The English Novel Page 6

  CHAPTER VI

  THE SUCCESSORS--TO THACKERAY

  A person inexperienced in the ways of life and literature might expectthat such developments as those surveyed and discussed in the lastchapter must have immediate and unbroken development further. Scott hadthrown open, and made available, the whole vast range of history for theromancer: Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinaryand present things for the novelist. And such a one might contend that,even if the common idea of definite precursorship and teachership be amistake, the more subtle doctrine that such work as Scott's, and as MissAusten's, is really the result of generally working forces, as well asof individual genius, would lead to the same conclusion. But theexpectation would show his inexperience, and his ignorance of the factthat Art, unlike Science, declines to be bound by any calculable lawswhatsoever.

  It was indeed impossible that Scott's towering fame should not draw thenobler sort, and his immense gains the baser, to follow in his track:and they promptly did so. But, as he himself quoted in the remarkablecomments (above alluded to) on his early imitators in the _Diary_, theyhad "gotten his fiddle, but not his rosin"--an observation the truth ofwhich may be shown presently. Miss Austen's immediate influence in theother direction was almost _nil_: and this was hardly to be regretted,because a tolerably stationary state of manners, language, etc., suchas her kind of novel requires, had not quite, though it had nearly, beenreached. At any rate, the kind of ebb or half ebb, which so often,though not so certainly, follows flood-tides in literature, came uponthe novel in the twenties and thirties. Even the striking appearance ofDickens and _Pickwick_ in 1837 can hardly be said to have turned itdistinctly: for the Dickensian novel is a species by itself--neitherstrictly novel nor strictly romance, but, as Polonius might say, apicaresque-burlesque-sentimental-farcical-realist-fantastic nondescript.Not till _Vanity Fair_ did the novel of pure real life advance itsstandard once more: while the historical novel-romance of a new kind maydate its revival with--though it should scarcely trace that revivalto--_Esmond_, or _Westward Ho!_ or both.

  Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on theother, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not afew names which should rank high in the second class, while some wouldpromote more than one of them to the first. The lines of development, aswell as the chief individual practitioners, may be best indicated byshort discussions of Hook, Bulwer, Disraeli, Ainsworth, James, Marryat,and Peacock.

  The most probable demur to this list is likely to be taken at the veryfirst name. Theodore Hook has had no return of the immense popularitywhich his _Sayings and Doings_ (1826-1829) obtained for him; nor,perhaps, is he ever likely to have any; nor yet, further, save in onerespect, can he be said to deserve it. Flimsily constructed, hastilywritten, reflecting indeed the ways and speech of the time after afashion, but in a distorted mirror and with a thin and superficialrepresentation, nearer to bad drama than to good literature, full ofhorseplay and forced high jinks--his stories have all the inseparablefaults of improvisation together with those of art that is out offashion and manners-painting (such as it is) of manners that are dead,and when alive were those of a not very picturesque, pleasing, orrespectable transition. Yet, for all this, Hook has a claim on thecritical historian of literature, and especially of the novel, which hasbeen far too little acknowledged. And this claim does not even consistin the undoubted fact that his influence both on Dickens and onThackeray was direct and very great. It lies in the larger and moreimportant, though connected, fact that, at a given moment, his were thehands in which the torch of the novel-procession was deposited. Hestands to fiction almost exactly as Leigh Hunt stands to themiscellaneous essay. He modernised and multiplied its subjects,attractions, appeals: he "vulgarised" it in the partly good Frenchsense, as well as in the wholly bad English one; he was its journalistand _colporteur_. He broke up the somewhat stock-and-type moulds ofeighteenth-century tale-telling; admitted a plurality, almost aninfinity, of interest and incident; gave a sort of universal franchiseto possible subjects of novel; and (perhaps most important of all)banished from that novel the tendency to conventional "lingo" which,though never so prevalent in it as in eighteenth-century drama, hadexisted. It may seem to some readers that there is an exaggerated andparadoxical opposition between this high praise and the severe censurepronounced a little above--that both cannot be true. But both are true:and it is a really natural and necessary cause and proof at once oftheir truth that Hook never wrote a really good novel, hardly even areally good tale ("Gervase Skinner" is probably the best), and yet thathe deserves the place here given to him.

