Talks on the study of literature.

by Arlo Bates

In order to enjoy a novel, it is certainly not necessary to believe it in a literal sense. No sane man supposes that Don Quixote ever did or ever could exist. To the intellect the book is little more than a farrago of impossible absurdities. The imagination perceives that it is true to the fundamental essentials of human nature, and understands that the book is true in a sense higher than that of mere literal verity. It is the cultivated man who has the keenest sense of reality, and yet only to the cultivated man is possible the exquisite enjoyment of "Esmond," of "Les Misérables," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Return of the Native," or "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." So far from being incompatible, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction are inseparable.

An artist who is worthy of the name is above all else truthful in his art. He never permits himself to set down anything which he does not feel to be true. It is with a truth higher than a literal accuracy, however, that he is concerned. His perception is the servant of his imagination. He observes and he uses the outward facts of life as a means of conveying its inner meanings. It is this that makes him an artist. The excuse for his claiming the attention of the world is that in virtue of his imagination he is gifted with an insight keener and more penetrating than that of his fellows; and his enduring influence depends upon the extent to which he justifies this claim.

With the novel of trifles it is difficult to have any patience whatever. The so-called Realistic story collects insignificant nothings about a slender thread of plot as a filament of cobweb gathers dust in a barn. The cobweb seems to me on the whole the more valuable, since at least it has the benefit of the old wives' theory that it is good to check bleeding. It is a more noble office to be wrapped about a cut finger than to muffle a benumbed mind.

One question which the great mass of novel-readers who are also students of literature are interested to have answered is, How far is it well to read fiction for simple amusement? With this inquiry, too, goes the kindred one whether it is well or ill to relax the mind over light tales of the sort sometimes spoken of as "summer reading." To this it is impossible to give a categorical reply. It is like the question how often and for how long it is wise to sit down to rest while climbing a hill. It depends upon the traveler, and no one else can determine a point which is to be decided by feelings and conditions known alone to him. It is hardly possible and it is not wise to read always with exalted aims. Whatever you might be advised by me or by any other, you would be foolish not to make of fiction a means of grateful relaxation as well as a help in mental growth. Always it is important to remember, however, that there is a wide difference in the ultimate result, according as a person reads for diversion the best that will entertain him or the worst. It is a matter of the greatest moment that our amusements shall not be allowed to debauch our taste. It is necessary to have some standard even in the choice of the most foamy fiction, served like a sherbet on a hot summer afternoon. One does not read vulgar and empty books, even for simple amusement, without an effect upon his own mind. The Chinese are said to have matches in which cockroaches are pitted against each other to fight for the amusement of the oblique-eyed heathen. To be thus ignoble in their very sports indicates a peculiar degradation and poverty of spirit; and there are certain novels so much in the same line that it is difficult to think of their being read without seeing in fancy a group of pig-tailed Celestials hanging breathlessly over a bowl in which struggle the disgusting little insect combatants. To give the mind up to this sort of reading is not to be commended in anybody.

Fortunately we are in this day provided with a great deal of light fiction which is sound and wholesome and genuine as far as it goes. Some of it even goes far in the way of being imaginative and good. As examples—not at all as a list—may be named Blackmore, Crawford, Stanley Weyman, Anthony Hope, or the numerous writers of admirable short stories, Cable, Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, or Thomas Nelson Page. All these and others may be read for simple entertainment, and all are worth reading for some more or less strongly marked quality of permanent worth. There are plenty of writers, too, like William Black and Clark Russell and Conan Doyle, concerning the lasting value of whose stories there might easily be a question, yet who do often contrive to be healthily amusing, and who furnish the means of creating a pleasant and restful vacuity in lives otherwise too full. Every reader must make his own choice, and determine for himself how much picnicking he will do on his way up the hill of life. If he is wise he will contrive to find his entertainment chiefly in books which besides being amusing have genuine value; and he will at least see to it that his intellectual dissipations shall be with the better of such books as will amuse him and not with the poorer.

The mention of the short story brings to mind the great part which this form of fiction plays to-day. The restlessness of the age and the fostering influence of the magazines have united to develop the short story, and it has become one of the most marked of the literary features of the time. It has the advantage of being easily handled and comprehended as a whole, but it lessens the power of seizing in their entirety works which are greater. It tends rather to increase than to diminish mental restlessness, and the lover of short stories will do well not to let any considerable length of time go by without reading some long and far-reaching novel by way of corrective. Another consequence of the wide popularity of the short story is that we have nowadays so few additions to that delightful company of fictitious yet most admirably real personages whose acquaintance the reader makes in longer tales. The delight of knowing these characters is not only one of the most attractive joys of novel-reading, but it is one which helps greatly to brighten life and enhance friendship. Few things add more to the sympathy of comradeship than a community of friends in the enchanted realms of the imagination. Strangers in the flesh become instantly conscious of an intimacy in spirit when they discover a common love for some character in fiction. Two men may be strangers, with no common acquaintances in the flesh, but if they discover that both admire Elizabeth Bennet, or Lizzie Hexam, or Laura Bell, or Ethel Newcome; that both are familiar friends with Pendennis, or Warrington, or Harry Richmond, or Mulvaney, or Alan Breck, or Mowgli, or Zagloba; or belong to the brave brotherhood of D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, they have a community of sympathy which brings them very close together.

It is seldom and indeed almost never that the short story gives to the reader this sense of knowing familiarly its characters. If there be a series, as in Kipling's "Jungle Book" or Maclaren's tales, where the same actors appear again and again, of course the effect may be in this respect the same as that of a novel; but cases of this sort are not common. All the aged women of Miss Wilkins' stories, for instance, are apt in the memory either to blend into one composite photograph of the New England old woman, or to stand remotely, not as persons that we know, but rather as types about which we know. The genuine novel-reader will realize that this consideration is really one of no inconsiderable weight; and it is one which becomes more and more pressing with the increase of the influence of the short story.