THE MODERN NOVEL.

A STUDY IN DEVELOPMENT.

By T. D.

It is the custom in these nil admirari days to look upon the present age of literature as degenerate. Men shake their beads sadly, and maintain that no one now can write like Thackeray, Dickens, or Scott, or even, if he be old-fashioned enough, like Fielding or Smollett. To a large section of critics there have been no dramatists since the Elizabethan age, no poets since Tennyson's heyday, no novelists since George Eliot died. These men have created a strange word to define the modern intellectual attitude. Decadent art, decadent, literature, is the name given to all work that does not conform to the ideals set up by masters of the old school. Woe betide' the man who does not conform to those ideals. He suffers small mercy at their hands.

It may well be asked whether their accusations, we might almost call them, are founded on correct assumptions. The present century has been, and rightly, called the age of evolution. That magic word explains everything, from the formation of the solar system to the growth of the smallest blade of grass. We may surely conclude that a similar movement is at work in art as well as in science. Now, one of tho fundamental postulates of the theory is that everything that is capable of change must move either forward or backward. It cannot remain stationary ; it must evolve or degenerate. Further, as a corollary to this, degeneration is only suffered by those things which are no longer useful to the megacosm or the microcosm, as the case may be. Even the most fanatical of the lovers of the old school will hardly dare to assert that literature no longer conduces to the general benefit of humanity or to the particular advantage of the individual.

It is the object, therefore, of this paper to show that the works of the best authors of the present day are necessarily of a higher grade than those of the same standard of writers in former years. The term " best" is used advisedly, to avoid confusion with that shibboleth " popular" usually the two are as far apart as the poles. Seldom does it happen that " the most popular novel of the day" is written by a man whose work, in the opinion of contemporary critics, will go down to posterity. More often the book is one characterised by pathetical bathos, hysterical melodrama, or pseudo-philosophy. But that, after all, is only "the public's" affair.

Of the three branches of literature above named—fiction, poetry, and the drama—the first is by far the most widely read and appreciated. Let us, then, trace the evolution of the modern novel from its inception, the beginning of the 18th century to the present day. Happily the record is complete, and we may follow the growth with comparative ease from the mere story or tale, which constitutes the earliest attempts at English fiction, to the studies of character which form the chief features of the novels of the present decade. With such an extended period before us, any attempt at systematic classification would be absurd ; but the whole history of the novel, with the names of some of the best known authors, may be roughly tabulated as follows :

I. Novels of Incident.—Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne.
Link, Oliver Goldsmith.
II. Novels of Sentiment.—Frances Burney, Jane Austen.
Link, Charlotte Bronte.
III. Novels of Types.—Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens.
Link, George Eliot.
IV. Novels of Character.—Meredith, James, Hardy, and other living writers.

To the whole of these classes, with the exception of the last, and, to some extent, of George Eliot, the one epithet of "panoramic" may be applied. The characteristic of each author is contained in the name of the division to which he belongs ; but the method of developing the story in one and all, from Defoe to George Eliot, is the same. The relation of incident after incident (not necessarily action) is relied on to satisfy the mental appetite of the reader, and enable him to grasp the details of the plot. This is the case especially with the first class, Smollett using the system, to such an extent that his books became a mere relation of detached anecdotes and comic situations. The "typical" novelists will be remembered for their creation of oddities long after the history of Scott, the humour of Dickens, and the satire of Thackeray have been forgotten or superseded. Scott is at his best when portraying contemporary Scottish character, Dickens when drawing types of middle and lower class life of his own period, and Thackeray when sketching the society of which he was a member. To George Eliot belongs the honour of materially altering the system of writing fiction. Her first novels followed the lead given her by her predecessors, but her style of developing the plot gradually changed until in " Daniel Deronda" the analytical study of human feelings becomes predominant, and the book may be looked upon as the first real novel of character in English fiction.

Such then, in brief, is the history of the evolution of the novel of incident into the novel of character. The terminology is vague, and a better classification would, perhaps, be that of " the novel of incident," and " the novel of analysis." The radical difference between the two lies in the treatment of the plot. In the novel of incident the plot is of primary importance, the characters being subordinated thereto, and the narration of events made use of as the chief instrument for its development. The novel of character, on the other hand, more often than not, consists of a common-place plot, used only as the background of a picture on which are painted, with an extra- ordinary attention to detail, studies of men and women whose motives are probed to their remotest sources, and whose actions are the resultants of forces most complicatedly psychological.

This class of novels—the " best" class is therefore only the next step in the evolution, not degeneration, of fiction. That it is of a higher grade than its forerunners must of course follow. Works of fiction are always a sign-post of the spirit of the age. Consequently, the latest novels, in point of development, show the latest movement in human thought. To any man who wishes to keep in line with the advance of literature, a novel of the incidental type is of as much service as a history of the middle ages would be to the student of the democratic attitude of the 19th century. Such novels are useful only as a picture of the manners and customs of the period written about, and only then if that period coincides with the author's own life. To be up-to-date, that great desideratum of the modern man, a reader should certainly have a knowledge of all the novelists in the table given above. But the reading of these should be finished before maturity. For any man to prefer those writers after that time seems almost a case of arrested development—Just as if a boy of 14 should prefer " Chatterbox" and " Little Folks" to Ballantyne, Henty, and Manville Fenn.

It must he clearly understood that this defence is not raised for the modern novel in toto. The bulk of the fiction of to-day is very little more developed than the works of Fielding, Bronte, Scott, &c. The authors are more refined than Fielding, better stylists than Charlotte Bronte, more correct in detail than Scott, but their novels are novels of incident only, in the field with the more advanced works of Meredith, Hardy, and James, just as the Australian aborigines live in the same century as the Anglo-Saxon race. They are not anachronisms, they are merely the plainer fare provided for less cultured readers. The point held by this paper is that the novel of analysis is the latest and best development of English fiction. The reader of to-day should no longer be satisfied with the outward manifestation of the inward feelings. He must see the works. The relation of incidents should no longer interest him. He must know the hidden mainsprings of human action. Scientifically, he may learn about them from Aristotle upwards; artistically, he has the novel. The study may be materialistic, realistic, or idealistic, but it must be psychological.

 The Brisbane Courier 31 March 1900,