MODERN NOVELS.

(From the Evening Standard)

The recent encomiums bestowed upon works of fiction by the Bishop of Ripon and Sir Theodore Martin must have rejoiced the hearts of many hardened and inveterate novel readers. It is satisfactory to learn on such good authority that the perusal of "light literature" is not the sinful and debasing taste it was once considered by many worthy people Hawthorne (in his preface to the ' Scarlet Letter ), dwelling upon the persecuting veil of his great grandsires towards Quakers and witches, remarks that it would probably be penance enough for these misguided ancestors; could they look up from their graves to view the career of their descendant himself " What, is he," murmurs one gray shade of my forefathers to the other, "a writer of story books ? "What a kind of a business in life—of being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation—might that be? "Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler." Elderly people may yet recollect pious households into which novels were never permitted to enter (this generic term embracing the pure as well as the doubtful works of the class), and where even the children's books were restricted to "true stories," albeit they were allowed to read history, which is proverbally the class of literature in which fictions do most abound. Times are changed, and few persons would now taboo the works of George Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens, and our other standard novelists. Few persons could be as troubled at learning that their mother or wife had written a novel as was "Monk" Lewis when his maternal parent contemplated publishing a work of fiction under her own name. But as the novelist and the novel have gained in popular estimation, so have they also altered many of their former characteristics. Novels were formerly simply designed for the purpose of recreation. Their writers did not attempt to be instinctive, but only to be amusing—often the harder task of the two. This want of a " serious purpose," so scandalising to the graver minded renders, was infinitely agree able to the frivolous ones. The average novel reader takes up his volume with the single desire to be entertained, as children ask for "just one story," or Eastern idlers throng round a professional tale-relater. Old novel writers conceded to this frailty. Fielding and Smollett, and even Scott, wrote their novels to amuse their readers.

But a new school of writers has now arisen, who are resolved to do us good in spite of ourselves. How often does the unwary reader, designing to refresh himself by an hour's "light reading," find that he has tumbled on a theological treatise, a political disquisition, of a Socialistic rhapsody under the guise of a "novel." There may be a slight groundwork of romance , but the " story" of the book is merely used as a vehicle to convey the special creed, or no creed, of the writer. This kind of novel has grown up gradually. Historical novels may be said to have been the first description of "instructive" works of fiction. They were supposed to convey a certain amount of surreptitious instruction under the guise of amusement. But they were often brilliantly written, and the historical facts themselves were equal to any fictitious romance for interest and sensational qualities. Moreover, the author frequently took liberties with facts, and obliged his readers, if they wanted actual historical information, to seek it in the proper quarters afterwards. Then came the " religious novel." Worthy persons, sensible of the disinclination too often evinced to peruse sermons, sprang these addresses on their readers amid the pages of a story-book. The characters in the novel preach for pages to each other ; and the sermons and the plot are inextricably interwoven. The political novel had its day, then came what may be called the psychological novel and the atheistical novel, and the Nihilistic novel. Many of these works are most ably written, but it is hardly fair to call them novels. The reader in search of mere amusement does not care to be confronted by these grim problems, these studies of mental agonies, these harassing details of doubts and conflicts. Let them stand in the pages of the metaphysician or the moralist, or the preacher : not intrude into the realms of "light literature." To stumble over works like these when expecting to peruse a genuine novel is to realise the dream quoted by Scott in the "Antiquary:" "She went to pick up a bit of cloth and it exploded like a cannon. She tried to save a pirn, and it went off like a pistol." The idler designing to be amused is led to consider all manner of complex questions of social existence, to assist at what may be called studies of mental anatomy—to weigh the arguments of contending sects and factions, political or religious. How often does the lover of amusing fiction look back lovingly to the "purposeless" novels of days of yore. They were never akin to "powders in jam." The dear old heroine who was always requesting to be " unhanded " by some ruffian ! The hero always so handsome and chivalrous ! Even when the old reciters dealt in horrors they did not patronise the refined moral tortures of the modern writer. They gave us plenty of dungeons, and fires, and murders, but all in a bold straightforward fashion. And the reader know that "all would be right in the end." The villain of the story would be the only actual sufferer. The heroine would escape from the deepest dungeon. Rebecca would find a champion at the stake, Roderick Random and Tom Jones rise to fortune at the last. Very rarely did an old-fashioned novel "end badly." Even the tragedy of the gentle old Colonel's death in "The Newcomes" is so peacefully led up to that one can read it without the harrowed feelings which attend the perusal of many a modern novel. And the genuine novelists never forgot to make us laugh. It would be easy to name many modern works of fiction which an simply one painful psychological study from the title page to finis, ably written—too ably, indeed, for the reader's pleasure—but painful to read and dwell upon. It is like coming out of a sick-room to a breezy moor to take up an old-fashioned amusing novel after reading one of these modern claimants to the same title. Even the despised "sensational novel," with its murders and startling adventures, is a relief. The very magnitude of these disasters make us sensible of their unreality—no one was ever haunted by melancholy after reading Dumas or Mayne Reid, though he may have sat up late to see how the story ended.

Comparing the old school of novels with the new, one looks back gratefully to the hours of genuine entertainment given to us by writers like Scott, Thackeray, Dickens— the list is too long to continue. "Pickwick" has assuredly no " serious purpose," but its absence would leave a blank on our library shelves. Scott is one of the few writers of fiction, whose works we can peruse again and again without weariness. Fielding and Smollett wrote simply to amuse their readers ; yet, coarse as their works appear at times to modern tastes, do we owe them no gratitude for the hearty laughs they have often given us—no small boons in a world of dulness ? Many great novelists have thought slightingly of their own gifts, and rested their claims to fame on some "more important works"—which few people read ! Even Scott ranked his poetical works before his novels; a verdict few of his readers would endorse. But of all classes of literature the world could, perhaps, least afford to lose the genuine novel, designed to amuse without instructing. It was always a rare work of art ; it appears to be growing rarer. We have plenty of careful psychological studies, of political and religious disquisitions, of "realistic" works (sometimes plainly styled "literature of the gutter"), but out of a multitude of so-called "novels" now published how seldom do we meet with works which afford genuine amusement unmixed with instruction or with debasing matter. The novel-writers of former days at least set before themselves the task of entertaining their readers. They did not always succeed in realising this laudable design ; they were sometimes tedious, sometimes coarse, but they never put forth a work of fiction as a mere vehicle for conveying their private sentiments in political, religious, or social matters. The student of history is often greatly indebted to serialists for sketches of past times, but even this information appears to have been supplied accidentally and involuntarily by the novel-writer. Boccaccio reveals the social existence of mediæval Italy with the clearness of a photograph, but when he wrote his tales he had probably little intention of composing an elaborate study of the manners and customs of the fourteenth century.

The Brisbane Courier 28 December 1888,