ARTISTS-COMPARED AS ETHICAL TEACHERS - REALISTIC ART
AND ROMANTIC ART IN NOVELS-IMITATIONS OF DICKENS AND
THACKERAY-THE YEAR 1848 AN IMPORTANT YEAR TO DATE
FROM, IN LITERARY AS WELL AS IN POLITICAL HISTORY-PER-
SEVERING SPIRIT OF REALISM IN RECENT PROSE FICTIONS, AND
APPLICATION OF THIS SPIRIT TO THE REPRESENTATION OF

CONTEMPORARY;

MISS BRONTE, ETC.-

FACTS PECULIARLY
GREAT DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOVEL OF PURPOSE, AS SHOWN
IN SECTARIAN NOVELS, NOVELS OF THE FORMATION OF CHAR-
ACTER, NOVELS CURATIVE OR SATIRICAL OF SKEPTICISM, ETC.-
MR. KINGSLEY AND THE AUTHOR OF "TOM BROWN"-INCREASE
OF THE POETICAL SPIRIT IN NOVELS-SPECULATIONS AS TO
THE NOVEL OF THE FUTURE, AND DESIDERATA IN NOVEL-

WRITING,

214

BRITISH NOVELISTS.

LECTURE I.

ON THE NOVEL AS A FORM OF LITERATURE, AND ON EARLY BRITISH PROSE FICTION.

(1.) NATURE OF THE NOVEL. THE NOVEL A FORM OF POETRY ITS RELATION TO THE EPIC-RELATIVE CAPABILITIES OF VERSE AND PROSE IN FICTION - POINTS FOR CRITICISM IN A NOVEL THE THEME, OR SUBJECT-THE INCIDENTS—THE SCENERY - THE CHARACTERS EXTRA-POETICAL MERITS. (2.) HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. ITS LATE APPEARANCE, COMPARED WITH OTHER FORMS OF LITERATURE CLASSICAL ROMANCES MEDIEVAL FICTIONS EARLY ITALIAN, FRENCH, AND SPANISH PROSE FICTIONS EARLY BRITISH ROMANCES THE "MORT D'ARTHUR"- CHAP-BOOK ROMANCES EARLY ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF FOREIGN NOVELS-MORE'S "UTOPIA," AND SIMILAR FICTIONS SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA," AND PASTORAL NOVELS BOYLE'S "PARTHENISSA," AND CLASSIC-HEROIC NOVELS — BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS MRS. APHRA BEHN, AND NOVELETTES OF THE RESTORATION.

If we adopt the common division of Literature into History, Philosophical Literature, and Poetry, or the Literature of Imagination, then the Novel, or Prose Fiction, as the name itself indicates, belongs to the department of Poetry. It is poetry, inasmuch as it consists of matter of imagination; but it differs from what is ordinarily called Poetry,

inasmuch as the vehicle is not verse, but prose. If we wish to define farther the place of the Novel, in the general department to which it is thus assigned, we shall do so best by referring to

There are said

the subdivisions of Poetry itself. to be three kinds of Poetry- the Lyric, the Narrative or Epic, and the Dramatic. This division is usually made with respect to Metrical Poetry; but it holds also with respect to the Prose Literature of Imagination. The prose counterpart to Lyric Poetry or song, is Oratory, or, at least, a conceivable species of oratory, which might be called the Prose Ode, or Rhapsody. The prose counterpart to the Metrical Drama, is, of course, the Drama in prose. There thus remains, as the prose counterpart to Narrative Poetry, the Romance or Novel. The Novel, at its highest, is a prose Epic; and the capabilities of the Novel, as a form of literature, are the capabilities of Narrative Poetry universally, excepting in as far as the use of prose, instead of verse, may involve necessary differences.

This association of the Novel with the narrative kind of metrical Poetry, this theory of the Novel as being, at its highest, the prose counterpart of the Epic, — will be found, I believe, not unimportant. Apart from any hope it may give as to the Novel of the future, it is not without

value in reference to our judgment of the novels of the past. No one seems recently to have had a clearer perception of this than Baron Bunsen. "Every romance," he says, in his preface to one of the English translations of the popular German nove Debit and Credit, "is intended or ought to be a new Iliad or Odyssey." Very naturally, by those who take a more common view of the subject, this statement may be received as a philosophic extravagance. What! a Circulating Library novel and the Iliad; one of our thousand-and-one stories of society in Mayfair, and Homer's old story of the wanderings of Ulysses and Penelope's troubles with her suitors? But, as Baron Bunsen is demonstrably right in theory, so he is able to verify the theory by an appeal to experience. "If we pass in review," he says, "the romances of the last three centuries, we shall find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two generations which have satisfied this (i. e., the epic) requirement." In fact, any unwillingness that there may be to admit his statement, will be found to arise from the circumstance that people, in testing it, think only of the great epics, but think indiscriminately of all novels, small as well as great. When we think of the Iliad or the Odyssey, or of the "Jerusalem Delivered," or of "Paradise Lost," it is certainly difficult to re

und

member a prose romance, or at most more than one or two prose romances, that could for a moment be seriously put in comparison with such works of epic genius. But, on the other hand, if there are specimens of the metrical epic with which we can hardly dare to compare the best prose romances extant, there are as certainly hundreds of performances, ranking in the same general class of poetry as these epics, which we should as little dare to compare, in respect of genius, with some of our best novels. Take, as an instance, Don Quixote. If we hesitate about elevating this great work quite to the altitude of the three or four metrical Epics which the world prefers to all others, we have no hesitation whatever in pronouncing it a work of far higher and even of more truly poetic genius, than many works of narrative verse which have yet deservedly earned for their authors no mean reputation - the metrical stories of Dryden, for example, and the Fables and Tales of Lafontaine. In short, if we think only of good novels in connection with good narrative poems, throwing equally out of sight what is inferior in both departments, the association of the Novel with the Epic will not seem so much amiss. At all events, in tracing the history of a Novel, there will be some advantage in recollecting the association. The phases through which the Novel