient of all fiction) and is a better work of art. It shows George Eliot absorbed in story-telling: "Middlemarch" is George Eliot using a slight framework of story for the sake of talking about life and ill.u.s.trating by character. Those who call it her masterpiece are not judging it primarily as art-work: any more than those who call Whitman the greatest American poet are judging him as artist. While it seems necessary to make this distinction, it is quite as necessary to bear down on the attraction of the character-drawing. That is a truly wonderful portrait of the unconsciously selfish scholar in Casaubon. Dorothea's n.o.ble naturalness, Will Ladislaw's fiery truth, the verity of Rosamond's bovine mediocrity, the fine reality of Lydgate's situation, so portentous in its demand upon the moral nature--all this, and more than this, is admirable and authoritative. The predominant thought in closing such a study is that of the tremendous complexity of human fate, influenced as it is by heredity, environment and the personal equation, and not without melioristic hope, if we but live up to our best. The tone is grave, but not hopeless. The quiet, hesitant movement helps the sense of this slow sureness in the working of the social law:

"Though the mills of G.o.d grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small."

In her final novel, "Daniel Deronda," between which and "Middlemarch" there were six years, so that it was published when the author was nearly sixty years old, we have another large canvas upon which, in great detail and with admirable variety, is displayed a composition that does not aim at complete unity--or at any rate, does not accomplish it, for the motive is double: to present the Jew so that Judenhetze may be diminished: and to exhibit the spiritual evolution through a succession of emotional experiences of the girl Gwendolen. This phase of the story offers an instructive parallel with Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways." If the Jew theme had been made secondary artistically to the Gwendolen study, the novel would have secured a greater degree of constructive success; but there's the rub. Now it seems the main issue; again, Gwendolen holds the center of the stage. The result is a suspicion of patchwork; nor is this changed by the fact that both parts are brilliantly done--to which consideration may be added the well-known antipathy of many Gentile readers to any treatment of the Jew in fiction, if an explanation be sought of the relative slighting of a very n.o.ble book.

For it has virtues, many and large. Its spirit is broad, tolerant, wide and loving. In no previous Eliot fiction are there finer single effects: no one is likely to forget the scene in which Gwendolen and Harcourt come to a rupture; or the scene of Deronda's dismissal. And in the way of character portrayal, nothing is keener and truer than the heroine of this book, whose unawakened, seemingly light, nature is chastened and deepened as she slowly learns the meaning of life. The lesson is sound and salutary: it is set forth so vividly as to be immensely impressive. Mordecai, against the background necessary to show him, is sketched with splendid power. And the percentage of quotable sayings, sword-thrusts, many of them, into the vitals of life, is as high perhaps as in any other of the Novels, unless it be "Middlemarch." Nevertheless those who point to "Deronda" as ill.u.s.trating the novelist's decadence--although they use too harsh a word--have some right on their side. For, viewed as story, it is not so successful as the books of the first half of George Eliot's career. It all depends whether a vital problem Novel is given preference over a Novel which does not obtrude message, if it have any at all. And if fiction be a fine art, it must be confessed that this latter sort is superior. But we have perfect liberty to admire the elevation, earnestness and skill en detail that denote such a work. Nay, we may go further and say that the woman who wrote it is greater than she who wrote "The Mill on the Floss."

With a backward glance now at the list, it may be said in summary that the earlier fiction const.i.tutes George Eliot's most authoritative contribution to English novel-making, since the thinking about life so characteristic of her is kept within the bounds of good story-telling. And the compensation for this artistic loss in her later fiction is found in its wider intellectual outlook, its deeper sympathy, the more profound humanity of the message.

But what of her philosophy? She was not a pessimist, since the pessimist is one who despairs of human virtue and regards the world as paralyzing the will n.o.bly to achieve. She was, rather, a meliorist who hoped for better things, though tardy to come; who believed, in her own pungent phrase, "in the slow contagion of good." Of human happiness she did in one of her latest moods despair: going so far in a dark moment as to declare that the only ideal left her was duty. In a way, she grew sadder as she grew older. By intellect she was a positivist who has given up any definite hope of personal immortality--save that which by a metaphor is applied to one's influence upon the life of the world here upon earth. And in her own career, by her unconventional union with Lewes, she made a questionable choice of action, though from the highest motives; a choice which I believe rasped her sensitive soul because of the way it was regarded by many whom she respected and whose good opinion she coveted. But she remained splendidly wholesome and inspiring in her fiction, because she clung to her faith in spiritual self-development, tested all life by the test of duty, felt the pathos and the preciousness of inconspicuous lives, and devoted herself through a most exceptional career to loving service for others. She was therefore not only a novelist of genius, but a profoundly good woman. She had an ample practical credo for living and will always be, for those who read with their mind and soul as well as their eyes, anything but a depressing writer. For them, on the contrary, she will be a tonic force, a seer using fiction as a means to an end--and that end the betterment of mankind.