  Ainsworth and James perhaps deserve to be taken next, not so much inpoint of merit as because both, though continuing (especially Ainsworth)very late, began pretty early. Indeed, a book in which Ainsworth had ahand, though it is said to be not wholly his, _Sir John Chiverton_, waswith Horace Smith's _Brambletye House_ (1826), the actual subject ofScott's criticism above quoted. Both Ainsworth and James are unconcealedfollowers of Scott himself: and they show the dangers to which thehistorical romance is exposed when it gets out of the hands of genius.Of the two, James had the greater scholarship, the better command ofEnglish, and perhaps a nearer approach to command also of character:Ainsworth more "fire in his interior," more variety, somewhat morehumour (though neither was strong in this respect), and a certain notuseless or despicable faculty of splashy scene-painting and rough butnot ineffective stage-management. But of Scott's combination of poetry,humour, knowledge of life, reading, grasp of character, and command ofeffective dialogue and description, both were utterly destitute: andboth fell into the mistake (which even Dumas did not wholly avoid) ofattempting to give the historical effect by thrusting in lardings ofpure history, by overloading descriptions of dress, etc., and, in short,by plastering the historic colour on, instead of suffusing it, as Scotthad managed to do. Popular as they were, not merely with youthfulreaders, they undoubtedly brought the historical novel into somediscredit a little before the middle of the century.[20]

  [20] Here and in a good many cases to come it is impossible to particularise criticism. It matters the less that, from Ainsworth's _Rookwood_ (1834) and James' _Richelieu_ (1829) onwards, the work of both was very much _par sibi_ in merit and defect alike.

  With Bulwer and Disraeli we get into a different sphere ofliterature--whether into the same in both cases, and whether, if so,into one of the highest, are questions on which no general agreement hasyet been reached--on which, perhaps, no general agreement is evenpossible.

  With regard to the second, it must be remembered that to him, whether asMr. Disraeli or as Lord Beaconsfield, novel-writing was always a"by-work"--partly a means to his real end of politics, partly arelaxation from the work necessary to that end. He called himself a"gentleman of the press"--with that mixture of sincerity, purpose, andironical simulation which brought on him, from unintelligent or not veryhonest opponents, and even from others, the charge of affectation, ifnot of hypocrisy. And, undoubtedly, he did a good deal of work for thepress, and very remarkable work too--almost wholly in the kind ofnovel-writing, from _Vivian Grey_ (1826) to _Endymion_ (1880). Yet itmay be permitted--in the face of some more than respectable opinion onthe other side--to doubt whether, except in some curious sports andby-products, he ever produced real novel-work of the highest class. Inthe satiric-fantastic tale--in a kind of following of Voltaire--such as_Ixion_, he has hardly a superior, unless it be Anthony Hamilton, who isthe superior of Voltaire himself and the master of everybody. For a purelove-novel of a certain kind, _Henrietta Temple_ (1837) is bad tobeat--and in a curious cross between the historical, biographical, andthe romantic, _Venetia_ (same year) also stands pretty much alone. Butall the rest, more or less political, more or less "of society," more orless fantastic--_Coningsby_ (1844) as well as _Alroy_ (1833), _Tancred_(1847) as well as _Vivian Grey, Sybil_ (1845), as well as _The YoungDuke_ (1831), "leave to desire" in a strange way. Like the three whichhave been excepted for pr
aise, each is in a manner _sui generis_, whilethe whole group stands, in a manner also, apart from others and byitself. There is astonishing cleverness everywhere, in regard to almostevery point of novel-composition, though with special regard toepigrammatic phrase. But the whole is _inorganic_ somehow, and more thansomehow unreal; without (save in the cases mentioned) attaining thatobviously unreal but persuasive phantasmagoria which some great writersof fiction have managed to put in existence and motion. How far this isdue to the fact that most of the novels are political is a questionrather to be hinted than to be discussed. But the present writer hasnever read a political novel, whether on his own side or on others, thatseemed to him to be wholly satisfactory.

  Bulwer--for it is perhaps here not impolite or improper still to callthe first Lord Lytton by the name under which he wrote for forty years,and solidly niched himself in the novel-front of the minster of EnglishLiterature--had not a few points of resemblance to his rival and futurechief. But their relations to politics and letters were reversed.Disraeli was a born politician who was also a very considerable man ofletters: Bulwer was a born man of letters who was a by no meansinconsiderable politician. His literary ability was extraordinarilydiversified: but, once more, he was (here also) a born novelist, who wasalso a not inconsiderable dramatist; a critic who might not impossiblyhave been great, a miscellanist of ability, and a verse-writer than whommany a worse has somehow or other obtained the name of poet. He begannovel-writing very early (_Falkland_ is of 1827), he continued it allhis life, and he was the very Proteus-chameleon of the novel in changinghis styles to suit the tastes of the day. He never exactly copiedanybody: and in all his various attempts he went extremely near to theconstruction of masterpieces. In the novel of society with _Pelham_(1828); the novel of crime with _Eugene Aram_ (1832) and _Zanoni_(1842); the novel of passion and a sort of mystery with _ErnestMaltravers_ and _Alice_; the historic romance with _The Last Days ofPompeii_ (1834), _The Last of the Barons_ (1843), and _Harold_ (1848),he made marks deep and early. When the purely domestic kind came in hemade them, earlier and deeper still, with _The Caxtons_ (1850), _MyNovel_ (1853), etc. He caught the "sensation" ball at nearly its firstservice with his old "mystery" racket, and played the most brilliantgame of the whole tournament in _A Strange Story_ (1862). At the last hetried later kinds still in books like _The Coming Race_ (1871), _TheParisians_ (1873), and _Kenelm Chillingly_. And once, Pallas being kind,he did an almost perfect thing (there is not a speck or a flaw in itexcept, perhaps, the mechanical death of the bulldog) and produced oneof the best examples of one of the best and oldest classes of fictionknown to the world, in the ghost-story of _The Haunted and the Haunters_(1859).

