_Thomas Hill Green_

_An Estimate of The Value and Influence

Of

Works of Fiction In Modern Times_

_Edited With Introduction and Notes

By

Fred Newton Scott

Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan_

 _George Wahr Ann Arbor Michigan 1911_

COPYRIGHT

FRED NEWTON SCOTT

1911

THE ANN ARBOR PRESSANN ARBOR, MICH. 

PREFACE

_For a good many years I have used this essay of Green's with anadvanced class in the theory of prose fiction. It has worked well. Italways arouses discussion, and in doing so it has the great virtue thatit imperiously leads the argument away from superficialities and centersit upon fundamentals. Its service as a stimulus to high thinking cannoteasily be overestimated. For any student, and especially for one who hasknown only the unidea'd criticism of fiction so popular today, it is afine thing to come in contact with a high-minded, sturdy, anduncompromising thinker such as Green is. As Green says of the hearer oftragedy, _ "He bears about him, for a time at least, among the rankvapors of the earth, something of the freshness and fragrance of thehigher air. " _I trust that this reprint, by making the essay more easilyaccessible than it has been heretofore, will help to raise the grade ofstudent thought and taste and criticism. _

 F. N. S. _University of MichiganDecember 1, 1910. _

CONTENTS. 

 PAGEIntroduction 9I. PRINCIPLES OF ART 19 a. Epic, Drama, and Novel 19 b. Imitation vs. Art 21 c. Nature the Creation of Thought 22 d. The 'Outward' aspect of Nature 23 e. Conquest of Nature by Art 24 f. The Artist as Idealizer 26 g. The Epic 27 h. Tragedy as Purifier of the Passions 29 i. Tragedy the Elevation of Life 33 j. Conditions Favorable to Tragedy 34II. THE NOVEL AN INFERIOR FORM OF ART 35 a. Beginnings of the Novel 35 b. Characteristics of the _Spectator_ 36 c. The Modern Novel a Reflection of Ordinary Life 38 d. Naturalism vs. Idealism 43 e. Tragedy and the Novel 44 f. The Epic and the Novel 47 g. Poetry and Prose 49 h. The Novel an Incomplete Presentation of Life 52 i. Prudence the Novelist's Highest Morality 54 j. Evil Effects of Novel-reading 56III. TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NOVEL 60 a. A Widener of Experience 60 b. An Expander of Sympathies 63 c. A Creator of Public Sentiment 69 d. A Leveller of Intellects 69

APPENDIX. 

 a. An Appreciation of Green's Essay 72 b. Hegel on the Novel 77

INTRODUCTION

Thomas Hill Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, April 7, 1836. Hisearly education was acquired first at home under his father, the rectorof Birkin, then at Rugby, where he was sent at the age of fourteen. In1855 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, and came under the influence ofJowett, afterwards famous as Master of Balliol and translator of Plato. Though he matured early, Green was not a brilliant student. On thecontrary, he appeared to be indolent and sluggish. "No man, " wrote oneof his fellow-students in 1862, "is driven with greater difficulty towork not to his taste. .. . He wrote some of the best college essays: henever sent them in on the right day, and might generally be seen on theMonday pondering over essays which every one else had sent in on theFriday night. " These traits, however, as it proved later, were the indexnot of a vagrant mind, but of independence of thought and ofpreoccupation with weightier matters. To quote again from the tribute ofa fellow-student: "On everything he said or wrote there was stamped theimpress of a forcible individuality, a mind that thought for itself, and whose thoughts had the rugged strength of an original characterwherein grimness was mingled with humor, and practical shrewdness with alove for abstract speculation. " In the end, his solid qualities of mindand character made so strong an impression upon the Universityauthorities that in 1860 he was elected fellow of Balliol. At the sametime he became lecturer on ancient and modern history. Though from thebeginning of his student life he had been drawn to an academic careerand especially to the study of philosophy, he was now for a periodundecided what to make his life-work. At one time he thought of goinginto journalism in India. In 1864, having accepted a place with theRoyal Commission on Middle Class Schools, he prepared a valuable reportupon the organization of high schools and their relation to theuniversity. Finally, however, in 1866, his indecision was brought to anend. Obtaining an appointment in that year to a position on the teachingstaff of Balliol College, he settled down to the work of a tutor inphilosophy. When Jowett was made Master of Balliol, Green became, underhim, the responsible manager of the college, performing the manifoldsmall duties of the position with patience, thoroughness, and tact. 

In 1871 he was married to Miss Charlotte Symonds, sister of JohnAddington Symonds. 

Twice Green was candidate for a professorship; once in 1864 when heapplied for the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, and again in1867 when the Waynflate professorship of moral and metaphysicalphilosophy fell vacant at Oxford. In both cases he was unsuccessful. Itwas not until 1878, by his election to the Whyte's professorship ofmoral philosophy, that he obtained the position and the independence hehad long deserved. His enjoyment of the honor was brief. He died ofblood-poisoning, after an illness of only ten days, March 26, 1882. 

Green's character was compounded of a variety of elements. The shynessand reserve characteristic of many cultivated Englishmen, wasaccentuated in his case by a natural austerity and an absorption inserious thought. But though his temper was puritanic and inclined tomoroseness, there was no sourness or cynicism in it. "If, " he wrote toMiss Symonds, "I am rather a melancholy bird, given to physical fatigueand depression, yet I have never known for a moment what it was to beweary of life, as the youth of this age are fond of saying that theyare. The world has always seemed very good to me. " Grim though he mightbe outwardly, he had a keen sense of humor and a warmth of interest inhis fellows that made him, for those who broke through his reserve, acharming companion. His most characteristic quality was elevation ofmind. In the essay that is here reprinted he speaks of "that aspiringpride which arises from the sense of walking in intellect on the necksof a subject crowd. " Something of this elevation, this aloofness fromthe vulgar, characterized all of his utterances and gave to them attimes a solemn fervency akin to that of the Hebrew prophets. This traitis finely portrayed in the following description of the tutor Grey (athin disguise for Green) in Mrs. Ward's 'Robert Elsmere:'

 "In after years memory could always recall to him at will the face and figure of the speaker, the massive head, the deep eyes sunk under the brows, the midland accent, the make of limb and features which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rude strength and simplicity of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility, the fire, the spiritual beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed, was a man on whom his fellows might lean, a man in whom the generation of spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it overflowed of necessity into the poorer, barrener lives around him, kindling and enriching. "

Green's contributions to philosophy were partly constructive, partly(and perhaps mainly) critical and destructive. On the critical side, hisgreatest effort was his attack upon the philosophy of Hume in twomasterly Introductions to an edition of Hume's 'Works, ' published in1874-5. English philosophical thinking, so Green held, had stuck fastin the scepticism of Hume. Such forward movement in thought as there hadbeen since the 18th Century, had come mainly through the writings of menlike Wordsworth and Shelley--men who having seen deeply into life, hadexpressed themselves in imaginative, not in philosophical ways. To setthe stagnant tide of speculative thinking in motion, involved a two-foldtask: on one side the breaking down of the barriers erected by thesensationalist and materialist schools of the 17th and 18th centuries, and on the other side the letting in of a current of fresh ideas fromsome source outside of England. The first, or destructive, task Greenperformed with remarkable success in the two Introductions. For the newand truer ideas which were to displace the old, he naturally looked toGermany, whose methods of research were just coming into vogue at Oxfordthrough the influence of Pattison and Jowett. And since to speculativethinkers of that time German philosophy meant the philosophy of Hegel, Green's fundamental conceptions were derived by Hegelian modes ofthinking. In other words, he was a neo-Hegelian. But, as his biographernotes, he never committed himself unreservedly to the Hegelian credo. "While he regarded Hegel's system as the 'last word of philosophy, ' hedid not occupy himself with the exposition of it, but with thereconsideration of the elements in Kant of which it was thedevelopment. " That is, he was a neo-Kantian as well as a neo-Hegelian. Of his constructive thinking in these channels the most completeembodiment is his 'Prolegomena to Ethics. '

Though naturally his contributions to philosophy are first in bulk andimportance, Green's writings cover a considerable range of subjects. Listed in the order of publication, they are as follows: 'The Force ofCircumstances, ' published in _Undergraduate Papers_, 1858; 'An Estimateof the Value and Influence of Prose Fiction, ' published as a prizeessay, 1862; 'The Philosophy of Aristotle' and 'Popular Philosophy inits relation to Life, ' _North British Review_, Sept. , 1866, and March, 1868; Introductions to 'Hume's Treatise of Human Nature' 1874-5; 'TheGrading of Secondary Schools, ' _Journal of Education_, May, 1877; Reviewof E. Caird's 'Philosophy of Kant, ' _Academy_, Sept. 22, 1877; 'Mr. Spencer on the Relations of Subject and Object, ' _Contemporary Review_, Dec. , 1877; 'Mr. Spencer on the Independence of Matter, ' _ibid. _, March, 1878; 'Mr. Lewes' Account of Experience, ' _ibid. _, July, 1878; review ofJ. Caird's 'Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, ' _Academy_, July10, 1880; 'Answer to Mr. Hodgson, ' _Contemporary Review_, January, 1881;review of J. Watson's 'Kant and his English Critics, ' _Academy_, September 17, 24, 1881; 'Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Control, '1881; 'The Work to be done by the New Oxford High School, ' 1882;'Prolegomena to Ethics, ' 1883; 'The Witness of God' and 'Faith'(delivered in 1870 and 1877, and at the time printed for privatecirculation), 1884. 