CHAPTER XI

TROLLOPE AND OTHERS

Five or six writers of fiction, none of whom has attained a position like that of the three great Victorians already considered, yet all of whom loomed large in their day, have met with unequal treatment at the hands of time: Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, Reade, Trollope, Kingsley. And the Brontes might well be added to the list. The men are mentioned in the order of their birth; yet it seems more natural to place Trollope last, not at all because he lived to 1882, while Kingsley died seven years earlier. Reade lived two years after Trollope, but seems chronologically far before him as a novelist. In the same way, Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton, as we now look back upon them, appear to be figures of another age; though the former lived to within a few years of Trollope, and the latter died but two years before Kingsley. Of course, the reason that Disraeli impresses us as antiquated where Trollope looks thoroughly modern, is because the latter is nearest our own day in method, temper and aim. And this is the main reason why he has best survived the shocks of time and is seen to be the most significant figure of an able and interesting group. Before he is examined, something may be said of the others.

In a measure, the great reputation enjoyed by the remaining writers was secured in divisions of literature other than fiction; or derived from activities not literary at all. Thus Beaconsfield was Premier, Bulwer was noted as poet and dramatist, and eminent in diplomacy; Kingsley a leader in Church and State. They were men with many irons in the fire: naturally, it took some years to separate their literary importance pure and simple from the other accomplishments that swelled their fame. Reade stood somewhat more definitely for literature; and Trollope, although his living was gained for years as a public servant, set his all of reputation on the single throw of letters. He is Anthony Trollope, Novelist, or he is nothing.

I

Thinking of Disraeli as a maker of stories, one reads of his immense vogue about the middle of the last century and reflects sagely upon the change of literary fas.h.i.+ons. The magic is gone for the reader now. Such claim as he can still make is most favorably estimated by "Coningsby," "Sybil" and "Tancred," all published within four years, and const.i.tuting a trilogy of books in which the follies of polite society and the intimacies of politics are portrayed with fertility and facility. The earlier "Henrietta Temple" and "Venetia," however fervid in feeling and valuable for the delineation of contemporary character, are not so characteristic. Nor are the novels of his last years, "Lothair" and "Endymion," in any way better than those of his younger days. That the political trilogy have still a certain value as studies of the time is beyond argument. Also, they have wit, invention and a richly pictorial sense for setting, together with flamboyant attraction of style and a solid substratum of thought. One recognizes often that an athletic mind is at play in them. But they do not now take hold, whatever they once did; an air of the false-literary is over them, it is not easy to read them as true transcripts from life. To get a full sense of this, turn to literally contemporaneous books like d.i.c.kens' "David Copperfield" and "Hard Times"; compared with such, Disraeli and all his world seem clever pastiche. Personal taste may modify this statement: it can hardly reverse it. It would be futile to explain the difference by saying that Disraeli was some eight years before d.i.c.kens or that he dealt with another and higher cla.s.s of society. The difference goes deeper: it is due to the fact that one writer was writing in the spirit of the age with his face to the future and so giving a creative representation of its life; whereas the other was painting its manners and only half in earnest: playing with literature, in sooth. A man like d.i.c.kens is married to his art; Disraeli indulges in a temporary liaison with letters. There is, too, in the Lothair-Endymion kind of literature a fatal resemblance to the older sentimental and grandiose fiction of the eighteenth century: an effect of plush and padding, an atmosphere of patchouli and sachet powder. It has the limitation that fas.h.i.+on ever sets; it is boudoir novel-writing: cabinet literature in both the social and political sense. As Agnes Repplier has it: "Lothair is beloved by the female aristocracy of Great Britain; and mysterious ladies, whose lofty souls stoop to no conventionalities, die happy with his kisses on their lips." It would be going too far perhaps to say that this type never existed in life, for Richardson seems to have had a model in mind in drawing Grandison; but it hardly survives in letters, unless we include "St. Elmo" and "Under Two Flags" in that denomination.

To sum it all up: For most of us Disraeli has become hard reading. This is not to say that he cannot still be read with profit as one who gives us insight concerning his day; but his gorgeous pictures and personages have faded woefully, where Trollope's are as bright as ever; and the latter is right when he said that Lord Beaconsfield's creatures "have a flavor of paint and unreality."

II

Bulwer Lytton has likewise lost ground greatly: but read to-day he has much more to offer. In him, too, may be seen an imperfectly blent mixture of by-gone sentimentality and modern truth: yet whether in the romance of historic setting, "The Last Days of Pompeii," or in the satiric study of realism, like "My Novel," Bulwer is much nearer to us, and holds out vital literature for our appreciation. It is easy to name faults both in romance and realism of his making: but the important thing to acknowledge is that he still appeals, can be read with a certain pleasure. His most mature work, moreover, bears testimony to the coming creed of fiction, as Disraeli's never does. There are moments with Bulwer when he almost seems a fellow of Meredith's.

