Even Euripides himself was so infected with the pagan view that he sees a sort of Nemesis pursuing the hero whom the slighted Aphrodite reproaches with lack of reverence—religious reverence—for her power. This primitive pagan view, crude, non-moral, but essentially sincere, animates the story of Tom Jones and gives it a character which is lacking in the popular "novel of incident."
Tom Jones was and is a popular book. But I hope I am not wronging the larger mass of mankind when I say that those (of the majority) who like Fielding do not like him for his unique excellences; they would be equally pleased if puppets instead of vital persons had passed along the same course of exciting events; and that there are others who would not read him even if he began writing to-day, because his picture of life is too consistent with his imagination, and this very tenacity would perturb and irritate the trivial. Nevertheless he would have many readers among a large minority, just as Mr. Arnold Bennett has to-day—readers who can appreciate a story which is direct, vivid, and mainly external in treatment.
But the largest public is for writers like Mr. Cutcliffe Hyne or Mr. William Le Queux. These more nearly represent the popular ideal in a "novel of incident." For the former I have some respect. He shows ingenuity in his concoction of improbable plots. In Captain Kettle there is at least some attention to character—of a freakish kind—and something of atmosphere which gives it a mock-romantic interest. It holds the multitude by reason of the thrilling sensations extracted from incidents wholly unlike anything possible in their lives, but near enough to reported facts to be able to astonish and excite them. Such improbable but ingeniously contrived events are enough to distract them, and if there be more in Mr. Hyne's stories imparted by his personal eagerness and honesty, it escapes them, or at least does not annoy them.
But this finer quality has been lacking in such of Mr. Le Queux's books as I have chanced to read. I may have been unlucky in my selection, and there may be admirable qualities in those of his novels which I have not read. But in the three or four volumes known to me I found that the persons were puppets, moving in unnatural situations, meeting sensational adventures which constituted all that there was of an improbable and slenderly connected plot. We all know the sort of book. But what is it that makes this, and others like it, popular? There were scenes of spurious passion. There were incidents in which action assumed the proportions of prodigy. There was vague sensation. In one of his novels I found an introduction by Lord Roberts warning Englishmen to prepare for the German invasion planned by Mr. Le Queux for 1910! History has not yet revealed the horror and devastation of that war; but this horror and devastation lent to Mr. Le Queux's book the interest which it required.
Yet the novel which is read mainly for the thrill of the incident may be written in a far finer spirit. Most historical novels depend mainly upon the vigour of the action. The very best historical novelists must be excepted; in Scott, for example, as in Fielding, there is so much which depends on character and atmosphere that there is always much more than thrilling incident to hold the attention. In the books of a modern writer like Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, at his best, there is an artistry of composition, a synthetic quality in the romance, a unity of pictorial effort which give to them a quality of design and exquisiteness; they are a distillation of Mr. Hueffer's romantic personality. But if we consider Mr. Stanley Weyman, we are taking a novelist in whom everything depends upon the thrill of incident. Still, he has made of his work a fine craft. He uses words conscientiously. He has exceptional skill in tracing his ingenious plots. He has read history carefully, and for the most part adheres faithfully to facts—though I believe he is not so well instructed in German as in French history. The scrupulousness which refines his work gives quality to his narrative, and he can be read with pleasure by persons of exacting taste. And, again, we might take the case of Richard Dehan, author of The Dop Doctor. That writer is not innocent of the crudest melodrama. She is diffuse, extravagant, formless. But she has imagined and created certain characters. She has at moments touched profoundly that most rudimentary of all emotions—the war-emotion—an emotion which may be experienced intensely by every member of an energetic community, and therefore affords the basis of a real popular art—just as certain universal sentiments afforded the basis of folk-songs, which were constantly taken up and moulded into fine artistic forms. The Dop Doctor is a book compounded of vulgar sensationalism on the one hand, and a strange imaginative vigour and actuality on the other.
But the sensibility of the crudest and, it is to be feared, the (at present) largest strata of society can be touched, as we have seen, by the sheer extravagance of the novel of incident, by action distorted out of the proportions of life and made astonishing, by violent assaults upon the reader calculated to arouse him like pistol-shots, since a more moderate appeal would escape his attention. Just as a donkey with a hard mouth can only be guided by violent jerks upon the reins, so a dull sensibility can only be awakened by the harshest literary appeal. Style in such cases must adapt itself to the subject. Redundant words are heaped up where one would suffice for the trained intelligence. A multitude of violent, flamboyant phrases assist to the excitement of fever. It is possible, indeed, that some rudimentary art-feeling lurks behind this pandemonium of crude literature, more probably in cases where lawlessness is the result not of indolence, but of some sort of vigour and spontaneity. But it should be remembered that the mimetic impulses in which art among primitive races is supposed to originate, are not themselves art; and continually to whet the appetite with such primitive exercises is to perpetuate the rudimentary condition and stifle the finer faculties.
II. The sentimental absurdities of Pyramus and Thisbe are the occasion of some apt criticism which Shakespeare puts into the mouths of Hippolyta and Theseus:
Hippolyta. This is the silliest stuff that e'er I heard.
Theseus. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.