All of the foregoing, with the exception of the 'Prolegomena to Ethics, 'are included in the 'Works' edited by R. L. Nettleship (3 Vols. , 1885, 2d Ed. 1889, Longmans). The 'Works' contain, in addition, the followingwritings not previously published: An essay on 'The Influence ofCivilization on Genius'; an essay on 'Christian Dogma'; an article on'Mr. Lewes' Account of the Social Medium, ' written for the _ContemporaryReview_, but not used; four lectures or addresses on the New Testament;four lectures on 'The English Commonwealth'; a series of lectures on'The Philosophy of Kant, ' on 'Logic' and on 'The principles of PoliticalObligations'; a lecture on 'The Different Senses of Freedom as Appliedto Will and to the Moral Progress of Man'; and a fragment on'Immortality. '

Aside from occasional references to poetry and art in his philosophicalwritings, as, for example, in the opening paragraphs of the'Prolegomena, ' the essay on fiction here reprinted is Green's onlyventure in the field of aesthetic criticism. When we remember that itwas one of his earliest productions, having been submitted for theChancellor's prize in 1862, when Green was but 26 years of age, thematurity of both style and contents seems remarkable. It is in fact amonumental piece of literary criticism, sufficient to establish thereputation of many a lesser writer. At the same time, however, there isabout it an air of constraint which shows that the author was not atease in this kind of speculation. He was fencing, so to speak, with hisleft hand. His mind was so absorbed in the metaphysical, ethical, andreligious aspects of experience that upon the aesthetic as such he hadlittle attention to bestow. When he approached aesthetic problems at allit was for the purpose of obtaining data which he could employ in otherfields of thought. He was obviously not in sympathy with the aims ofEnglish novelists. He had no expert knowledge of the history of fictionin England, and no knowledge at all, so far as appears, of its historyin other countries. Probably he misunderstood the relation, in certainparticulars, of the novel to the epic. Nevertheless, his appreciation ofconcrete works of art was so genuine and profound, his insight so clear, his expressed judgments so candid, that any contact of his mind withart, literary or other, could not fail to be illuminating. Whatever itslimitations, the essay has at least one distinguishing merit: in it afundamental principle of criticism is applied with merciless rigor tothe solution of a literary problem. The products of such a method arecertain to be interesting and valuable. Whether we agree with theauthor's conclusions or not, we can at least see whence he derives themand feel the stimulus which always comes from the spectacle of apowerful mind grappling in deadly earnest with momentous questions ofart and life. 

 AN ESTIMATE of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times

I. PRINCIPLES OF ART

A. EPIC, DRAMA, AND NOVEL

1. We commonly distinguish writings which appeal directly to theemotions from those of which the immediate object is the conveyance ofknowledge, by applying to the former a term of conveniently loosemeaning, "works of imagination. " Of the kinds included in the widedenotation of this term there are three, between which it seemsdifficult at first sight to draw a definite line; which appeal tosimilar feelings, and excite a similar interest, in the different agesto which each is appropriate. These are the epic poem, the drama, andthe novel. Each purports to be, in some sort, a reflex of human life andaction, as obeying certain laws and tending to a certain end. In eachmen are represented, not as at rest, or in contemplative isolation, butin co-operation or collision. In each there is a combination of twoelements, an outer element of incident, an inner of passion andcharacter. In view of these common features, we might be tempted atfirst sight to suppose the difference between the three kinds to bemerely one of form, merely the difference between the vehicle of proseand the vehicle of metre. We shall find, however, on deeper inquiry, that to the true artist, who does not find his materials in the world, but creates them according to the inner laws by which the world andhimself are governed, the vehicle is not more a part of his creationthan the "impassioned truth" which it conveys. Here, as elsewhere, formand substance are inseparable; and the difference of form thatdistinguishes the novel from the other kinds of composition which itseems for the present to have superseded, symbolises, or rather isidentical with, a different potency in the art by which the substance iscreated. [1]

FOOTNOTE:

[1] "Though in its most general sense the substance and matter of allfine art is the same, issuing from the common source of the human desirefor expression, yet the region of fancy corresponding to each medium ofutterance is molded by intercourse with that medium, and acquires anindividuality which is not directly reducible to terms of any otherregion of aesthetic fancy. Feeling, in short, is modified in becomingcommunicable; and the feeling which has become communicable in music isnot capable of re-translation into the feeling which has becomecommunicable in painting. Thus the arts have no doubt in common a humanand even rational content--rational in so far as the feelings which areembodied in expression, for expression's sake, arise in connection withideas and purposes; but each of them has separately its own peculiarphysical medium of expression and also a whole region of modifiedfeeling or fancy which constitutes the material proper to be expressedin the medium and according to the laws of each particular art. "--B. Bosanquet, 'The Relation of the Fine Arts to One Another' (_Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society_). 

B. IMITATION vs. ART

2. Mere copying is not art. The farther the artist rises above the stageof imitation, the higher is his art, the more elevating its influence onthose who can enter into its spirit. If the landscape-painter doesnothing more than represent nature as seen by the outward eye, thevulgar objection against looking at pictures--"I can see as fine a viewas this any day"--is unquestionably valid. But if the painter isanything better than a photographer, he does far more than this. Hebrings nature before us, as we have seen it, perhaps, only once or twicein our lives, under the influence of some strong emotion. He does thatfor us which we cannot do for ourselves; he reproduces those moments ofspiritual exaltation in which "we feel that we are greater than weknow"--moments which we can remember, and of which the mere memory maybe the light of our lives, but which no act of our own will can bringback. It is not till the distinction has been appreciated between natureas it is and nature as we make it to be, between that which we see andthat which "having not seen we love, " that any branch of art can bereckoned in its proper value. 

C. NATURE THE CREATION OF THOUGHT

3. In one sense of the the word, it would no doubt be true to say thatnature is simply and altogether that which we make it to be. Modernphilosophy has discarded the language which represented our knowledge ofthings as the result of impressions and the transmission of images. [2]If we still not only speak but think of ourselves as primarily passiveand in contact with an alien world, this arises simply from thedifficulty of conceiving a pure spontaneous activity. Driven from thecrude imagination which found the primary condition of knowledge in thereception of "ideas" from without, "common sense" took refuge in themore refined hypothesis of unknown objects, which cause our sensations, and through sensations our knowledge. [3] But this standing-ground hasbeen swept away by the consideration that such a cause may be foundwithin as well as without, in the laws of the subject's activity as wellas in objects confessedly beyond the reach of cognition. Our ultimateanalysis can find no element in knowledge which is not supplied byourselves in conformity to a ruling law, or which exists independentlyof the action of human thought. 

FOOTNOTES:

[2] As, _e. G. _, in the philosophy of Locke. 

[3] Probably referring to Herbert Spencer. 

D. THE "OUTWARD" ASPECT OF NATURE

4. But though the world of nature is, in this sense, a world of man'sown creation, it is so in a different way from the world of art and ofphilosophy. Thought is indeed its parent, but thought in its primarystage fails to recognize it as its own, fails to transfer to it its ownattributes of universality, and identity in difference. It sees outwardobjects merely in their diversity and isolation. It seeks to penetratenature by endless dichotomy, glorying in that dissection of unity whichis the abdication of its own prerogative. [4] It treats outward thingsas ministering to animal wants, as the sources of personal andparticular pleasures and pains; and thus induces the sense of bondage, of collision with a world in which it has not yet learnt to find itself. It places the end of human life not in harmony with the law which is thehighest form of itself, but in happiness, _i. E. _, in the extraction ofthe greatest possible amount of enjoyment from a world to which it seemsto be accidentally related. The view of things corresponding to thisstage of thought is what we commonly call their outward aspect. It isthe aspect of matter-of-fact, of logic, of "mere morality, " as opposedto that of art, of philosophy, and religion. 

FOOTNOTE:

[4] "Life, " says Professor Dewey ('Studies in Logical Theory, ' p. 81), "proposes to maintain at all hazards the unity of its own process. " Andin a foot-note he adds: "Professor James's satisfaction in thecontemplation of bare pluralism, of disconnection, of radicalhaving-nothing-to-do-with-one-another, is a case in point. Thesatisfaction points to an aesthetic attitude in which the brutediversity becomes itself one interesting object; and thus unity assertsitself in its own denial. When discords are hard and stubborn, andintellectual and practical unification are far to seek, nothing iscommoner than the device of securing the needed unity by recourse to anemotion which feeds on the very brute variety. Religion and art andromantic affection are full of examples. "

E. CONQUEST OF NATURE BY ART

5. The perfection of this of latter and higher view involves theabsolute fusion of thought and things. Its full attainment is a newcreation of the world. Yet it is but the discovery of a relationshipwhich was from the beginning, the adoption by thought of a child whichwas never other than its own. The habitual interpretation of naturalevents by the analogy of human design, to which every hour'sconversation testifies, is the evidence that to the ordinary man naturepresents itself not as something external, but, like a friend, as"another himself. " The true conquest of nature is but the completion ofthe reconciliation thus anticipated in the everyday language andconsciousness of mankind. When the mind has come to see in the endlessflux of outward things, not a succession of isolated phenomena, but thereflex of its own development into an infinite variety of laws on abasis of identity--when the laws of nature are raised to the characterof laws which regulate admiration and love--when the experiences of lifeare held together in a medium of pure emotion, and the animal element sofused with the spiritual as to form one organization through which thesame impulse runs with unimpeded energy--then man has made nature hisown, by becoming a conscious partaker of the reason which animates himand it. [5] The attainment of this consummation is the end of life: butit is an end that can never be fully realised, while "dualism" remains anecessary condition of humanity. To most men it is as a land very faroff, of which occasional glimpses are caught from some "specular mount"of philosophic or poetic thought. It can only approach realisationthrough the operation of a power which can penetrate the whole man, andact on every moment of his life. But that power, which in the form ofreligion can make every meal a sacrament, and transform human passioninto the likeness of divine love, is represented at a lower stage, notonly by the unifying action of speculative philosophy, but by thecombining force of art. 