  Such a mass, such a length, such a variety of production, with so manymerits in it, would be difficult to meet elsewhere in our department.And yet very few critics of unquestionable competence, if any, haveaccorded the absolute First Class to Lord Lytton as a novelist. Thatthis is partly (and rather unjustly) due to the singular and sometimespositively ridiculous grandiloquence and to the half-mawkish,half-rancid, sentimentality which too often mar his earlier novels isprobably true. But it is not all the truth: if it were, it would bealmost sufficient to point out that he outgrew the first of these faultscompletely, the second almost completely; and that from _The Caxtons_(1850) onward there is hardly any stain on his literary character inany such respect. But other faults--or at least defects--remain. Theymay be almost summed up in the charge of want of _consummateness_.Bulwer could be romantic--but his romance had the touch of bad taste andinsincerity referred to above. He could, as in _The Caxtons_, be fairlytrue to ordinary life--but even then he seemed to feel a necessity ofsetting off and as it were apologising for the simplicity and veracityby touches--in fact by _douches_--of Sternian fantastry, and by othertouches of what was a little later to be called sensationalism. Even hishandling of the supernatural, which was undoubtedly a strong point ofhis, was not wholly _de ban aloi_. To pronounce him, as was once done byan acute and amiable judge, "the _hum_miest of _bugs_" was excessive inlife, and would be preposterous in literature. But there undoubtedlywas, with rare exceptions, a suspicion of what is called in slang"faking" about his work. The wine is not "neat" but doctored; thecomposition is _pastiche_; a dozen other metaphors--of stucco, veneer,glueing-up--suggest themselves. And then there suggests itself, in turn,a sort of shame at such imputations on the author of such a mass ofwork, so various, so interesting, so important as accomplishment,symptom, and pattern at once. And perhaps one may end by pronouncingBulwer one of the very greatest of English novelists who are not of thevery greatest.

  It is difficult to say whether the usual attitude of criticism toCaptain Marryat (1792-1848) is more uncritical than ungrateful or moreungrateful than uncritical. Because he has amused the boy, it seems tobe taken for granted that he ought not to amuse the man: because he doesnot write with the artificial and often extremely arbitrary graces ofthe composition books, that he is "not literature." If it be so, why inthe first case so much the worse for "the man," and in the second somuch the worse for literature. As a matter of fact, he has many of thequalities of the novelist in a high degree: and if he were in thefortunate position of an ancient classic, whose best works only survive,these qualities could not fail of recognition. Much of his later worksimply ought not to count; for it was mere hack-labour, rendered, if notnecessary, very nearly so by the sailor's habit (which Marryat possessedin the highest degree) of getting rid of money. Even among this,_Masterman Ready_ and _The Children of the New Forest_, "children'sbooks," as they may be called, rank very high in their kind. But hecounts here, of course, for his sea-novels mainly: and in them there areseveral things for us to notice. One is that Marryat had the truequality of the craftsman, as distinguished from the amateur or thechance-medley man who has a lucky inspiration. If it were the case thathis books derived their whole attraction from the novelty and (withinits limits) the variety of their sea-matter, then the first ought to bethe best, as in nearly all such cases is the fact. But _Frank Mildmay_(1829), so far from being the best, is not far from being the worst ofMarryat's novels. Much--dangerously much--as he put of his ownexperiences in the book, he did not know in the least how to managethem. And if Frank is something of a bravo, more of a blackguard, andnearly a complete ruffian, it is not merely because there was a gooddeal of brutality in the old navy; not merely because Marryat's ownstandard of chivalry was not quite that of Chaucer's Knight:--butpartly, also, because he was aiming blunderingly at what he supposed tobe part of the novelist's business--irregular as well as regulargallantry, and highly seasoned adventure. But, like all good artists(and like hardly anybody who has not the artistic quality in him), hetaught himself by his failure, even though he sometimes relapsed. Ofactual construction he was never a master. _The King's Own_, with itsoverdose of history at the beginning and of melodrama at the end, is anexample. But his two masterpieces, _Peter Simple_ (1834) and _Mr.Midshipman Easy_ (1836), are capital instances of what may be called"particularist" fiction--the fiction that derives its special zest fromthe "colours" of some form of life unfamiliar to those who have notactually lived it. Even _Peter Simple_ is unduly weighted at the end bythe machinations of Peter's uncle against him and, at intervals duringthe book, by the proceedings connected therewith. But _Mr. MidshipmanEasy_ is flawless--except for the amiable but surely excessivesentimentalists who are shocked at the way in which Mr. Easy _pere_quits the greater stage by mounting the lesser. Than this book there isnot a better novel of special "humour" in literature; as much may besaid of the greater part of _Peter Simple_, of not a little in _JacobFaithful_ (a great favourite with Thackeray, who always did justice toMarryat), and _Japhet in Search of a Father_, and of something in almostall. Nor were high jinks and special naval matters by any meansMarryat's only province. Laymen may agree with experts in thinking theclubhauling of the _Diomede_ in _Peter Simple_, and the two great fightsof the _Aurora_ with the elements and with the Russian frigate in _Mr.Midshipman Easy_, to be extraordinaril
y fine things:--vivid, free fromextravagance, striking, stirring, clear, as descriptive and narrativeliterature of the kind can be only at its best, and too seldom is atall. An almost Defoe-like exactness of detail is one of Marryat'smethods and merits: while it is very remarkable that he rarely attemptsto produce the fun, in which Defoe is lacking and he himself sofertile, by mere exaggeration or caricature of detail. There areexceptions--the Dominie business in _Jacob Faithful_ is one--but theyare exceptions. Take Hook, his immediate predecessor, and no doubt in away his model, as (it has been said) Hook was to almost everybody at thetime; take even Dickens, his fellow-pupil with Hook and his own greatersuccessor; and you will find that Marryat resorts less than either tothe humour of simple _charge_ or exaggeration.

