From the National Review of 1892.

A PARISIAN Hebraist has been attracting a moment’s attention to his paradoxical and learned self by announcing that strong-hearted and strong-brained nations do not produce novels. This gentleman’s soul goes back, no doubt, in longing and despair to the heart of Babylon and the brain of Gath. But if he looks for a modern nation that does not cultivate the novel, he must, I am afraid, go far afield. Finland and Roumania are certainly tainted; Bohemia lies in the bond of naturalism. Probably Montenegro is the one European nation which this criterion would leave strong in heart and brain. The amusing absurdity of this whim of a pedant may serve to remind us how universal is now the reign of prose fiction. In Scandinavia the drama may claim an equal prominence, but no more. In all other countries the novel takes the largest place, claims and obtains the widest popular attention, is the admitted tyrant of the whole family of literature.

  This is so universally acknowledged nowadays that we scarcely stop to ask ourselves whether it is a heaven-appointed condition of things, existing from the earliest times, or whether it is an innovation. As a matter of fact, the predominance of the novel is a very recent event. Most other classes of literature are as old as the art of verbal expression: lyrical and narrative poetry, drama, history, philosophy,—all these have flourished since the sunrise of the world’s intelligence. But the novel is a creation of the late afternoon of civilization. In the true sense, though not the pedantic one, the novel began in France with “La Princesse de Clèves,” and in England with “Pamela,”—that is to say, in 1677 and in 1740 respectively. Compared with the dates of the beginning of philosophy and of poetry, these are as yesterday and the day before yesterday. Once started, however, the sapling of prose fiction grew and spread mightily. It took but a few generations to overshadow all the ancient oaks and cedars around it, and with its monstrous foliage to dominate the forest.

  It would not be uninteresting, if we had space to do so here, to mark in detail the progress of this astonishing growth. It would be found that, in England at least, it has not been by any means regularly sustained. The original magnificent outburst of the English novel lasted for exactly a quarter of a century, and closed with the publication of “Humphrey Clinker.” During this period of excessive fertility in a hitherto unworked field, the novel produced one masterpiece after another, positively pushing itself to the front and securing the best attention of the public at a moment when such men as Gray, Butler, Hume, and Warburton were putting forth contributions to the old and long-established sections of literature. Nay, such was the force of the new kind of writing that the gravity of Johnson and the grace of Goldsmith were seduced into participating in its facile triumphs.

  But, at the very moment when the novel seemed about to sweep everything before it, the wave subsided and almost disappeared. For nearly forty years, only one novel of the very highest class was produced in England; and it might well seem as though prose fiction, after its brief victory, had exhausted its resources, and had sunken forever into obscurity. During the close of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, no novel, except “Evelina,” could pretend to disturb the laurels of Burke, of Gibbon, of Cowper, of Crabbe. The publication of “Caleb Williams” is a poor event to set against that of the “Lyrical Ballads”; even “Thalaba the Destroyer” seemed a more impressive phenomenon than the “Monk.” But the second great bourgeoning of the novel was at hand. Like the tender ash, it delayed to clothe itself when all the woods of romanticism were green. But in 1811 came “Sense and Sensibility,” in 1814 “Waverley”; and the novel was once more at the head of the literary movement of the time.

  It cannot be said to have stayed there very long. Miss Austen’s brief and brilliant career closed in 1817. Sir Walter Scott continued to be not far below his best until about ten years later. But a period of two decades included not only the work of these two great novelists, but the best books also of Gait, of Mary Ferrier, of Maturin, of Lockhart, of Banim. It saw the publication of “Hajji Baba,” of “Frankenstein,” of “Anastatius.” Then, for the second time, prose fiction ceased for a while to hold a position of high predominance. But Bulwer Lytton was already at hand; and five or six years of comparative obscurity prepared the way for Dickens, Lever, and Lover. Since the memorable year 1837 the novel has reigned in English literature; and its tyranny was never more irresistible than it is to-day. The Victorian has been peculiarly the age of the triumph of fiction.