FOOTNOTE:

[5] The same thought may be found, in concrete and poetic form, inWordsworth's lines:

 "And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains. "

F. THE ARTIST AS IDEALIZER

6. The artist, even at his lowest level, is more than an imitator ofimitations. [6] Abridgment, selection, combination, are the necessaryinstruments of his craft; and by their aid he introduces harmony andorder into the confused multiplicity of sensuous images. He substitutesfor the primary outward aspect of things a new view, in which thoughtalready finds a resting place. Just as strong emotion tends to make allknown existence the setting of a single form; just as intense meditationsees in all experience the manifestation of a single idea; so theartist, even if he be merely telling a story, or painting a commonlandscape, puts some of his materials in a relief, and combines all in aharmony, which the untaught eye does not find in the world as it is. Hepresents to us the facts in the one case, the outward objects in theother, as already acted upon by thought and emotion. In this sense everyartist, instead of copying nature, idealises it. In degree and mode, however, the idealisation varies infinitely in the various kinds of art. It is by considering the height to which it is carried in the epic poemand the drama that we shall best appreciate its limitations in thenovel. 

FOOTNOTE:

[6] Here are three beds: one existing in nature, which ismade by God, as I think that we may say--for no one else can bethe maker?--No. --There is another which is the work of thecarpenter?--Yes. --And the work of the painter is a third?--Yes?--Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintendthem: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter?--Yes, there are threeof them. --God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one bed innature and one only; two or more such ideal beds neither ever have beennor ever will be made by God. .. . Shall we, then, speak of Him as thenatural author or maker of the bed?--Yes, he replied; inasmuch as bythe natural process of creation He is the author of this and of allother things. --And what shall we say of the carpenter--is he notalso the maker of the bed?--Yes. --But would you call the painter acreator and maker?--Certainly not. --Yet if he is not the maker, what is he in relation to the bed?--I think, he said, that we may fairlydesignate him as the imitator of that which the others make. --Good, Isaid; then you call him who is third in the descent from nature animitator?--Certainly, he said. --And the tragic poet is an imitator, andtherefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the kingand from the truth. --That appears to be so. --Plato, 'Republic, ' X. 597. 

G. THE EPIC

7. In outward form the epic poem is simply a narrative in verse. Historically it seems to have originated in the records of ancestralheroism, which passed from mouth to mouth in metre, as the natural formof oral communication in an unlettered age. In the Iliad and Odyssey wefirst find this outward form penetrated by a new spirit, which convertsthe narrative into the poem. There is no need to do violence tohistorical probability by supposing that Homer was a conscious artist, or that he imagined himself to be doing anything else than representingevents as they happened. We have simply to notice that in him facts havebecome poetry, and to ask ourselves what constitutes the change. How isit that the epic poet, while "holding up the mirror to nature, " yetshows us in the glass a glory which belongs not to nature as we see it, in its material limitations? The answer is, that though he follows theessential laws of the human spirit, his scene is not the earth we livein. He fills it with actors other than the men who "hoard and sleep andfeed" around us. He places the action either in heroic ages--in the"past which was never present, " when gods were more human and men moredivine--or in heavenly places, and among the powers of the air. Theaction is simple in proportion to its remoteness from the reality oflife, and rapid in proportion to its simplicity. It arises from theoperation of the most elementary passions, the wrath of Achilles or thepride of Satan, in collision with an overruling power. For the animalwants and tricks of fortune, which entangle the web of man's affairs, ithas no place. The animal element, if not banished from view altogether, becomes merely the organ of the ruling motions of the spirit; andfortune is lost in destiny or providence. Thus the incidents of thenarrative cease to be mere incidents. They are held together by passion;they are themselves, so to speak, manifestations of passion working withmore and more intensity to the final consummation. Not the laws whichregulate curiosity, but those which regulate hope and awe, are the lawswhich they have to satisfy. 

H. TRAGEDY AS PURIFIER OF THE PASSIONS

8. In tragedy, as the product of a more cultivated age, thesecharacteristics appear more strongly than in the primitive epic. TheHomeric poems are still legendary narratives, though narrativesunconsciously transmuted by the highest art. Tragedy, on the contrary, has no extraneous elements. It implies a conscious effort of the spirit, made for its own sake, to re-create human life according to spirituallaws; to transport itself from a world, where chance and appetite seemhourly to give the lie to its self-assertion, into one where it may workunimpeded by anything but the antagonism inherent in itself and thepresence of an overruling law. This result is attained simply by theaction of the proper instruments of thought, abstraction and synthesis. The tragedian presents to us scenes of life, not its continuous flow ofincident. In "Macbeth, " for instance, there is an hiatus of some yearsbetween the earlier and later acts;[7] but we are not sensible of thevoid; for the passions which lead to the catastrophe are but thedevelopment of those which appear at the beginning, and to the lawagainst which they struggle "a thousand years are but as yesterday. "Time, however, is but one among many circumstances which the tragedianignores. The common facts of life as it is, and always must have been, the influence of custom, the transition of passion into mechanicalhabit, the impossibility of continuous effort, the necessaryarrangements of society, the wants of our animal nature and all thatresults from them, these are excluded from view, and so much only of thematerial of humanity is retained as can take its form from the action ofthe spirit, and become a vehicle of pure passion. But the synthesiskeeps pace with the abstraction, for the tragedian creates not passionsbut men. The outer garment, the flesh itself, is stript off from man, that the spirit may be left to re-clothe itself, according to its properimpulses and its proper laws. The false distinctions of dress, ofmanner, of physiognomy, are obliterated, that the true individualitywhich results from the internal modifications of passion may be seen inclearer outline. These modifications are as infinite and as complex asthe spirit of man itself; and if the characters of the ancientdramatists, in their broad simplicity, fail to exhibit the finerlineaments of real life, yet in Shakespeare the variations of purepassion are as numerous and as subtle as those of the fleshly orcustomary mask by which man thinks that he knows his neighbour. Theessential difference lies in the fact that they are variations of thespiritual, not the animal, man; that they arise from the qualificationsof the spirit by itself, not from its intermixture with matter. It isthis which gives tragedy its power over life. The problem of thediabolic nature, of the possibility of a "fallen spirit, " is not forman to solve. He may be satisfied with the diagnosis of his own disease, with the knowledge that it is his littleness, not his greatness, thatseparates him from the divine; that not intellectual pride, notspiritual self-assertion, but the meanness of his ordinary desires, thedegradation of his higher nature to the pursuit of animal ends, keep himunder the curse. From this curse tragedy, in its measure, helps torelieve him. It "purifies his passions"[8] by extricating them fromtheir earthly immersion. For an hour, it may be, or a day, it raises himinto a world of absolute ideality, where he may forget his wants and hisvanity, and lose himself in a struggle in which the combatants are theforces of the spirit, and of which the end is that annihilation incollision with destiny which is but the blank side of reconciliationwith it. And though his sojourn in this region be short, yet, when hefalls again, the smell of the divine fire has passed upon him, and hebears about him, for a time at least, among the rank vapours of theearth, something of the freshness and fragrance of the higher air. 

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The actual time represented in the play has been calculated to benine days, with intervals of a week or two between Acts II and III, scenes ii and iii of Act IV, and scenes i and ii of Act V. See _NewShakespeare Society Publications_, 1877-79. 

[8] The phrase is Aristotle's; cf. The 'Poetics, ' Chap. Vi, and, forcomment, Butcher's 'Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, ' Chaptervi. 

I. TRAGEDY THE ELEVATION OF LIFE

9. In this sense, then, tragedy satisfies its definition as "the flightor elevation of life. " The two indispensable supports which render thiselevation possible, are metrical expression and great situations. "Inthe regeneration" the language of the market-place and the morning callmay answer to the realised harmony of life; there may, indeed, be "thefifth act of a tragedy in every death-bed;" there may be no distinctionof great or little, high or low. But it is an affectation to confoundwhat shall be with what is. We cannot dissociate ordinary incidents fromthe petty wants out of which they ordinarily spring, nor common languagefrom the common-place thoughts which it usually expresses. The action intragedy must be relative to the situation; and if the situation be onewhich we are unable to separate from matter-of-fact associations, neither can the action be so separated except by an effort which ofitself depresses the soaring spirit. Nor, again, if the action behigh-wrought, above the measure of man's ordinary activity, can it findexpression in the unrhythmical language[9] which corresponds to thatordinary activity. New wine must not be put in old bottles; nor must themotions of disenthralled passion be confined in vessels worn by the usesof daily life. 

FOOTNOTE:

[9] The language of prose is not necessarily unrhythmical, nor is italways commonplace, as witness, for example, the more moving andimaginative passages of the English Bible. On this point consultGummere's 'Beginnings of Poetry, ' Chapter ii (Rhythm as the EssentialFact of Poetry, especially pp. 56-60); Watts's article 'Poetry' in theEncyclopædia Britannica; and the _Publications of the Modern LanguageAssociation_, xx. 4. 

J. CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO TRAGEDY

10. These considerations may explain to us why the production of a greattragedy is almost an impossibility in our own time. The age mostfavourable to it would seem to be one in which men stand on the edge ofan old and but half-known world--as Aeschylus and Sophocles stood on theedge of the mythologic, Shakespeare on that of the feudal world--an ageof sufficient culture and reflection for men to be conscious of theglory they have left behind, while yet civilisation has not reached thestage of acquiescence in things as they are, and scepticism as to allbeyond them. Those great situations furnished by the mysterious past, inwhich passion quits the earth, soon lose their charm, and with the reignof wonder that of tragedy ceases. At Athens it gives place to the newcomedy, whose highest boast was to copy present life ([Greek: ô Menandrekai Bie, poteros ar' humôn poteron apemimêsato];):[10] in modern Europeit has yielded to the novel. 

