We lay aside some authors with a sense of fulness that will not let the attention be immediately distracted to other persons and things. The greatest books put the mind at once into a fruitful state, as if it had received seed of instantly bearing power. Less great books may still give us the desire to imitate their heroes or follow their maxims. Only dead books neither beget new thoughts nor incite by examples. As the characters of children are partly moulded from their surroundings, so the imaginary friends of fiction are mental associates for good or ill. We take heart and hope from the novelist's scenes, or are so wrought upon by his personages that these phantoms move us more than most real men and women. If all we know of Adam Bede is what we read of him, pray what more do we know of Czar Peter? Instead of lamenting the fascination of the story-wright, let us rather plead for its noble use, saying of him, as a great and generous brother writer said of Dickens: "What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place, and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of mankind—to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their children's children—but must think of his calling with a solemn and humble heart! May love and truth guide such a man always!"
Most of us have known an era in life when we looked down on novels like Miss Muloch's, with their gentle refrain: "He was so handsome, how could she help loving him? She was so beautiful, what could he do but adore her?" Better worth reading were stories of frontier trails, knightly tourneys, chases of smuggler and corvette—those stimulating feasts that we swallowed rather too hastily for health, and which, I grant the St. Louis preacher, formed so rich a mixture that nightmare sometimes followed a pâté of adventure and murder on which we had too bountifully supped.
Yet who would willingly forget the terror of that moment when Crusoe discovers the footprints on the lonely shore? I fancy many a lad has borne testimony to the genius of De Foe by popping his curly pate beneath the bed clothes at that awful juncture, in as great fright as if he himself had just seen the track in the sand. Or perhaps, living by the seaside, he has rowed his wherry to some neighboring bunch of rocks, to take possession of it, Crusoe fashion, bribing some less enthusiastic companion to act the rôle of Friday, until, unworthy of his faithful prototype, the extemporized Friday sulks and throws off his allegiance. I lately heard that Crusoe's isle was now tenanted by industrious German colonists, who had planted and stocked it, not like Robinson, but under all agricultural advantages, and that Juan Fernandez was a regular entrepot for whale ships. Think of it! Yankee tars revictual where the lonely mariner saw cannibals feasting! But it is only Selkirk's domain that is thus invaded; Crusoe's right there is none to dispute; safe in the keeping of genius, his monarchy can no more be annexed by filibuster or colonist than the magic isle of Prospero.
Musing on popular novels, one is struck by the changes of fashion in fiction. Who now reads "Clarissa," which Dr. Johnson pronounced the first book of the world for knowledge of the human heart; which D'Alembert styled unapproachably greater than any romance ever written in any language; for which Diderot predicted an immortality as illustrious as that of Homer? Who reads "Cecilia," which Burke sat up all night to read? The romances over which our great grandmothers simpered and sighed are to our age intolerable bores. Reade, not Richardson, is the man for our money; Miss Braddon, not Miss Burney, is the rage at the circulating libraries. Whither are gone those stories that a few years ago could not be printed fast enough—"The Lamplighter," "Hot Corn," and the rest of that brood? They are hidden under dust in the alcoves, or have been carted off to the pulp mill. Could mind of man have fancied, an oblivion so swift for those favorites of the public? Could mortal ken have foretold its present fate for the "Wide, Wide World"?—a story now quite dropped out of sight, but once the town's rage, and whose heroine I remember as a sort of inexhaustible human watering cart with the tear tap always turned on.
What has become, too, of those learned novels, patterned after Bulwer—extracts from Lemprière in dialogue form, sandwiched with layers of low life? "Surely, my dear niece, you remember what Athenæaus quotes on this subject from the Leontium of Hermesianax of Colophon, the friend of Philetas?" "Perfectly, aunt, and methinks mention is also made of the same elegiac poem in Pausanias, and again in Antoninus Liberalis, the latter saying," etc. Where, I say, are the novels in that vein, with their charming mixture of murder, mythology, and metaphysics? They have their run, strut their brief hour, and give way to some "Madcap Violet" or "Helen's Babies." Never fear a lack of fresh novels. If the lads lose Mayne Reid, they find Jules Verne. The secret is an open one: the novel is the best paid branch of literature—always excepting Mr. Gladstone's pamphlets. Times have changed since "Evelina" was sold for £20.
Perhaps of all novelists Victor Hugo receives the largest earnings for a single work. One of his clerical enemies, Mgr. de Ségur, has bitterly attacked him for his gains—"$100,000 for 'Les Misérables' alone," said the critic in angry extravagance. But Hugo's admirers will not grudge his gains.
The English have put a premium on prolix novels by giving them a regulation length of just three volumes, to be cold for a guinea and a half. This droll uniformity has much less basis of reason than the old custom of writing tragedies and comedies just five acts long; for there is sense in making a play last out an evening. Trouble to writer and weariness to reader must come of spinning a novel against space, overlaying a plot with trivial incidents, and stuffing a story with padding, merely to reach a standard of length both arbitrary and absurd. Yet prodigious was the patience of our novel-reading ancestry prior to Fielding. The "Grand Cyrus" was issued in ten volumes, "Clarissa Harlowe" in eight, and sometimes an heroic romance reached twelve. Jules Janin puts Richardson on Shakespeare's level, and modern French readers appreciate "Clarissa" more than English—but they get it abridged. Mr. Dallas, following Janin, has abridged the famous novel with care for English readers, too, and a more recent editor likewise aims to evade its monotony by striking out "tediously unnecessary passages and unimportant details," though old-fashioned readers may still like to take "Clarissa" in all its prolixity. As to the romances that preceded it, they seem to our age duller than any ever written—"huge folios of inanity," said Sir Walter, "over which our ancestors yawned themselves to sleep." I warrant their descendants never yawned over "Guy Mannering."
Still, modern novels as a class are more apt to be voluble than prolix. Story-writers like Trollope, Mrs. Edwards, and McCarthy amaze us at the ductility which the English tongue assumes for them. They seem less to compose than to reel off their pages. To Trollope's free-and-easy flow is there any stop? None, surely, through mental exhaustion. His bright loquacity and productiveness remind one of that bewitched salt mill in the story of Nicholas, which ground on for ever, without effort or wearying, until it had salted the whole sea.
PRIMOGENITURE AND PUBLIC BEQUESTS.