BACK TO THE SOLID NOVEL.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 449, 6 March 1909, Page 9

BACK TO THE SOLID NOVEL.

From England it is reported that public I taste has been turning strongly to Dickens, Thackeray, Georgo Eliot, and other writers who are believecf to have done some- meritorious work during the first half of the Victorian qra. To a considerable extent, this revival is explained as part of a general movement towards substantial reading. Jn tho process, fiction is said to suffer by comparison with biography, history, tho essay, and even theology; and, in fiction, it is the younger men of tho indispensable light and swift touch that are finding the market turning against them. Of course, the mere swing of fashion will account for tho new popularity of Dickens and his contemporaries. If .Eipling and the men of the vibrant school of literature had been the victims of neglect for a score of years, to them the reading masses would now bo turning. That is tho ordinary ebb and flow of general taste. In our own day, moreover, tho operation of such general forces k appreciably accelerated or retarded by the professional literary enthusiast. It is a rare young critic that does not set on foot some heresy against tho tastes of tho hour. Tho critic is still more raro who doss not dig up a forgotten author or drag a famous ono out of his temporary obscurity. But, after all, tho setting and turning of the tide aro beyond the determination of the individual will. Tho recrudescence of the elder writers is' not confined to England. Among us, Dickens and Thackeray havo been prospering of late in cheap cloth bindings, in limp leather, in thin paper, and on very heavy paper between covers of half morocco.

Tho changing fashion does not merely look hack towards certain great names; it is a harking back towards an older brand of fiction, towards tho solid novol, tho heavy novel if wo wish to call it so, yea, oven the namo of three-decker does not appal us. That Mrs. Humphry AVard should bo writing serials for our popular magazines is an' example of the samo tendency, for Mrs. Humphry Ward continues tho tradition of tho old literature when novels took largo subjects—not necessarily sensational subjects—large canvases, and drew on them large crowds with tho figures of full-grown men and women in them. For, after all, wo arc growing aware of the distinction between tho old writers who woro heavy because they travelled with heavy baggage, and our modern sprightly ones, who aro so athletic because they are so very, very thin. Thus a return to Dickens, to Georgo Eliot, and oven to Charles Rende, is a protest against two separate, though related, idols of tho present-day literary marketplace. As against tho mero story-tollers— Kipling, 'Wells, Conan Dayle, Hall Cainc, Corelli, AVeyman, Crockett, Anthony Hope, not to come nearer home—wo go back to tho novel whoso story ia built up out of the realities of life. As against tho modern realists who, largely recruited from among tho women, havo gono in strong for wellseasoned compounds of passion, politics, and sociology, we havo tho comprehensive sweep and masterful handling which makes of tho great Victorian novel a little world, and not a "problem," that cries and laughs instead of whimpering and cackling, over largo things liko life, death, love, hunger, duty, pity, anger, and not the nerves of a young girl who was not brought up well or tho "claims' , of a woman who does not know what sho wants. On tho ground of economy it is easily comprehensible why the elder writers should

come back into favour regularly and often. It might be possiblo to show that the unfavourable financial conditions with which England, liko ourselves and the rest of tbo world, has boon contending, arc partly responsible for tho deviation of public taste from tho modern to iho classic writers, or to those writers of the present time who write with tho weight, tho leisure, and tho fulness of tho Victorians. Publishers unblushingly call upon us to pay l.oOdol. for a novel that will help us wilo away half an hour on a rainy day, or for just tho story that goes with a hammock under the trees and a good cigar, or the book that will make the fedious business triii from Philadelphia to Pittsburg a holiday jaunt. Even though the. original volumes of "Our Mutual Frfcnd" or "Vanity Fair" or "Middlcmarch" cost five times tho fixed prico of the present-day novel, see how there can be no comparison between tbo actual amount of protein, fat, carbo-hydrates supplied by one of Dickens's volumes and one of our modern tales. "Our Mutual Friend" has a hotter plot and mystery than most contemporary detective, stories; more dramatic action than tho great mass of cowboy, railway-accident, and sea fiction; more humour—that goes without saying— than any living author, with one possible exception, can now supply; more political satire than pur novels of uplift about honest district attorneys and dishonest Congressmen; more truth about tho slums than our ordinary novel of low life. When you balanco accounts, it is Dickens that will turn out the lower-priced fare. The longing for the leisuro and amplitude of a bygone age manifests itself even in growing attempts at imitation. William Do Morgan, who has had the courage to write like Thackeray, now has his own imitators in turn. We' shall, in all probability, have our neo-Diokonsians soon, our nco-Jane Austens, perhaps our neo-Fioldings, and Cervanteses. Some bold young spirit may even leap tho ocean and the Channel and dare to write thirty pages of description like Balzac. For a while wo shall grow serious and slacken up.—New York "Post."