FOOTNOTE:

[10] A saying of Aristophanes, the Grammarian, quoted by Syrianus onHermogenes, IV. 101. It may be translated: "O Menander and Life! Whichof you copies the other?"

II. THE NOVEL AN INFERIOR FORM OF ART

A. BEGINNINGS OF THE NOVEL

11. The novel in its proper shape did not come to the birth in Englandtill the time of Fielding and Richardson, but it had long been inprocess of formation. The seventeenth century at its close had lost thetragic impulse of its youth. The ecstatic hope of a new world, combinedwith the sad and wondering recollection of the old, which had raised thehuman spirit to the height of the Shakesperian tragedy, had died out, and the age had become eminently satisfied with itself. Wits, philosophers, and poets, alike were full of the present time. While thewits complimented each other on their superiority to the weaknesses ofmankind, they made no scruple of indulging those weaknesses in their ownpersons. It was part of their business to do so, for it was part of"life. " The only difference between them and other men was that theywere weak and laughed over it, while others were weak and serious. Philosophers congratulated themselves on their new enlightenment; but itwas an enlightenment which gave them insight into things as they are, not as they are to be. "The proper study of mankind, " they held was"man;" man, however, not in his boundless promise, but in the meanperformance with which they proclaimed themselves satisfied. The poetryof the time was, at best, merely common-sense with ornamentation. It wasneither lyrical nor tragic, though it may have tried to be both. Itrepresented man neither as withdrawn into himself, nor as transportedinto an ideal world of action, but as observing and reasoning on hispresent affairs. The satire and moral essay were its characteristicforms. 

B. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SPECTATOR

12. The most pleasing expression of this self-satisfaction of the age isfound in the _Spectator_, the first and best representative of thatspecial style of literature--the only really popular literature of ourtime--which consists in talking to the public about itself. Humanity istaken as reflected in the ordinary life of men; and, as thus reflected, it is copied with the most minute fidelity. No attempt is made either tosuppress the baser elements of man's nature, or to transfigure them by astronger light than that of the common understanding. No deeper laws arerecognised than those which vindicate themselves to the eye of dailyobservation, no motives purer than the "mixed" ones which the practicalphilosopher delights to analyse, no life higher than that which isqualified by animal wants. The reader never finds himself carried into aregion where it requires an effort to travel, or which is above theexisting level of opinion and morality. It is from this levelness withlife that the _Spectator_ derives its interest--an interest so nearlythe same, barring the absence of plot, with that of the novel, as tolead Macaulay to pronounce Addison "the forerunner of the great Englishnovelists. "[11] The elements of the novel, indeed, already existed inAddison's time, and only required combination. Fictitious biography, which may be regarded as its raw material, had been written by Defoewith a life-like reality which has never since been equalled; and thepopular drama furnished plots, in the shape of love stories drawn frompresent life. Let the adventures of the fictitious biography, instead ofbeing merely external to the man, as in Defoe, be made subservient tothat display of character in which Addison had shown himself a master, and let them become steps in the development of a love-plot, and thenovel--the novel of the last century, at any rate--is fully formed. Aswas the self-contented, and therefore uncreative and prosaic, thought ofthe age, which produced the novel, such the novel itself continued tobe. Man, comfortable and acquiescent, wished to amuse himself by areflex of the life which he no longer aspired to transcend. He wanted toenjoy himself twice over--in act and in fancy; or, if the former weredenied him, at least to explore in fancy the world of pleasure andexcitement, of which circumstances abridged or disturbed his enjoymentin fact. In "the smooth tale, generally of love, "[12] the novelistsupplied the want. 

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "We have not the least doubt that, if Addison had written a novel, on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any that wepossess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered, not only as thegreatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the greatEnglish novelists. "--Macaulay, 'Life and writings of Addison. '

[12] "A small tale, generally of love. "--Johnson's Dictionary. 

C. THE MODERN NOVEL A REFLECTION OF ORDINARY LIFE

13. This Johnsonian definition may be objected to as merely accidental, and as inconsistent with the romantic character which the novel assumedin the hands of Sir Walter Scott. It expresses, however, adequatelyenough the view which the popular novelists prior to Scott took of theirown productions. Cervantes, though in his own great work attaining thatrhapsody of grotesqueness which lies on the edge of poetry, had yetestablished the idea of the novel as the antithesis of romance. Thesenovelists, accordingly, if they are not always telling the reader (likeFielding), seem yet to be always thinking to themselves, how perfectlynatural their stories are. It is on this naturalness they pridethemselves; and naturalness, in their sense, meant conformity to natureas it is commonly seen. This is the characteristic feature of the class. Whether, like Richardson, they analyse character from within, or, likeMiss Austen, develop it in the outward particularities of an unruffledlife--whether they describe, like Fielding, the buoyancy of a generousanimalism, or, like Miss Edgeworth and Miss Burney, the precisedecencies of conventional morality--they deal simply witheighteenth-century life as seen by eighteenth-century eyesight. Allromantic virtue, all idealised passion, they rigorously eschew. Prudencethey make the guide, happiness the end, of life. And they do well. Theyundertake to copy present life, and they do so. They have to reflectman's habitual consciousness; it is not for them to anticipate aconsciousness which has not yet been attained, or to represent man'slower nature as absorbed in a spiritual movement which, because wecannot arrest it, we habitually ignore. It is just their deficiency inthis respect which gives them their peculiar fascination. Man is notreally mere man, though he may think himself so. He is always somethingpotentially, which he is not actually; always inadequate to himself; andas such, disturbed and miserable. The novel, on the contrary, representshim as being what he vainly tries to be--adequate to himself. It offersto his imagination the full enjoyment of earthly life, unchallenged byobstinate surmises, untroubled by yearnings after the divine. Ordinarymen are satisfied with this enjoyment; the highest are allured by itstemptation. The "reading public" is charmed with the contemplation ofits own likeness, "twice as natural" as life. Its own wisdom, its ownwishes, its own vanity, are set before it in little with a completenessand finish which the deeper laws of the universe, vindicating themselvesby apparent disorder and misfortune, happily prevent from being attainedin real life. [13] It is thus pleasantly flattered into contentment withitself--a contentment not disturbed by the occasional censure ofpractices which good taste condemns as ungraceful, or prudence asprejudicial to happiness. But the man of keener insight, who, instead ofwrestling with the riddle of life, seeks for a time to forget it, andto place in its stead the rounded representation of activity which thenovelist supplies, cannot but find the vanity of hiding his face fromthe presence which he dreads. Out of heart with the world abouthim--conscious of its actual meanness, and without vigor to re-cast itin the mould of his own thought--he fancies that after a sojourn in theworld of fiction he may come back braced for his struggle with life. Inhis study, with a novel, he hopes to overlook the walls of hisprison-house, to see the beginning and the end of human strife. But hesoon finds himself in the embrace of the very power which he sought toescape. Here is the world itself brought back to him. Here is a perfectcopy of that which in actual experience he sees but partially. Themirror is but too truly held up to nature. The getting and spending, themarrying and giving in marriage, the dominion of fortune which makeslife a riddle, the prudential motives and worship of happiness whichhide its divinity, these meet him here as they meet him in life, untransmuted, unidealised. Yet the charm of art overcomes him. Theperfectness of the representation, the skill with which the incidentsare combined to result in a crowning happiness behind which no sorrowseems to lie, make him find a pleasure in the copy which he cannot findin actual life, when in personal and painful collision with it. Butmeanwhile he gains no real strength, he readies no new height ofcontemplation. He comes back to the world, as a man with a diseaseddigestion, after living for a time on spiced meats, comes back toordinary food. He has not braced the assimilative power of his thoughtby a flight into the ideal world, or learnt even for a time to turn"matter to spirit by sublimation strange. " He has remained on the earth, and though his fancy has for the hour given the earth a charm, he is nobetter able than he was before to raise his eyes from its dead level, orremove the limits of its horizon. 

14. Thus, then, the old quarrel of the philosopher with the imitativearts seems to be revived in respect of the novel. But thoughnovel-writers might be banished from a new republic, [14] it would not beas artists, but for the inferiority of their art. An artist indeed thenovelist is; he combines events and persons with reference to ends; heconcentrates into a dialogue of a few sentences an amount of feeling andcharacter which it would take real men some hours to express; he impartsa rapidity to the stream of incident quite unlike the sluggishness ofour daily experience. In this sense he does not copy what we see, butshows us what we can not see for ourselves. Our complaint against him isthat the aspect of things which he shows us is merely the outward andnatural, as opposed to the inner or ideal. His answer would probably beeither that the ideal, in any sense in which it can be opposed to thenatural, must be false and delusive; or that it is merely an accident ofnovel-writing, as hitherto practised, and not anything essential to thisspecies of composition, which has prevented it from exhibiting thehighest aspect of things; or, finally, that admitting the view which thenovel presents to be necessarily lower than the poetic, it yet is a moreuseful view for man to contemplate. 

FOOTNOTES:

[13] This rather obscure phrase may be interpreted as follows: Theaverage man would like to live such a rounded and symmetrical life as isportrayed in the novel. He would like to see his wisdom justifyingitself, his vanity triumphant, his selfishness achieving its end; and hethinks that his cravings are being satisfied. But the deeper laws of theuniverse will not be balked, they are lying in wait. And presently whenhe thinks, good easy man, his little bourgeois world is rounding intothe perfect sphere, they spring up in his path, shatter his sugar-candyparadise, and ruthlessly vindicate themselves (that is, prove that theycannot be disregarded, that they must be reckoned with) by bringing intohis life disorder and misfortune. 