  The last name on our present list belongs to the class of "eccentric"novelists--the adjective being used, not in its transferred and partlyimproper sense so much as in its true one. Peacock never plays theJack-pudding like Sterne: and his shrewd wit never permits him thesincere aberrations of Amory. But his work is out of the ordinarycourses, and does not turn round the ordinary centres of novel writing.It belongs to the tradition--if to any tradition at all--of Lucian andthe Lucianists--especially as that tradition was redirected by AnthonyHamilton. It thus comes, in one way, near part of the work of Disraeli;though, except in point of satiric temper, its spirit is totallydifferent. Peacock was essentially a scholar (though a non-academic one)and essentially a humorist. In the progress of his books from _HeadlongHall_ (1816) to _Gryll Grange_ (1860)--the last separated from the groupto which the first belongs by more than twice as many years as werecovered by that group itself--he mellowed his tone, but altered hisscheme very little. Except in _Maid Marian_ and _The Misfortunes ofElphin_, where the Scott influence is evident, though Peacock washimself a rebel to Scott, the plan is always the same. _Headlong Hall_and _Nightmare Abbey, Melincourt_ and _Crotchet Castle_ (1831), as wellas _Gryll Grange_ itself, all have the uniform, though by no meansmonotonous, canvas of a party of guests assembled at a country-house andconsisting of a number of "originals," with one or more common-sense butby no means commonplace characters to serve as contrast. It is in theselection and management of these foils that one of Peacock's principaldistinctions lies. In his earlier books, and in accordance with themanners of the time, there is a good deal of "high jinks"--less later.In all, there is also a good deal of personal and literary satire, whichtones and mellows as it proceeds. At first Peacock is extremely unjustto the Lake poets--so unjust indeed as to be sometimes hardlyamusing--to the two universities (of which it so happened that he wasnot a member), to the Tory party generally, to clergymen, to otherthings and persons. In _Crotchet Castle_ the progress of Reform wasalready beginning to produce a beneficent effect of reaction upon him,and in _Gryll Grange_, though the manners and cast are surprisinglymodern, the whole tone is conservative--with a small if not even with alarge C--for the most prominent and well treated character is aChurchman of the best academic Tory type.

  It is not, however, in anything yet mentioned that Peacock's charmconsists, so much as in the intensely literary, but not in the leastpedantic, tone with which he suffuses his books, the piquant but not inthe least affected turn of the phrases that meet us throughout, thepeculiar quality of his irony (most quintessenced in _The Misfortunes ofElphin_, which is different in scheme from the rest, but omnipresent),and the crisp presentation of individual scene, incident, and characterof a kind. Story, in the general sense, there is none, or next tonone--the personages meet, go through a certain number of dinners(Peacock is great at eating and drinking), diversions, anddifficulties, marry to a greater or less extent, but otherwise part. Yetsuch things as the character of Scythrop in _Nightmare Abbey_ (a halffantastic, half faithful portrait of Shelley, who was Peacock's intimatefriend), or of Dr. Folliott (a genial parson) in _Crotchet Castle_--asthe brilliant picture of the breaking of the dyke in _Elphin_, or thecomic one of the rotten-borough election in _Melincourt_--are among thetriumphs of the English novel. And they are present by dozens andscores: while (though it is a little out of our way) there is no doubtthat the attraction of the books is greatly enhanced by the abundance ofinset verse--sometimes serious, more often light--of which Peacock,again in an eccentric fashion, was hardly less a master than he was ofprose.