I recall with amus.e.m.e.nt the cla.s.sroom remark of a college professor to the effect that "My Novel" was the greatest fiction in English literature. While the freshmen to whom this was addressed did not appreciate the generous erraticism of the judgment, even now one of them sees that, coming as it did from a clergyman of genial culture, a true lover of literature and one to inspire that love in others--even in freshmen!--it could hardly have been spoken concerning a mere man-milliner of letters. Bulwer produced too much and in too many kinds to do his best in all--or in any one. But most of us sooner or later have been in thrall to "Kenelm Chillingly" or thrilled to that masterly horror story, "The House and the Brain." There is pinchbeck with the gold, but the s.h.i.+ning true metal is there.

III

To pa.s.s to Kingsley, is like turning from the world to the kingdom of G.o.d: all is religious fervor, humanitarian purpose.

Here again the activity is multiple but the dominant spirit is that of militant Christianity. Outside of the Novel, Kingsley has left in "Water Babies" a book deserving the name of modern cla.s.sic, unless the phrase be a contradiction in terms. "Alton Locke," read to-day, is felt to be too much the tract to bear favorable comparison with Eliot's "Felix Holt"; but it has literary power and n.o.ble sincerity. Kingsley is one of the first to feel the ground-swell of social democracy which was to sweep later fiction on its mighty tide. "Westward Ho!" is a sterling historical romance, one of the more successful books in a select list which embraces "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Lorna Doone," and "John Inglesant." "Hypatia," examined dispa.s.sionately, may be described as an historical romance with elements of greatness rather than a great historical romance.

But it shed its glamour over our youth and there is affectionate dread in the thought of a more critical re-reading.

In truth, Kingsley, viewed in all his literary work, stands out as an athlete of the intellect and the emotions, doing much and doing it remarkably well--a power for righteousness in his day and generation, but for this very reason less a professional novelist of a.s.sured standing. His gifted, erratic brother Henry, in the striking series of stories dealing prevailingly with the Australian life he so well knew, makes a stronger impression of singleness of power and may last longer, one suspects, than the better-known, more successful Charles, whose significance for the later generation is, as we have hinted, in his sensitiveness to the new spirit of social revolt,--an isolated voice where there is now full chorus.

IV

An even more virile figure and one to whom the attribution of genius need not be grudged, is the strong, pugnacious, eminently picturesque Charles Reade. It is a temptation to say that but for his use of a method and a technique hopelessly old-fas.h.i.+oned, he might claim close fellows.h.i.+p for gift and influence with d.i.c.kens. But he lacked art as it is now understood: balance, restraint, the impersonal view were not his. He is a glorious but imperfect phenomenon, back there in the middle century.

He worked in a way deserving of the descriptive phrase once applied to Macaulay--"a steam engine in breeches;" he put enough belief and heart into his fiction to float any literary vessel upon the treacherous waters of fame. He had, of the more specific qualities of a novelist, racy idiom, power in creating character and a remarkable gift for plot and dramatic scene.

His frankly melodramatic novels like "A Terrible Temptation"

are among the best of their kind, and in "The Cloister and the Hearth" he performed the major literary feat of reconstructing, with the large imagination and humanity which obliterate any effect of archeology and worked-up background, a period long past. And what reader of English fiction does not harbor more than kindly sentiments for those very different yet equally lovable women, Christie Johnstone and Peg Woffington? To run over his contributions thus is to feel the heart grow warm towards the st.u.r.dy story-teller. Reade also played a part, as did Kingsley, in the movement for recognition of the socially unfit and those unfairly treated. "Put Yourself in His Place," with its early word on the readjustment of labor troubles, is typical of much that he strove to do. Superb partisan that he was, it is probable that had he cared less for polemics and more for his art, he would have secured a safer position in the annals of fiction. He can always be taken up and enjoyed for his earnest conviction or his story for the story's sake, even if on more critical evaluations he comes out not so well as men of lesser caliber.

V

The writer of the group who has consistently gained ground and has come to be generally recognized as a great artist, a force in English fiction both for influence and pleasure-giving power, is Anthony Trollope. He is vital to-day and strengthening his hold upon the readers of fiction. The quiet, cultivated folk in whose good opinion lies the destiny of really worthy literature, are, as a rule, friendly to Trollope; not seldom they are devoted to him. Such people peruse him in an enjoyably ruminative way at their meals, or read him in the neglige of retirement. He is that cosy, enviable thing, a bedside author.