[14] As poets were from the republic of Plato. "When any one of thesepantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, wewill fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being;but we must also inform him that in our state such as he are notpermitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we haveanointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, weshall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for oursouls' health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who willimitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those modelswhich we prescribed at first when we began the education of oursoldiers. "--Plato, 'Republic, ' III. 398. 

D. NATURALISM vs. IDEALISM

15. Much fruitless controversy between naturalism and idealism in artmight have been saved by a consideration of the true character of theantithesis. It becomes unmeaning as soon as nature is expanded to thefulness of the idea. And so expanded it may be, for, according to theold formula, it is always in flux. It is never in being, always inbecoming. As has been already pointed out, it is what we see; and we seeaccording to higher and lower laws of vision. We may look at man and theworld either from without or from within. We may observe man's actionslike other phenomena, and from observation learn to ascribe them tocertain general but distinct motives and faculties, which we do notrefer to any higher unity; or, on the other hand, by the light of ourown consciousness we may recognise that in man of which no observationof his actions could tell us--something which is in him, but yet is nothis own; which combines with all his faculties, but is none of them;which gives them a unity, to which their diversity is merely relative. So again with regard to the phenomena of the world; we may look on theseeither simply as phenomena, or as manifestations of destiny or divinewill. The former view of man and the world we may conveniently call_natural_, because the only view that mere observation can give us; thelatter _ideal_, because making observation posterior to something givenin thought. 

E. TRAGEDY AND THE NOVEL

16. The tragedian, then, idealises, because he starts from within. Hereaches, as it were, the central fire, in the heat of which everyseparate faculty, every animal want, every fortuitous incident ismelted down and lost. We never could observe in actual experiencepassion such as Lear's, or meditation such as Hamlet's, fusingeverything else into itself. Facts at every step would interfere toprevent such a possibility. But let us place ourselves, by the poet'shelp, within the soul of Lear or Hamlet, and we shall be able to followthe process by which the spiritual power, taking the form of passion inthe one, and of thought in the other, and working outwards, drawseverything into its own unity, according to the same activity of which, however impeded by the "imperfections of matter, " we are conscious inourselves. The incidents of the tragedy are wholly subordinate, issuingeither from this spiritual energy of the actors on the one hand, or, onthe other, from destiny, to whose throne the poet penetrates. They thuspresent an aspect entirely different from that of events which weapproach from without. The novel, on the contrary, starts from theoutside. Its main texture is a web of incidents through which themotions of the spirit must be discerned, if discerned at all. Theseincidents must be probable, must be such as are consistent with theobserved sequences of the world. The view of man, therefore, which weattain through them, can only be that which is attainable by observationof outward actions and events; or, in other words, according to thedistinction which we have attempted to establish, it is the naturalview, not the ideal. Its character corresponds to its origin. Observation shows us man not as self-determined, but as the creature ofcircumstances, as a phenomenon among other phenomena. As such, too, heis presented to us in the novel. We do not see him, as in tragedy, standing in the strength of his own spirit, remaking the world by itspower, determined by it for good or evil, dependent on it for all thatmay be attractive or repellent about him. The hero of a novel attractsin part by his physiognomy, his manner, or even his dress; his characteris qualified by circumstances and society; his impulses vary accordingto the impressions of outward things; he is the sport of fortune, dependent for weal or woe on the acquisition of some external blessingwhich the development of the plot may or may not bestow on him. Ascircumstances make his life what it is, so the particular combination ofcircumstances, called happiness, constitutes its end. Instead of losinghis merely personal and particular self, as in the catastrophe of atragedy, he satisfies it with its appropriate pleasure. "He that lovethwife or children more than me, is not worthy of me, " are the words ofthe Author of the Christian life. "Marry, enjoy domestic bliss, and thouhast attained the end of virtue"--such is the ordinary moral of theordinary novel; nay, the only consistent moral of the consistent novel. As the novelist sows, so must he reap; as his plot is, such must itsconsummation be. In the body of the work he must, from the nature of thecase, represent men as they appear in fact, and he cannot fitly round itoff by representing them as they are only in idea. He cannot step atpleasure from one sphere of art to another; by attempting to do so hedestroys the harmony without which there is no art at all, and leaves uswith a sense of dissatisfaction and unreality. The reader, who throughthe whole three volumes till close upon the end has been travelling inan atmosphere of ordinary morality and every-day aspiration, knows nothow in the last chapter to breathe the air of a higher life. 

F. THE EPIC AND THE NOVEL

17. It may be objected to this limitation of the capabilities of thenovel, that it must stand on the same footing with the epic poem, whichis no less made up of a texture of incident, and which, therefore, according to the present argument, can only reach the springs of man'sactions from without. Such an objection has some truth with reference tothe Homeric poems. These, as we have seen, have the legendary narrativefor their primitive element, and in so far as they are merely a reflexof Greek life in the Homeric age, their interest is that of a novel, notproperly of the epic. The true epic (of which the "Paradise Lost" wouldseem to be a less mixed form than the Iliad or Odyssey), no less thantragedy, seizes the idea of a self-determined spirit on the one hand, and of destiny or divine law on the other. These are the primary springsfrom which it makes action and incident issue, with a perfectsubordination which the laws of our lower nature and of social life mustprevent from being realised in the world of experience, and which thenovelist therefore, tied down to the world of experience, only offendsus by attempting to exhibit. The essential character of the novel is notchanged by its assumption of the form of a romance. In the romanticworld of the middle ages, the great Italian poets did indeed find theirmaterials. To their eyes it was a world in which hope and wonder mightroam at large: it furnished actions which, glorified by them, becamemanifestations of the divine and heroic in man. But it is another worldas seen by the novelist, even by such a one as Walter Scott. Theromantic life which he depicts is simply the life which we see our ownneighbors live, with more picturesque situations, with more to excitecuriosity in the reader, and activity in the imaginary hero. We gainmore from him, it is true, than from those copies of the too familiarfaces around us which are the staple commodity in novels of the day. Heat least carries us into scenes of adventure, where we may forget the"smooth tale" of our nineteenth-century life. But further he cannot go, for he approaches men from without. He does not reach, by other methodsthan observation, to any _a priori_ affection of the spirit, and to thissubordinate incident. Had he done so, he could not have uttered himselfin the language of common life. In the world of heroes or angels, _i. E. _, of men idealised, to which the epic poet raises us, he sustainsus by the power of verse. The exalted action and the poetic expressionare as essentially correlative in the epic, as are the natural incidentand the prosaic expression in the novel. 

G. POETRY AND PROSE

18. The hostility of Wordsworth to the "poetic diction" of histime rested on principles of which he scarcely seems himself tohave been conscious. [15] The poets of the last century had lost thegenuine sense of their high calling. Their productions for the most partwere, at best, practical philosophy in verse. They observed the outeraspect of things, and to make their observations poetry they clothedthem in "poetic diction, " which thus became offensive, becauseartificial--because a superadded ornament, and not the naturalexpression of exalted passion or the emotion which accompanies ourpassage "behind the veil. " Repugnance to this artificiality misledWordsworth into the celebrated assertion that "between the language ofprose and that of metrical composition, there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference:" an assertion which, as prompted by a feelingof the incompatibility of poetic language with prosaic thought, isreally a witness to the essential antithesis between poetry and prose. Verse is simple, harmonious, and unfamiliar. It is thus the fittingorgan for that energy of thought which simplifies the phenomena of lifeby referring them to a spiritual principle; which blends its shiftingcolours in the light of a master-passion, and passes from thecontradictory data of the common understanding to the unity of a deeperconsciousness. Even the spiritualist philosopher, no less than the poet, would have to speak in verse, if, instead of making statements, heportrayed: if, besides asserting that "all things are to be seen inGod, " he sought to excite in the reader the emotion appropriate to thesight. Prose is the "oratio soluta. " It is complex, irregular, inharmonious. It thus corresponds to the natural or phenomenal view oflife; the view of it, that is, in its diversity, as qualified ininnumerable modes by animal wants and apparent accident, and notharmonised by the action of the spirit. [16] The novelist must expresshimself in prose, because this is his view of life: and this must be hisview of life, because he thus expresses himself. It is indeed a viewwhich may vary according to the circumstances of the case, but onlywithin definite limits. There is an "earnestness" about some of ourmodern novelists, Miss Brontë for instance, which would have seemed outof place to those of fifty years ago; but this is merely because thelife they see around them is more "earnest. " It presents to them scenesof sterner significance than were to be found among the coquetry anddissipation of the fashionable world or the dull courtesies of a countryhouse. But that they do not transcend this outward life we have onecrucial proof. Just in so far as each of us learns to regard his ownindividual being from within, and not from without, does he discarddependence on happiness as arising from external circumstances, andbecomes already in idea, as he tends to become in reality, his own worldand his own law. No novelist attains to the assertion of this spiritualprerogative. As we follow in sympathy the story of his hero, we findourselves lifted up and cast down as fortune changes, our lifebrightening as the clouds break above, and darkening as they closeagain. If the author chooses to disappoint us with "a bad ending, " heleaves us, not as we are left at the conclusion of a tragedy, purifiedfrom personal desires, but vexed and sorrowful, sadder but not wisermen. 