  We have but to look around us at this very moment to see how complete the tyranny of the novel is. If one hundred educated and grown men—not, of course, themselves the authors of other books—were to be asked which are the three most notable works published in London during the present season, would not ninety and nine be constrained to answer, with a parrot uniformity, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” “David Grieve,” “The Little Minister?” These are the books which have been most widely discussed, most largely bought, most vehemently praised, most venomously attacked. These are the books in which the “trade” has taken most interest, the vitality of which is most obvious and indubitable. It may be said that the conditions of the winter of 1892 were exceptional—that no books of the first class in other branches were produced. This may be true; and yet Mr. Jebb has issued a volume of his “Sophocles,” Mr. William Morris a collection of the lyric poems of years, Mr. Froude his “Divorce of Catharine of Aragon,” and Mr. Tyndall his “New Fragments.” If the poets in chorus had blown their silver trumpets and the philosophers their bold bassoons, the result would have been the same: they would have won some respect and a little notice for their performances; but the novelists would have carried away the money and the real human curiosity. Who shall say that Mr. Freeman was not a better historian than Robertson was? Yet did he make £4,500 by his “History of Sicily”? I wish I could believe it. To-day Mr. Swinburne may publish a new epic, Mr. Gardiner discover to us the head of Charles I. on the scaffold, Mr. Herbert Spencer explore a fresh province of sociology, or Mr. Pater analyze devils in the accents of an angel,—none of these important occurrences will successfully compete, for more than a few moments, among educated people, with the publication of what is called, in publishers’ advertisements, “the new popular and original novel of the hour.” We are accustomed to this state of things, and we bow to it. But we may, perhaps, remind ourselves that it is a comparatively recent condition. It was not so in 1730, nor in 1800, nor even in 1835….

  I should like to ask our friends the leading novelists whether they do not see their way to enlarging a little the sphere of their labors. What is the use of this tyranny which they wield, if it does not enable them to treat life broadly and to treat it whole? The varieties of amatory intrigue form a fascinating subject, which is not even yet exhausted. But, surely, all life is not love-making. Even the youngest have to deal with other interests, although this may be the dominant one; while, as we advance in years, Venus ceases to be even the ruling divinity. Why should there not be novels written for middle-aged persons? Has the struggle for existence a charm only in its reproductive aspects? If every one of us regards his or her life seriously, with an absolute and unflinching frankness, it will be admitted that love, extended so as to include all its forms,—its sympathetic, its imaginative, its repressed, as well as its fulfilled and acknowledged forms,—takes a place far more restricted than the formulæ of the novelist would lead the inhabitant of some other planet to conjecture.

  Unless the novelists do contrive to enlarge their borders, and take in more of life, that misfortune awaits them which befell their ancestors just before the death of Scott. About the year 1830 there was a sudden crash of the novel. The public found itself abandoned to Lady Blessington and Mr. Plumer Ward, and it abruptly closed its account with the novelists. The large prices which had been, for twenty years past, paid for novels were no longer offered. The book clubs, throughout the kingdom, collapsed, or else excluded novels. When fiction reappeared, after this singular epoch of eclipse, it had learned its lesson, and the new writers were men who put into their work their best observation and ripest experience. It does not appear in the thirties that any one understood what was happening. The stuff produced by the novelists was so ridiculous and ignoble that “the nonsinse of that divil of a Bullwig” seemed positively unrivaled in its comparative sublimity, although these were the days of “Ernest Maltravers.” It never occurred to the authors when the public suddenly declined to read their books (it read “Bullwig’s,” in the lack of anything else) that the fault was theirs. The same excuses were made that are made now,—“necessary to write down to a wide audience”; “obliged to supply the kind of article demanded”; “women the only readers to be catered for”; “mammas so solicitous for the purity of what is laid before their daughters.” And the crash came.

  The crash will come again, if the novelists do not take care.