UNKNOWN

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3129, 8 July 1881, Page 4

UNKNOWN

To make a novel —that is, to construct out of the ever-changing kaleidoscope of human fate a picture of life which shall impress people as being life-like, and stand out to its own and possibly an after generation as such—this is a task that cannot be accomplished without genius, but whi*h genius, unaided by mechanical skill, generally fails to accomplish thoroughly. Much of what is required comes, not by intuition, but experience. " How do you write a novel ?" has been asked me hundreds of times; *>nd as half the world now writes novels expecting the other half to read them, my answer, given in plain print, may not be quite useless. The shoemaker who in his time has fitted a good many feet need not hesitate to explain his mode of measuring, how he cuts and sews his leather, and so on. He can give a hint or two on the workmanship ; the materials are beyond hipower. Wliat othor novelists do ,1 know not, but this has been my own way— ab orn For I contend, all stories that are meant t" live must; contain tin* "erni of lii'e, tb<» eat' the vital principle. A novel "with a pm pose " may be intolerable, but a novel with out a purpose is m<>re intolerable still— l\< feeble a-id flaccid as a man without a back bone. Therefore the ficst thing ia to fix on a central idea, like the spine of a human being or the trunk of a tree. Yet as nature never leaves either bare, but r-lothes then: with muscle and fle«h, branches and folinge, so this leading idea of bis book will be b<. the true author so successfully disguised or covered as not to obtrude itßelf objectionably ; indeed, the ordinary reader ought not even to suspect its existence. Yet from it, this one principal idea, proceed all aftergrowths—the kind of plot which shall best developit, the characters which must act if out, the incidents which will express these characters, even to the conversations which evolve and describe these incidents. All are sequences, following one another in natural order ; even as from the seed-germ result successively the trunk, limbs, branches, twigs, and leafage of a tree. This, if I have put my meaning clearly, shows that a conscientiously written novel is by no means a piece of impulsive, accidental scribbling, but a deliberate work of art; that though in one sense it is also a work of nature, since every part ought to result from and be kept subservient to the whole, still, in another, the novel is the last thing that ought to be allowed to say of itself, like Topsy, "Spects I growed."—An Old Novelist," in Good Words.