FOOTNOTES:

[15] "Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in thatcondition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil inwhich they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, andspeak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition oflife our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and moreforcibly communicated. .. . The language, too, of these men has beenadopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, fromall lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust), because such menhourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part oflanguage is originally derived; and because, from their rank in societyand the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being lessunder the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings andnotions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such alanguage arising out of repeated experience and regular feeling, is amore permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that whichis frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they areconferring honor upon themselves and their art in proportion as theyseparate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitraryand capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickletastes and fickle appetites of their own creation. "--Wordsworth, Prefaceto the 'Lyrical Ballads. '

[16] On the relations of prose and poetry, see Alden's 'An introductionto Poetry, ' pp. 23-28, 128-138, 160-164, and the references there given. 

H. THE NOVEL AN INCOMPLETE PRESENTATION OF LIFE

19. By the mere explanation of the difference between the ideal and thenatural, the poetic and novelistic, views of the world, we may seem tohave already settled the question as to the beneficial effects of each. The question, be it observed, is not as to the comparative influence ofthe discipline of art and that of real life. The man who seeks hisentire culture in art of any kind will soon find the old antagonismbetween speculation and action begin to appear. There will be a chasm, which he cannot fill, between his life in the closet and his life in theworld; his impotence to carry his thought into act will limit and weakenthe thought itself. But this ill result will equally ensue, whether theart in which he finds his nurture be that of the novelist or that of thepoet. The novel-reader sees human action pass before him like apanorama, but he feels none of its pains and penalties; his fancy feedson its pleasures, but he has not to face the struggle of resistance topleasure, or the suffering which follows on indulgence. Nor is it merelyfrom that weakness of effect which, in one sense, must always belong torepresentation as opposed to reality, that the novel suffers. Therepresentation itself is incomplete. The novelist, like every otherartist, must abridge and select. For many of the elements whose actionbuilds up our human soul, there is no place in his canvas. A great partof the discipline of life arises simply from its slowness. The longyears of patient waiting and silent labor, the struggle withlistlessness and pain, the loss of time by illness, the hope deferred, the doubt that lays hold on delay--these are the tests of thatpertinacity in man which is but a step below heroism. The exhibition ofthem in the novel, however, is prevented by that rapidity of movementwhich is essential to its fascination; and hence to one whoseacquaintance with life was derived simply from novels, its main businesswould be unknown. They are perhaps more brought home to us by Defoe thanby any other writer of fiction; but this is due to that very deficiencyof artistic power which makes his agglomeration of details[17] suchheavy reading to all but school-boys. 

FOOTNOTE:

[17] Modern criticism inclines to the view that Defoe's "agglomerationof details" is the result of high and conscious art. If 'RobinsonCrusoe' were kept away from schoolboys it would doubtless be readpleasurably by adults. 

I. PRUDENCE THE NOVELIST'S HIGHEST MORALITY

20. The novel, then, as being a work of art, must fail to teach thelesson of life in its completeness: as an inferior work of art, it haspeculiar weaknesses of its own. However extensive the influence of theliterature of fiction may have been, its intensity has been in inverseproportion. A great poem, once made our own, abides with us for ever. 

 "Amid the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, "[18]

the spirit, returning to it, may gain a fresh assurance of its _own_birthright, and purify itself, as in a river of Lethe, for an idealtransition to its proper home. The novel, itself the reflex of "thefretful stir unprofitable, " can exercise no such power. It can but makeus more at home in the region from which a great poem transports us. Thevalue of that experience of the world, which it is its object to impart, is commonly overrated in our day. In the form in which it is imparted bythe novelist, we have perhaps had too much of it without his aid. Ourexternal environment is quite enough in our thoughts: we are not tooreluctant to admit that we are what we seem to be, dependent for good orevil on circumstances which we do not make for ourselves. Thisdependence is in itself, no doubt, a fact; but it ceases to be so for uswhen we contemplate it in forgetfulness of that spring of potentialfreedom which underlies it, and of the law of duty correlative tofreedom. To the exclusive consideration of it we owe those profitlessrecipes for eliciting moral health from circumstances which are theplague of modern literature, and which one of our ablest writers haslately condescended to dispense, in an essay on "organisation in dailylife. " This circumstantial view of life, if we may use the term, beingthe only one that the novelist can convey, prudence is his highestmorality. But it may be doubted whether prudence is what any one hasgreat need to learn. The plain man, who fronting circumstances boldly onthe one hand, looks reverently to the stern face of duty on the other, can dispense with its maxims. For the moral valetudinarian small benefitis to be gained from a doctor who will

 "Read each wound, each weakness clear, Will strike his finger on the place And say, 'Thou ailest here and here'. "[19]

It is far better for him, instead of poring over a detail of the causesand symptoms of the disease which he hugs, to be stimulated to an effortin which, though it be but temporary, ecstatic, and for an end notactually attainable, he may at least forget the disease altogether. Sucha stimulus a great poem may afford him; but in the whole expanse ofnovel-literature he merely sees his own sickly experience modified in aninfinite variety of reflections, till he fancies that the "strangedisease of modern life" is the proper constitution of God's universe. 

FOOTNOTES:

[18]

 "When the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world Have hung upon the beatings of my heart. " --Wordsworth, 'Tintern Abbey. '

[19] Matthew Arnold's 'Memorial Verses, ' lines 20-22, adapted to thecontext. 

J. EVIL EFFECTS OF NOVEL-READING

21. Novel-reading thus aggravates two of the worst maladies of moderntimes, self-consciousness and want of reverence. Many a man in thesedays, instead of doing some sound piece of work for mankind, spends histime in explaining to himself why it is that he does not do it, and how, after all, he is superior to those who do. Even men of a higher sortnever seem to forget themselves in their work. Our popular writersgenerally take the reader into confidence as to their private feelingsas they go along; our men of action are burdened by a sense of theirreputation with "intelligent circles. " No one loses himself in a cause. Scarcely understanding what is meant by a "divine indifference" as tothe fate of individual existences in the evolution of God's plan, weweary heaven with complaints that we find the world contrary, or that wecannot satisfy ourselves with a theory of life. Thus "measuringourselves by ourselves, and comparing ourselves among ourselves, we arenot wise. " The novel furnishes the standard for the measurement, and thedata for the comparison. It presents us with a series of fictitiousexperiences, in the light of which we read our own, and become morecritically conscious of them. Instead of idealising life, if we may soexpress ourselves, it sentimentalises it. It does not subordinateincidents to ideas; yet it does not treat them simply as phenomena toexcite curiosity, but as misfortunes or blessings to excite sentiment. The writer of the "Mill on the Floss" reaches almost the tragic pitchtowards the close of her book, and if she had been content to leave uswith the death of the heroine and her brother[20] in the flood, wemight have supposed that in this case, as representing the annihilationof human passion in the struggle with destiny, the novelist had indeedattained the ideal view of life. But the novelistic instinct does notallow her to do so. At the conclusion we are shown the other chiefactors standing, with appropriate emotions, over the heroine's grave, and thus find that the catastrophe has not really been the manifestationof an idea, but an occasion of sentiment. The habitual novel-reader, from thus looking sentimentally at the fictitious life which is thereflex of his own, soon comes to look sentimentally at himself. Hethinks his personal joys and sorrows of interest to angels and men; andinstead of gazing with awe and exultation upon the world, as a theatrefor the display of God's glory and the unknown might of man, he sees init merely an organism for affecting himself with pains and pleasures. Thus regarded, it must needs lose its claim on his reverence, for it isnarrowed to the limits of his own consciousness. Conversant with presentlife in all its outward aspects, he forgets the infinite spaces whichlie around and above it. This confinement of view, which among the moreintelligent appears merely as disbelief in the possibilities of man, takes a more offensive form in the complacent blindness of ordinaryminds. We have no wish to disparage our own age in comparison with anythat have preceded it. Young men have always been ignorant, andignorance has always been conceited. There is, however, this difference. The ignorant young men of past time, such as the five sons of SirHildebrand Osbaldistone, [21] knew that they were ignorant, but thoughtit no shame: the ignorant young men of our days, with the miscellaneousknowledge of life which they derive from the popular novelists, fancythemselves wiser than the aged. Whoever be the philosopher, the coxcombnowadays will answer him not merely with a grin, but with a joke whichhe has still in lavender from Dickens or his imitators. The comic aspectof life is indeed plain enough to see, nor is the merely pathetic muchless obvious; but there is little good in looking at either. It is fareasier to laugh or to weep than to think; to give either a ludicrous orsentimental turn to a great principle of morals or religion than toenter into its real meaning. But the vulgar reader of our comicnovelists, when he has learnt from them a jest or a sentiment for everyoccasion of life, fancies that nothing more remains unseen and unsaid. 

FOOTNOTES:

[20] "Lover" in the original text of the essay. The error does not muchaffect the argument. 