  Here also it has seemed fit to dwell on a single writer, not perhapsgenerally held to be of the absolutely first class, because these"eccentrics" are of very great importance in the history of the Englishnovel. The danger of the kind--even more than of other literarykinds--lies in the direction of mould and mechanism--of the production,by the thousand, of things of no individual quality and character. Thisdanger has been and is being amply exemplified. But the Peacocks (wouldthe plural were more justified!) save us from it by their ownunconquerable individuality in the first place and, in the second, bythe fact that even the best in this kind is "caviare to the general,"while anything that is not the best has no attraction either for thegeneral or the elect. They are, as it were, the salt of the novel-feast,in more senses than one: and it is cause for thankfulness that, in thisrespect as in the physical, England has been well off for salt-pits.

  Besides these individual names--which in most literatures would begreat, and even in English literature are not small--the second quarterof the century added to the history of the novel an infinity of otherswho can hardly appear here even on the representative or selectivesystem. All the suns of the novel hitherto mentioned had moons and starsaround them; all the _cadres_ of the various kinds were filled withprivates and non-commissioned officers to follow the leaders. Gait andMoir carried out the "Scotch novel" with something of Scott, but more ofSmollett (Gait at least certainly, in part of his work, preceded Scott).Lady Morgan, who has been mentioned already, Banim, Crofton Croker, andothers played a similar part to Miss Edgeworth. Glascock, Chamier, andHoward were, as it were, lieutenants (the last directly so) to Marryat.The didactic side of Miss Edgeworth was taken up by Harriet Martineau.Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ (1818) is among the latest good examplesof the "Terror" class, to which her husband had contributed two of itsworst, and two of the feeblest books ever written by a man of thegreatest genius, in _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_, some seven yearsearlier. Many women, not unnaturally, encouraged by the great examplesof Miss Burney, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, and Miss Ferrier, attemptednovels of the most various kinds, sometimes almost achieving the purelydomestic variety, sometimes branching to other sorts. The novels of Mrs.Gore, chiefly in the "fashionable" kind, are said to have attained thethree-score and ten in number; Mrs. Crowe dealt with the supernaturaloutside of her novels if not also in them; the luckless poetess "L.E.L."was a novelist in _Ethel Churchill_ (1837) and other books; Mrs.Trollope, prolific mother of a more prolific son, showed not a littlepower, if not quite so much taste, in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ (1837) and_The Widow Barnaby_. Single books, like Morier's _Hajji Baba_ (1824),Hope's _Anastasius_ (1819), Croly's _Salathiel_ (1829), gained famewhich they have not quite lost: and the little known Michael Scott(1789-1835) left in _Tom Cringle's Log_ and _The Cruise of the Midge_ apair of stories of West Indian scenery and adventure which are nearlyfirst rate. In 1839, not long after _Pickwick_, Samuel Warren's _TenThousand a Year_ blended Bulwer and Dickens in a manner which to thisday is a puzzle in its near approach to success. Yet he never repeatedthis approach, though he had earlier done striking things in the _Diaryof a Late Physician_ (1830). But in the latest thirties and earlyforties there arose two writers who were to eclipse every one of theircontemporaries in this kind.

  The remarkable originality and idiosyncrasy of Dickens have perhaps, tosome extent and from not a few persons, concealed the fact that he wasnot, any more than other people, an earth-born wonder. Scanted ofeducation as he was, he has in several places frankly and eagerlyconfessed his early acquaintance with the great older novelists, and hisspecial fancy for Smollett--whose influence indeed is traceable on himfrom first to last, and not least in the famous "interiors" of which hemade far mo
re than his example had done. Even in _Pickwick_ the expertwill trace suggestions from others. But if the work is read in itsproper order, and the _Sketches by Boz_ are taken first, nobody whoknows both Leigh Hunt and Theodore Hook will fail to see that Dickensowed a great deal to both. The fact is in no sense discreditable to him:on the contrary, it adds, in the estimation of all reasonable andcritical judges, a very great deal of interest, and takes away none. Theearth-born prodigy is seldom good for much and never for very much. Thegenius who fastens on the points in preceding literature most congenialto him, develops them, builds on them with his own matter and form, andturns out something far greater than his originals is the reallysatisfactory person. Had Leigh Hunt lent to Hook his literature, hisfund of trivial but agreeable observation and illustration, and hisattractive style; had Hook communicated to Hunt his narrative facultyand his fecundity in character and manners:--neither could have written_Pickwick_ or even the worst of its successors. Had there been no Huntand no Hook, Dickens would no doubt have managed, in some fashion, to"do for himself." But it would have given him more trouble, he wouldhave done it more slowly, and he would hardly have earned that generousand admirable phrase of his greatest contemporary in fiction which willbe quoted shortly.

