THE DECADENCE OF FICTION.
THERE is no more fruitful source of error and absurdity in argument than the not uncommon tendency to leap from a single fact to a general rule, and then search for in- stances afterwards whereby to support it. When there is added to this tendency a certain element of positive, " cock- sure " assertion, the result is apt to be very curious indeed. Of all people in the world one would have thought that Mr. Frederic Harrison should have been the last to afford an illustration of this eminently unscientific and unphilo- sophical form of reasoning, and it is with a sense of not unpleased amusement that one reads his contribution to the Forum of this month, and realises how human a philosopher, even a Positive philosopher, can be Mr. Harrison seems, in the first place, to have been struck with the fact that there is no living novelist to-day who can be said to stand pre- eminently above his fellows. That we are willing to admit. If we were called upon at a moment's notice to point out our first, our greatest living novelist, we confess that we should not be able to do so; the task would not only be an invidious but an impossible one, for there are many whose claims upon our admiration and affection really seem to be fairly equally based; and though we might profess a personal prejudice in favour of this particular one or other, it would he purely a prejudice and not a judgment founded upon an estimate of their merits. That is not Mr. Harrison's deduction. "For the first time," he says, "in the present century, English literature is without a single living novelist of the first rank." Then upon that sweeping assertion he• proceeds to build his theory of the decadence of the novelists. We have no great novelist, he says, because we live in an age of the decadence of Romance; and for the decay of Romance he discovers a multiplicity of reasons, almost as convincing as the numerous instances which he adduces to prove his new rule. Had he, by romance, intended to refer only to pure romance and the older and more romantic form of fiction, we should have had little to say in answer. But it is only too evident that he makes no such dis- tinction, and includes under the head of " romance " the whole of fiction, the whole field of the novelist. With the end of the year 1865, he asserts, we saw the last of the best work of our great novelists, and with the death of Trollope we saw the last of the novelists themselves. Lytton, Disraeli, Hawthorne, the Brontës, Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope- to be joined later by George Eliot—were all novelists of the first rank, and carried on to the middle of the century the "splendid period" that began with Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen, followed by Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott. The first half of the century was splendid in its novelists ; the second, the decadent half, sees only the deca- dence of their trade ; and at no time is that decadence more apparent than it is to-day. We wonder that Mr. Frederic Harrison has refrained from quoting the decay of a dying century as the chief cause of the decay in romance. He does refrain, though he wistfully supposes "that it cannot be more than a paradox to fancy that fin, de siècle has anything to do with it ; " and draws our attention to the fact, if it is a fact, that the end of every century has been barren in litera- ture. In 1793, "in all Europe," he says, there was "not a single accepted living master of the first rank in verse or in prose." Is that a fact P In 1793, Burns, Cowper, and Gibbon still lived in England ; though Wordsworth and Coleridge had not quite attained to a quarter-of-a-century in age. In Germany, Goethe and Schiller, Wieland, Richter, and a score of others, lived and flourished. In Italy, Aretastaeio had just died, and Leopardi was not yet born; but Alfieri and Goldoni still lived and wrote. In France, it was the year of the Revo- lution, and literature was at a discount. At the end of the preceding century, Mr. Harrison can only see the decline of Dryden ; and yet Addison and Steele had begun to write ; and Swift, though perhaps unknown to fame, must have been at work. The end of the sixteenth century, of course, was notoriously barren, having no one to show but Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, and a few others, so insignificant as to have easily escaped Mr. Harrison's memory.