[21] In Scott's 'Rob Roy. '

III. TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NOVEL

A. A WIDENER OF EXPERIENCE

22. But there is another side to this question which we must not allowourselves to overlook. We have shown what the novel cannot do, and itsill effect on those who trust to it for their culture. We must notforget that it has a proper work of its own which, if modern progress beanything more than a euphemism, must be a work for good. Least of allshould it be depreciated by the student, who may find in it deliverancefrom the necessary confinement of his actual life. For the production ofpoetic effect, as we have seen, large abstraction is necessary. It iswith man in the purity of his inward being, with nature in its simplegreatness, that the poet deals. The glory which he casts on life is farhigher than any which the novelist knows, but it is only on certain ofthe elements of life that it can be cast at all. The novelist works on afar wider field. With choice of subject and situation he scarcely needtrouble himself, except in regard to his own intellectualqualifications. Wherever human thought is free, and human character candisplay itself, whether in the servants' hall or the drawing-room, whether in the country mansion or the back alley, he may find hismaterials. He is thus a great expander of sympathies; and if he cannothelp us to make the world our own by the power of ideas, he at leastcarries our thought into many a far country of human experience, whichit could not otherwise have reached. We hear much in these days of thesacrifice of the individual to society through professional limitations. In the progressive division of labor, while we become more useful ascitizens, we seem to lose our completeness as men. The requirements ofspecial study become more exacting, at the same time that the perfectorganisation of modern society removes the excitement of adventure andthe occasion for independent effort. There is less of human interest totouch us within our calling, and we have less leisure to seek it beyond. Hence it follows that one who has made the most of his profession is aptto feel that he has not attained his full stature as a man; that he hasfaculties which he can never use, capacities for admiration andaffection which can never meet with an adequate object. To this feeling, probably, are mainly due our lamentations over a past age ofhero-worship and romance, when action was more decisive and passion afuller stream. Its alleviation, if not its remedy, is to be found in thenewspaper and the novel. Every one indeed must lay in his own experiencethe foundation of the imaginary world which he rears for himself. Thereis a primary "virtue which cannot be taught. " No man can learn fromanother the meaning of human activity or the possibilities of humanemotion. But this [Greek: pou stô] being given, even the cloisteredstudent may find that, as his soul passes into the strife of socialforces and the complication of individual experience, which thenewspaper and the novel severally represent, his sympathies break fromthe bondage of his personal situation and reach to the utmost confinesof human life. The personal experience and the fictitious act and reacton each other, the personal experience giving reality to the fictitious, the fictitious expansion to the personal. He need no longer envy the manof action and adventure, or sigh for new regions of enterprise. Theworld is all before him. He may explore its recesses without beingdisturbed by its passions; and if the end of experience be the knowledgeof God's garment, as preliminary to that of God Himself, his eye may beas well trained for the "vision beatific, " as if he had himself been anactor in the scenes to which imagination transfers him. 

B. AN EXPANDER OF SYMPATHIES

23. The novelist not only works on more various elements, he appeals tomore ordinary minds than the poet. This indeed is the strongestpractical proof of his essential inferiority as an artist. All who arecapable of an interest in incidents of life which do not affectthemselves, may feel the same interest more keenly in a novel; but tothose only who can lift the curtain does a poem speak intelligibly. Itis the twofold characteristic, of universal intelligibility andindiscriminate adoption of materials, that gives the novel its place asthe great reformer and leveller of our time. Reforming and levelling areindeed more closely allied than we are commonly disposed to admit. Social abuses are nearly always the result of defective organisation. The demarcations of family, of territory, or of class, prevent theproper fusion of parts into the whole. The work of the reformerprogresses as the social force is brought to bear more and more fully onclasses and individuals, merging distinctions of privilege and positionin the one social organism. The novel is one of the main agenciesthrough which this force acts. It gathers up manifold experiences, corresponding to manifold situations of life; and subordinating each tothe whole, gives to every particular situation a new character, asqualified by all the rest. Every good novel, therefore, does somethingto check what may be called the despotism of situations; to prevent thatossification into prejudices arising from situation, to which all feel atendency. The general novel literature of any age may be regarded as anassertion by mankind at large, in its then development, of its claims, as against the influence of class and position; whether that influenceappear in the form of positive social injustice, of oppressive custom, or simply of deficient sympathy. 

24. To be what he is, the novelist must be a man with large powers ofsympathetic observation. He must have an eye for the "humanities" whichunderlie the estranging barriers of social demarcation, and in relationto which the influence of those barriers can alone be rightlyappreciated. We have already spoken of that acquiescence in the dominionof circumstance, to which we are all too ready to give way, and whichexclusive novel-reading tends to foster. The circumstances, however, whose rule we recognise, are apt to be merely our own or those of ourclass. We are blind to other "idola" than those of our own cave; we donot understand that the feelings which betray us into "indiscretions"may, when differently modified by a different situation, lead others togame-stealing or trade-outrages. From this narrowness of view thenovelist may do much to deliver us. The variations of feeling andaction with those of circumstance, and the essential human identitywhich these variations cannot touch, are his special province. He showsus that crime does not always imply sin, that a social heresy may be theassertion of a native right, that an offence which leads to conventionaloutlawry may be merely the rebellion of a generous nature againstconventional tyranny. Thus, if he does not do everything, he does much. Though he cannot reveal to us the inner side of life, he at least givesa more adequate conception of its surface. Though he cannot raise us toa point of view from which circumstances appear subordinate to spirituallaws, he yet saves us from being blinded, if not from being influenced, by the circumstances of our own position. Though he cannot show theprisoners the way of escape from their earthly confinement, yet bybreaking down the partitions between the cells he enables them tocombine their strength for a better arrangement of the prison-house. Themost wounding social wrongs more often arise from ignorance than frommalice, from acquiescence in the opinion of a class rather than fromdeliberate selfishness. The master cannot enter into the feelings of theservant, nor the servant into those of his master. The master cannotunderstand how any good quality can lead one to "forget his station"; tothe servant the spirit of management in the master seems mere"driving. " This is only a sample of what is going on all society over. The relation between the higher and lower classes becomes irritating, and therefore injurious, not from any conscious unfairness on eitherside, but simply from the want of a common understanding; while at thesame time every class suffers within its own limits from the prevalenceof habits and ideas, under the authority of class-convention, whichcould not long maintain themselves if once placed in the light ofgeneral opinion. Against this twofold oppression, the novel, from itsfirst establishment as a substantive branch of literature, has madevigorous war. From Defoe to Kingsley its history boasts of a noble armyof social reformers; yet the work which these writers have achieved hashad little to do with the morals--commonly valueless, if not false andsentimental--which they have severally believed themselves to convey. Defoe's notion of a moral seems to have been the vulgar one that vicemust be palpably punished and virtue rewarded; he recommends his "MollFlanders" to the reader on the ground that "there is not a wicked actionin any part of it but is first or last rendered unhappy and[22]unfortunate. " The moral of Fielding's novels, if moral it can be called, is simply the importance of that prudence which his heroes might havedispensed with, but for the wildness of their animal license. Yet bothDefoe and Fielding had a real lesson to teach mankind. The thieves andharlots whom Defoe prides himself on punishing, but whose adventures hedescribes with the minuteness of affection, are what we ourselves mighthave been; and in their histories we hear, if not the "music, " yet the"harsh and grating cry" of suffering humanity. Fielding's merit is ofthe same kind; but the sympathies which he excites are more general, ashis scenes are more varied, than those of Defoe. His coarseness iseverywhere redeemed by a genuine feeling for the contumelious buffets towhich weakness is exposed. He has the practical insight of Dickens andThackeray, without their infusion of sentiment. He does not moraliseover the contrast between the rich man's law and the poor man's, overthe "indifference" of rural justice, over the lying and adultery offashionable life. He simply makes us see the facts, which are everywhereunder our eyes, but too close to us for discernment. He shows societywhere its sores lie, appealing from the judgment of the diseased classitself to that public intelligence which, in spite of the cynic's sneeron the task of "producing an honesty from the combined action ofknaves, " has really power to over-ride private selfishness. The samesermon has found many preachers since, the unconscious missionariesbeing perhaps the greatest. Scott was a Tory of the purest water. Hismind was busy with the revival of a pseudo-feudalism: no thought ofreforming abuses probably ever entered it. Yet his genial human insightmade him a reformer against his will. He who makes man better known toman takes the first steps toward healing the wounds which man inflictson man. The permanent value of Scott's novels lies in his pictures ofthe Scotch peasantry. He popularised the work which the Lake poets hadbegun, of re-opening the primary springs of human passion. "Love he hadfound in huts where poor men lie, " and he announced the discovery;teaching the "world" of English gentry what for a century and a halfthey had seemed to forget, that the human soul, in its strength no lessthan in its weakness, is independent of the accessories of fortune. Heleft no equals, but the combined force of his successors has beenconstantly growing in practical effect. They have probably done morethan the journalists to produce that improvement in the organisation ofmodern life which leads to the notion that, because social grievancesare less obvious, they have ceased to exist. The novelist catches thecry of suffering before it has obtained the strength, or generalrecognition, which are pre-supposed when the newspaper becomes itsmouthpiece. The miseries of the marriage-market had been told byThackeray, with almost wearisome iteration, many years before they foundutterance in the columns of the "Times. "

FOOTNOTE:

[22] "Or" in Green's text. 

C. A CREATOR OF PUBLIC SENTIMENT

25. It may indeed be truly said that, after all, human selfishness ismuch the same as it ever was; that luxury still drowns sympathy; thatriches and poverty have still their old estranging influence. The novel, as has been shown, cannot give a new birth to the spirit, or initiatethe effort to transcend the separations of place and circumstance; butit is no small thing that it should remove the barriers of ignorance andantipathy which would otherwise render the effort unavailing. It atleast brings man nearer to his neighbor, and enables each class to seeitself as others see it. And from the fusion of opinions and sympathiesthus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which oppression ofany kind, whether of one class by another, or of individuals by thetyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in vain. 