  Neither from Smollett, however, nor from Hook, nor from Hunt, nor fromanybody else did Dickens take what makes him Dickens. His idiosyncrasy,already mentioned, is so marked that everybody acknowledges itspresence: but its exact character and nature are matter not so much ofdebate (though they are that also in the highest degree) as matter ofmore or less _questing_, often of a rather blind-man's-buff kind. Thereis probably no author of whom really critical estimates are so rare. Hehas given so much pleasure to so many people--perhaps there are none towhom he has given more pleasure than to some of those who havecriticised him most closely--that to mention any faults in him isupbraided as a sort of personal and detestable ingratitude andtreachery. If you say that he cannot draw a gentleman, you are told thatyou are a parrot and a snob, who repeats what other snobs have told you;that gentlemen are not worth drawing; that he _can_ draw them; and soforth. If you suggest that he is fantastic, it is reproachfully asked ifpoetry is not fantastic, and if you do not like poetry? If you intimatesmall affection for Little Nell and Little Paul, you are a brute; if youhint that his social crusades were often quite irrational, and sometimesat least as mischievous as they were beneficial, you are a parasite ofaristocracy and a foe of "the people." If you take exception to hisrepetitions, his mannerisms, his tedious catch-processes of variouskinds, you are a "stop-watch critic" and worthy of all the generouswrath of the exemplary and Reverend Mr. Yorick. And yet all theseassertions, objections, descriptions, are arch-true: and they can bemade by persons who know Dickens and enjoy Dickens a thousand timesbetter--who admire him in a manner a thousand times more reallycomplimentary--than the folk who simply cry "Great is Dickens" and willlisten to nothing but their own sweet voices.

  The real, the great, the unique merit of Dickens is that he brought tothe service of the novel an imagination which, though it was neverpoetic, was plastic in almost the highest degree: and that hecommunicated to the results of it a kind of existence which, thoughdistinctly different from that of actual life, has a reality of its own,and possesses the distinguishing mark of genius, so that if it does notexactly force belief in itself, it forces suspension of disbelief. Tohave done this is not only to have accomplished a wonderful artistictriumph, but to confer an immense benefit on the human race. But indoing it Dickens exhibits various foibles, prejudices, and disabilities:though it is quite open to any one to maintain that these ratherassisted the flow of his imagination than hindered it. He began veryyoung; he had curiously little literature; his knowledge of life,extraordinarily alert and acute, was very one-sided, and the organs bywhich he attained it seem absolutely to shut themselves and refusecommunion with certain orders of society and classes of human creatures.The wealth of fantastic imagery which he used to such purpose notinfrequently stimulated him to a disorderly profusion of grotesque; hewas congenitally melodramatic; and before very long his habit ofattributing special catch-words, gestures, and the like to hischaracters, exaggerated, degenerated, and stereotyped itself in afashion which it is difficult to think satisfactory to anybody. He was,moreover, a "novelist of purpose" in the highest degree; he had verystrong, but very crude--not to say absurd--political ideas; and he wasapt to let the great powers of pathos, of humour, of vivid description,which he possessed to "get out of hand" and to land him in the maudlin,the extravagant, and the bombastic.

  But--to put ourselves in connection with the main thread of our storyonce more--he not only himself provided a great amount of the novelpleasure for his readers, but he infused into the novel generallysomething of a new spirit. It has been more than once pointed out thatthere is almost more danger with the novel of "getting into ruts" thanwith any kind of literature. Nobody could charge the Dickens novel withdoing this, except as regards mannerisms of style, and though it mightinspire many, it was very unlikely to create a rut for any one else. Heliked to call himself "the inimitable," and so, in a way, he was.Imitations of him were, of course, tried: but they were all bad andobvious failures. Against the possible tameness of the domestic novel;against the too commonly actual want of actuality of the historicromance; he set this new fantastic activity of his, which was at oncereal and unreal, but where the reality had a magical touch of theunfamiliar and the very unreality was stimulating. He might have ahundred faults--he was in fact never faultless, except in _Pickwick_,which is so absolutely unique that there is nothing to compare with itand show up faults (if it has any) by the comparison. But you can readhim again and again with unceasing delight, and with delight of a kindgiven by no other novelist.[21]

  [21] It has not been thought necessary to insert criticism of Dickens's individual novels. They are almost all well known to almost everybody: and special discussion of them would be superfluous, while their general characteristics and positions in novel-history are singularly uniform and can be described together.

  The position of Thackeray in the history of the novel is as differentfrom that of Dickens as the fortunes of the two were in their ownprogress and development. In fact, though a sort of pseudo-Plutarchianparallel between them is nearly as inevitable as it is common, it is aparallel almost entirely composed of differences, carried out in matteralmost incommensurable. In the first place, Dickens, as we have seen,and as Thackeray said (with the generous and characteristic addition "atthe head of the whole tribe"), "came and took his place calmly" andpractically at once (or with the preliminary only of "Boz") in_Pickwick_. Whether he ever went further may at least be questioned. ButThackeray did not take his place at once--in fact he conspicuouslyfailed to take it for some sixteen years: although he produced, for atleast the last ten of these, work containing indications ofextraordinary power, in a variety of directions almost as extraordinary.