We only draw attention to this little forgetfulness on Mr. Harrison's part in the hope that it may prove of some kind of consolation to our modern novelists. It is hard upon a novelist, even at the end of a century, to be told that he is not of the first rank, and he may find comfort in the reflection that a literary critic who is capable of overlooking Shakespeare may also be capable of overlooking his own honourable person. If, in spite of these freaks of memory, he still feels hurt by Mr. Harrison's oversight, we would recommend him to turn to the latter's article in the Forum, and see for himself by what manner of critic he has been judged and found wanting. Should he be willing to acquiesce in the author's judgment of our past novelists, he may well accept at once his estimates of the living ones. He will learn, among other things, that Mr. Harrison does not dispute that Mrs. Wood's "Village Tragedy" may rank with "Silas Marner," or that Dickens could not have bettered the "Two Drummer Boys" of Rudyard Kipling. We have read the "Village Tragedy," and have been struck by the sombre power and the literary capacity of its author. It is a very clever but rather un- pleasant picture of village life, not very faithful, and marred by a too evident striving for realistic effect. But to class it with "Silas Marner," even to compare it to "Silas Marner," is an ineptitude which we fondly thought beyond the capacity of the most careless critic. And why, in the name of wonder, does Mr. Harrison single out Dickens "to better" the "Drums of the Fore and Aft "P Because comparisons are not odious, it does not follow that they are not ridiculous. However, we will not concern ourselves with Mr. Harrison as a critic ; it is as a philosopher, as a seeker after first causes, that he chiefly claims our attention in the Forum. What is the cause, he asks, of this decadence of fiction P In the first place, it is be- cause we have overtrained our tastes, we are overdone with criticism, we have formed too fastidious a standard in litera- ture. "A highly organised code of culture may give us good manners, but it is the death of genius;" it casts a chill upon originality, and cruelly curbs the outbreak of high spirits or romance. "Jane Eyre," if produced to-day, "would not rise above a common shocker," and the "riotous tomfoolery of Pickwick at the Trial" would be denounced as vulgar balder- dash. We will charitably suppose that by " Pickwick " Mr. Harrison means the scene, and not the hero of it, or we might fancy that his memory was again at fault. But surely it is hardly worthy of a philosopher to account for the inferiority of authors by the superiority of their readers. Secondly, wo are told that violent political struggles check the flow of litera- ture; political ferment, war, social agitation, and especially the uneasy sense of impending change, are all fatal to its growth. "We in England arc now in the most acute stage of all this period. Parliamentary reform, Continental changes, colonial wars, military preparations, Home-rule have absorbed the public mind and stunned it with cataracts of stormy debate. We are all politicians, all party-men now." Mr. Harrison fairly takes our breath away. Can a man then write of the" Meaning of History," and remain so forgetful of its facts P The most flourishing period of English fiction, according to his own showing, was contained between the years '45 and '65, a period which also covered the repeal of the Corn-Laws, the Chartist demonstration, the political excitement caused by revolutions in France and Germany, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and other incidents which were at the time considered of importance. Can he really mean to maintain that, in comparison with that period, we are now passing through a time of violent political unrest ? Thirdly, we may seek for a reason in the- changed conditions of life. Comfort, electric-light, and equality are the death of romance. We have lost the old boisterous, picturesque, and jolly world in which both Fielding and Scott rejoiced ; and the result is that poor romance has been driven to desperate shifts to preserve it- self. Either it is virtuous, and phonographically, photo- graphically reproduces everyday life ; or it is disreputable and—" Zolaesqne." "Men, revolting from this polite and monotonous world, are trying desperate expedients. Mr. Stevenson is playing at Robinson Crusoe in the Pacific, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling wants to die in a tussle with Fuzzy- Wuzzy in the Soudan. Bat it is no good." There we have a complete and exhaustive account of Mr. Stevenson, of Mr.. Kipling, and of all their works. The former happens to be exiled by ill-health ; the latter, to the best of our belief, has. not yet expressed any intention of dying in the way sug- gested; neither of them have had to go far afield in search of their subjects, and both have given us splendid romance from the material that lay at hand. Mr. Frederic Harrison might do worse than read some of their works ; it is never- quite safe to form an opinion of an author from paragraphs. in the newspapers.
Mr. Harrison admits that critics praise, and good judges. enjoy, the novelists of to-day,—" but their fame is partial, local, sectional." Judged by this standard, Mr. Martin Tupper or " Satan " Montgomery were the two greatest poets of their age, and "Called Back" was a greater novel than "Esmond." Most people, if they had been asked to give an opinion as to the most flourishing branch of literature at this end of the century, would have said, we fancy, that it was to be found in fiction. It is vain to prophesy; but nevertheless we cannot but cherish the conviction that another century will look back upon the end of this one as not unfruitful in masters of romance. Surely, a period which has produced Blackmore„ Hardy, Stevenson, to say nothing of others, can hardly be called sterile in fiction. Nor can it fairly be called "the ladylike age,—the age of ladies' novels," though we willingly agree that women have played no inconsiderable part in it. The fact is that Mr. Frederic Harrison, having started with a doubtful conclusion, has been somewhat put to- it to find the necessary premises to argue from. We have no- doubt that, had he been so minded, he could have preached to us a very convincing sermon on the decadence of meta- physics ; but by ill-luck, he has pitched upon a branch of literature which happens to show fewer signs of decay, per- haps, than any other ; and his argument is not convincing. For which reason we need not avail ourselves of the kind in- vitation towards philosophy with which he concludes. "Let us accept what the dregs of the nineteenth century can give us, without murmuring and repining for what it cannot give,. and should not give." Tastes differ; some people like dregs „ we ourselves prefer to drink at a cup which we still find fairly full.
Previous page
