WHAT DO NOVELS TEACH?

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3063, 21 April 1881, Page 4

WHAT DO NOVELS TEACH?

It has been claimed by one of the chief novelists of the day, we think Mr Trollope, who certainly has a right to be heard on the subject, that novels teach people, and especially young people, how to talk, and have had a distinct influence in shaping the stream —not a very brilliant one—of English conversation. Perhaps this is rather a strong statement, and it would be more true to say that English novels influence English conversation as the Timesleads popular opinion, by dividing and echoing it —occasionally with a clever semblance of forestalling and originating. It is somewhat curious, by the way, when we come to think of it and by no means complimentary to the novelists, that they, as we have just said, do so little to guide or help, ibose who may have complications of life' fio' go tkrmigh very eimilar to the corflpficatibns which form the subjects of modetftf romance. This is a question which writers of fiction would do well to ponder. Who has been helped through one of these difficulties by the example of the last study of life which even the most potent of contemporary magicians has set before him ? Perhaps the reason is that a sqarcely appreciable portion of humanity are those who are troubled by the special problems which the novelist prefers to investigate and fathom. For example, there are curiously few bigamists in good society, yot bigamy is perhaps more popular than any other subject with gome novelists. And few of us, after all, very few, make eccentric wills, which are still more largely used. As for the one grand problem of which all tho novels are full, which is how to get ourselves beloved and married, that, it is proverbial, is a question in which nobody will take any advice or profit by any example. Here human nature always feels its situation unique and its circumstances unexampled. If tbsre ever was a silly maiden like Lydia Languish in real life, demanding to be wooed fantastically and mysteriously, to be run away with and flattered by clandestine vows, in imitation of her favourite heroine, we are very sure there never was any who learned prudence and patience from the most exemplary of fictitious women. No doubt it pleases the young couple who have to -wait for each other through a lingering engagement to read of others in the same circumstances ; but we doubt if man or women ever got a hint for the speedier termination of their embarrassments through those of their contemporaries in fiction. It is by no means to be desired that novelists should give up this subject which is sacred to them, but in which nobody will ever be guided by any experience save their own; yet it would be well for them in other points to consider tins deficiency. They are the recognised exponents of social life ; it is their task to exhibit men and women in the midst of all its complications, and it is a reproach to them that they do nothing to help their fellow-creature who may have similar trials to go through.—Blackwood's Magazine.