  To attempt to assign reasons for this comparative failure would beidle--the fact is the only reasonable reason. But some phenomena andsymptoms can be diagnosed. It is at least noteworthy that Thackeray--inthis approaching Dickens perhaps nearer than in any other point--beganwith extravaganza--to adopt perhaps the most convenient general namefor a thing which cannot be quite satisfactorily designated by any. Inboth cases the adoption was probably due to the example and popularityof Theodore Hook. But it was also due, in a higher and more metaphysicalsense, to the fact that the romance, which had had so mighty a successin Scott's hands, was for the time overblown, and that the domesticnovel, despite the almost equally wonderful, though much quieter andless popular achievement of Miss Austen, was not thoroughly andgenuinely ready. From extravaganza in a certain sense Dickens, as hasbeen said, never really departed: and he achieved most of his best workin his own peculiar varieties of it. Thackeray was, if not to leave itentirely aside, to use it in his later days merely as an occasionalvariation and seasoning. But at first he could not, apparently, get freefrom
it: and he might have seemed unable to dispense with its almostmechanical externalities of mis-spelling and the like. It must also beremembered that circumstances were at first curiously unfavourable tohim: and that loss of fortune, domestic affliction, and other thingsalmost compelled him to write from hand to mouth--to take whatevercommission offered itself: whereas the, if not immediate, speedy andtremendous success of _Pickwick_ put the booksellers entirely atDickens's feet. Still, a certain vacillation--an uncertainty of designnot often accompanying genius like his--must be acknowledged inThackeray. For a time he hesitated between pen and pencil, the latter ofwhich implements he fortunately never abandoned, though the former washis predestined wand. Then he could not, or would not, for years, getout of the "miscellaneous" style, or patchwork of styles--reviews, shortstories, burlesques, what not. His more important attempts seemed tohave an attendant _guignon_.[22] _Catherine_ (1839-1840), a very powerfulthing in parts, was ill-planned and could not be popular. _A ShabbyGenteel Story_ (1841), containing almost the Thackerayan _quiddity_, wasinterrupted partly by his wife's illness, partly, it would seem, byeditorial disfavour, and moreover still failed to shake off theappearance of a want of seriousness. Even _The Great Hoggarty Diamond_(1841-1842) was apparently cut short by request, and still lay open toan unjust, but not quite inexcusable, question on this same point of"seriousness." In all there was, or might seem to be, a queer and tosome readers an unsatisfactory blend of what they had not learnt to call"realism" with what they were quite likely to think fooling. Duringthese years Thackeray was emphatically of the class of writers of whompeople "do not know what to make." And it is a true saying of Englishpeople--though perhaps not so pre-eminently true of them as some wouldhave it--that "not to know what to make" of a thing or a person issufficient reason for them to distrust, dislike, and "wash their handsof" it or him.

  [22] For this reason, and for the variety of kind of his later novels a little more individual notice must be given to them than in the case of Dickens, but still only a little, and nothing like detailed criticism.

  Some would have it that _Barry Lyndon_ (1843) marks the close of thisperiod of indecision and the beginning of that of maturity. The commonerand perhaps the juster opinion is that this position belongs to _VanityFair_ (1846-1848). At any rate, _after_ that book there could be nodoubt about the fact of the greatness of its writer, though it may bedoubted whether even now the quality of this greatness is correctly andgenerally recognised. It is this--that at last the novel of real life onthe great scale has been discovered. Even yet a remnant of shyness hangson the artist. He puts his scene a little though not very far back; heborrows a little, though not much, historical and romantic interest inthe Waterloo part; the catastrophe of the Becky-Steyne business, thoughby no means outside of the probable contents of any day's newspaper, isslightly exceptional. But on the whole the problem of "reality, thewhole reality, and nothing but reality" is faced and grasped andsolved--with, of course, the addition to the "nothing but" of "exceptart."

  He had struck his path and he kept to it: even when, as in _Esmond_(1852) and _The Virginians_ (1858-1859) actually, and in _Denis Duval_prospectively, he blended the historical with the domestic variety._Pendennis_ (1849-1850) imports nothing out of the most ordinaryexperience; _The Newcomes_ (1854-1855) very little; _Philip_ (1861-1862)only its pantomime conclusion; while the two completely historical talesare in nothing more remarkable than in the way in which their remoterand more unfamiliar main subject, and their occasional excursions fromeveryday life, are subdued to the scheme of the realist novel in thebest sense of the term--the novel rebuilt and refashioned on the linesof Fielding, but with modern manners, relying on variety and life, andrelying on these only.

  There is thus something of similarity (though with attendantdifferences, of the most important kind) between the joint position ofDickens and Thackeray towards the world of the novel, and the jointposition of Scott and Miss Austen. They _overlap_ more than their greatforerunners of the preceding generation. Both wrote historical novels:it is indeed Thackeray's unique distinction that he was equally masterof the historical novel and of the novel of pure modern society, almostuneventful. In parts of some of his later books, especially _LittleDorrit_, _Great Expectations_, and _Our Mutual Friend_, Dickens atleast tried to exchange his picaresque-fantastic cloudland for actualordinary modern life. But on the whole the method of Thackeray was themethod of the novel, though shot with a strong romantic spirit, and themethod of Dickens the method of the romance applied, for the most part,to material which could hardly be called romantic. Both, therefore, in amanner, recalled the forces of fiction from the rather straggling andparticularist courses which it had been pursuing for the last quarter ofa century.