D. A LEVELLER OF INTELLECTS

26. The novelist is a leveller also in another sense than that of whichwe have already spoken. He helps to level intellects as well assituations. He supplies a kind of literary food which the weakestnatures can assimilate as well as the strongest, and by the consumptionof which the former sort lose much of their weakness and the lattermuch of their strength. While minds of the lower order acquire fromnovel-reading a cultivation which they previously lacked, the higherseem proportionately to sink. They lose that aspiring pride which arisesfrom the sense of walking in intellect on the necks of a subject crowd;they no longer feel the bracing influence of living solely among thehighest forms of art; they become conformed insensibly, to the generalopinion which the new literature of the people creates. A similar changeis going on in every department of man's activity. The history ofthought in its artistic form is parallel to its history in its othermanifestations. The spirit descends, that it may rise again; itpenetrates more and more widely into matter, that it may make the worldmore completely its own. Political life seems no longer attractive, nowthat political ideas and power are disseminated among the mass, and thereason is recognised as belonging not to a ruling caste merely, but toall. A statesman in a political society resting on a substratum ofslavery, and admitting no limits to the province of government, was avery different person from the modern servant of "a nation ofshopkeepers, " whose best work is to save the pockets of the poor. Itwould seem as if man lost his nobleness when he ceased to govern, and asif the equal rule of all was equivalent to the rule of none. Yet wehold fast to the faith that the "cultivation of the masses, " which hasfor the present superseded the development of the individual, will inits maturity produce some higher type even of individual manhood thanany which the old world has known. We may rest on the same faith intracing the history of literature. In the novel we must admit that thecreative faculty has taken a lower form than it held in the epic and thetragedy. But since in this form it acts on more extensive material andreaches more men, we may well believe that this temporary declension ispreparatory to some higher development, when the poet shall idealiselife without making abstraction of any of its elements, and when thesecret of existence, which he now speaks to the inward ear of a few, maybe proclaimed on the house-tops to the common intelligence of mankind. 

APPENDIX

A. AN APPRECIATION OF GREEN'S ESSAY

It is interesting to see how the leading ideas in his [Green's] mindgoverned the treatment of an apparently alien material in his last pieceof academic work, the essay on novels, which gained the Chancellor'sprize in 1862. The essay has also the additional interest of beingalmost the only record of his views on art and its relation to life. Thefundamental conception upon which it is based is one with which we havealready met. The world in its truth is a unity, governed by a singlelaw, animated by an undivided life, a whole in every part. But to humanapprehension it is fragmentary and mechanical, a chaos of elements ofwhich each is external to the other and all are external to our minds, and in which chance tempered by familiarity seems to be the only law. Toexceptional men, or at exceptional crises in life, in the moments ofintense insight or emotion which philosophy calls knowledge and religionfaith, the weight of custom falls away, the truth breaks through theveil, and the most trivial object or accident comes to reflect initself the whole system of nature or the whole providence of God. Atsuch moments man realises that in order to live he must die, that inorder to be free he must obey, and that only by surrendering his fanciedindependence can he enter into the divine unity. To this liberation ofthe self from its own bondage art contributes its share. The poeticgenius, like the speculative and the religious, penetrates themonotonous disorder of everyday life, and lays bare "the impassionedexpression" which is there for those who can read it. The dramatist, forinstance, with whom the novelist is here compared, shows us someelemental force of humanity, stripped of the accidents of time andplace, working itself out in free conflict with other forces, andfinally breaking itself against the eternal fact that no man can gainthe world without first losing himself. It is this catastrophe whichmakes the real tragedy of life; it is this which the tragic poet has theeye to see and the words to portray; and in proportion as we can followhim in imagination, we come away from the spectacle with our own heartsbroken and purged, but strengthened to face the fact and obey the law. The novelist does with inferior means, and for minds at a lower level, what the dramatist may do for a mind at its highest. He idealises enoughto make us feel pleasure or pain, not enough to make us forgetourselves. He excites curiosity or suspense, not awe or hope. If thenovel ends well, it flatters our complacency with the feeling that theworld as it is is not such a bad place after all; if it ends badly, itstrengthens the indolent conviction that aimless misery is the law ofthe universe. There are however two ways in which novels may be of realservice and value. If they cannot teach men how to live, they may, through the wide range of their subjects, enable those who have alreadyfound a principle of life to give it a freer application than theirlimited circumstances would otherwise allow; the "fictitious experience"may "give expansion to the personal, " while the personal gives realityto the fictitious, and thus may be mitigated that "sacrifice of theindividual to society" which the modern division of labor tends to bringabout. And secondly, by appealing to such various classes andcapacities, and exhibiting the identity of human nature under suchvarious circumstances, novels supply a vehicle through which the forceof public opinion may work, fusing differences, breaking downprejudices, and checking the "despotism of situations. " The essayconcludes characteristically with the refusal to believe that democracyis necessarily unpoetic. As "we hold fast to the faith that the'cultivation of the masses, ' which has for the present superseded thedevelopment of the individual, will in its maturity produce some highertype of individual manhood than any which the old world has known, " so, though in the novel "the creative faculty has taken a lower form than itheld in the epic and the tragedy, " "we may well believe that thistemporary declension is preparatory to some higher development, when thepoet shall idealise life without making abstraction of any of itselements, and when the secret of existence, which he now speaks to theinward ear of a few, may be proclaimed on the housetops to the commonintelligence of mankind. "

Readers of the essay who are also novel-readers will be inclined to saythat the writer was not much in sympathy with his subject; and hehimself, on getting the prize, remarks that "it is curious that I shouldhave been successful in an essay on novels, about which I know and carelittle, and should have failed in both my efforts in theology, for whichI care considerably. " At the same time it is probably true, as he oncesaid, that he had read more novels than his friends gave him credit for, and it is certainly true that what his reading lacked in extent it madeup in intensity. As might be supposed, his taste in fiction was forforcible delineation and robust humor. The flavor of strong, healthyindividuality was what attracted him; for rarities, niceties, andabnormalities of mental organisation he cared nothing. He liked thingswhich he could take hold of with his mind, not things which merely gavehim sensations, pleasant or painful. Both in his deepest and hislightest moods he was absolutely simple and "above board, " and thissimplicity made him keenly alive to the proximity of the sublime to theridiculous or the exquisite to the grotesque. Though he had little ofthe animal in him, and was never troubled by his appetites, he was quitefree from prudery. If obscenity moved him at all, it was to franklaughter or to grim contempt; he never dwelt upon it, either in the wayof enjoyment or loathing. "For rules of ascetic discipline, " says afriend, "he had no need. The view of life suggested by so much of thebest French literature, that thinking men are generally in a practicaldilemma between the extremes of sensual excess and of spiritualexaltation, did not commend itself to him in the least. " The only formsof art to which he was keenly susceptible were those of oratory andpoetry. He had no ear for music, though he seemed to get a certainexaltation from listening to it. In regard to painting and sculpture healways professed himself incompetent, but he was not without decidedtastes. On his first visit to the Continent he was more attracted byRembrandt, Holbein, and Dürer than by the Italians; "these men, " hesaid, "grasped the idea of Christianity. " Of Durer's four saints atMunich he writes, "I could contemplate them with interest for hours; hehas contrived to give St. John an almost perfect expression of 'divinephilosophy'. " In later years when he went to Italy he spent a good dealof time in looking at early Italian pictures, and admitted that theywould soon have got a great hold upon him. But on the whole his attitudeto the arts (excluding those of language) was one of deferentialignorance. He had not himself any artistic gifts; he did not even writeverses. Yet to his friends, as one of them says, "he never representedthe prose of existence. With all his gravity, with all his firm grip onfact and material interests, he had the enthusiastic movement of theworld's poetry in him. "--From the Memoir by R. L. Nettleship, Green's'Works, ' Vol. 3, pp. Xxx-xxxiii. 

B. HEGEL ON THE NOVEL

Among the mongrel forms of epic should be included the half descriptive, half lyric poems which were popular among the English, dealing chieflywith nature, the seasons of the year, etc. There belong also to thisdivision numerous didactic poems in which a prosaic content is dressedup in poetic form, such as compendiums of physics, astronomy, andmedicine, and treatises on chess, fishing, hunting, and the conduct oflife. Poems of this sort were most artfully elaborated by the laterGreeks, by the Romans, and, in modern times, especially by the French. Despite their general epic tone, they lend themselves readily to lyrictreatment. 

More poetical, but still without the characteristics necessary fordefinite classification, are romances and ballads. Being epic in contentbut lyric in treatment, these products of the Middle Ages and of moderntimes may be assigned to either class indifferently. 

The case of the novel, the modern popular epic, is very different. Herewe find the same wealth and variety of interests, circumstances, characters, and human relationships, the same world-background, and thesame handling of events, that characterize the true epic. But there islacking to it the primitive poetic state of the world, in which the trueepic took its rise. The novel, in the modern acceptation of the term, presupposes a prosaically ordered reality. But working from the basis ofthis reality, and moving within its own circle, the novel, both asregards picturesqueness of incident and as regards characters and theirfate, retrieves for poetry (so far as the above presupposition permits)her lost prerogatives. [23]

Thus it happens that the struggle between the poetry of the heart andthe opposing prose of outward circumstances is for the novel one of thecommonest and most suitable conflicts. This struggle may end comically, or tragically, or in a reconciliation of the opposing forces. In thelast case the characters who at first oppose the ordinary world-ordermay, by learning to recognize the true and abiding elements in it, become reconciled to the existing circumstances, and take an active partin them; or, on the other hand, they may strip off the prosaic hull fromdeed and accomplishment, and thus put in the place of the original prosea reality which is on intimate and friendly terms with beauty and art. 

As far as the range of representation is concerned, the true novel, likethe epic, requires a complete world and a complete view of life, themany-sided materials and relationships of which exhibit themselves inthe particular action that is the nucleus of the whole. As to details ofconception and development, however, the author must be allowed greatliberty, for it is difficult to bring the prose of real life into therepresentation without sticking fast in the prosaic andcommonplace. --Hegel, 'Aesthetik. ' 3. Thl. , Kap. III. Abt. 3. , S. 394-396. 

FOOTNOTE:

[23] In simpler terms: The novel, being a form of epic, should have allthe characteristics of poetry. But this is impossible because it iscompelled to work in the humble field of prose. Nevertheless, by askilful use of description, narration, and dramatic situation, it causesa poetic oasis to spring up in the desert of prose, and so wins backsome of its poetical rights.