  In fact, even in the two mighty men of genius whom we have just beendiscussing, there may be seen--at their beginnings at least--somethingof that irresolution, uncertainty, and want of reliance on the powers ofthe novel, it-by-itself-it, which we have noticed before: and which theunerring craftsmanship of Scott had already pointed out in the"Conversation of the Author of _Waverley_ with Captain Clutterbuck" morethan once referred to. They want excuses and pretexts, bladders andspring-boards. Even Dickens, despite his irrepressible self-reliance,burdens himself, at the beginning of _Pickwick_, with the clumsy oldmachinery of a club which he practically drops: and, still later, withthe still more clumsy framework of "Master Humphrey's Clock" which hehas not quietly to drop, but openly to strip off and cast away, beforehe has gone very far. Thackeray takes sixteen years of experiment beforehe trusts his genius, boldly and on the great scale, to reveal itself inits own way, and in the straight way of the novel.

  Yet in this time also a great advance was made, as is shown not only bythe fact that Dickens and Thackeray themselves became possible, but bythe various achievements of the principal writers mentioned in thischapter, of one or two who might have been, but are perhaps, on thewhole, best postponed to the next, such as Lever, and of the great armyof minorities who have been of necessity omitted. In every direction andfrom every point of view novel is _growing_. Although it was abused byprecisians, the _gran conquesta_ of Scott had forced it into generalrecognition and requisition. Even the still severe discipline of familylife in the first half of the nineteenth century, instead of excludingit altogether, contented itself with prescribing that "novels should notbe read in the morning." A test which may be thought vulgar by thesuper-fine or the superficial, but a pretty good one, is the alteredstatus and position of the writers of novels. In the eighteenth,especially the earlier eighteenth, century the novelist had not merelybeen looked down upon _as_ a novelist, but had, as a rule, resorted tonovel-writing under some stress of circumstance. Even when he was bybirth a "gentleman of coat armour" as Fielding and Smollett were, he wasusually a gentleman very much out at elbows: the stories, true or false,of _Rasselas_ and Johnson's mother's funeral expenses, of the _Vicar ofWakefield_ and Goldsmith's dunning landlady, have something more thanmere anecdote in them. Mackenzie, though the paternity of his _familledeplorable_ of novels was no secret, preserved a strict nominalincognito. Women, as having no regular professions and plenty of time attheir disposal, were allowed more latitude: and this really perhaps hadsomething to do with their early prominence in the novel; but it iscertain that Scott's rigid, and for a long time successful, maintenanceof the mask was by no means mere prudery, and still less merely prudentcommercial speculation. Yet he, who altered so much in the novel,altered this also. Of the novelists noticed in the early part of thischapter, one became Prime Minister of England, another rose to cabinetrank, a baronetcy, and a peerage; a third was H.M. consul in importantposts abroad; a fourth held a great position, if not in the servicedirectly of the crown, in what was of hardly less importance, that ofthe East India Company; a fifth was a post-captain in the navy andCompanion of the Bath.

  And all this had been rendered possible partly by the genius ofnovel-writers, partly by the appetite of the novel-reader. This latterwas to continue unaba
ted: whether the former was to increase, tomaintain itself, or slacken must be, to some extent of course, matter ofopinion. But we have still two quarter-centuries to survey, in the firstof which there may perhaps be some reason for thinking that the novelrose to its actual zenith. Nearly all the writers mentioned in thischapter continued to write--the greater part, in genius, of Thackeray'saccomplished work, and the greater part, in bulk, of Dickens's, hadstill to appear. But these elders were reinforced by fresh recruits,some of them of a prowess only inferior to the very greatest: and adistinct development of the novel itself, in the direction ofself-reliance and craftsmanlike working on its own lines, was to beseen. In particular, the deferred influence of Miss Austen was at lastto be brought to bear with astonishing results: while, partly owing tothe example of Thackeray, the historical variety (which had for the mostpart been a pale and rather vulgarised imitation of Scott), was to berevived and varied in a manner equally astonishing. More than ever weshall have to let styles and kinds "speak by their foremen"--in fact tosome extent to let them speak for themselves with very little detailednotice even of these foremen. But we shall still endeavour to keep thegeneral threads in hand and to exhibit their direction, their crossing,and their other phenomena, as clearly as possible to the reader. Foronly so can we complete the picture of the course of fiction throughoutEnglish literature--with the sole exclusion of living writers, whosework can never be satisfactorily treated in such a book as this--first,because they are living and, secondly, because it is not done.