their dramatis persona. We are left to fill in the details of the outline at will. This habit has its defects. It springs from the haste with which we travel on the road of observation. It leaves a feeling of vagueness, and sometimes almost of requiring us to be part-authors of the story. But it has also its merits. The old assumption of thorough comprehension is untrue to life. In the image of mixed motives, often a perplexity to the very beings which they animate, how few natures stand out clear and unmistakable, how few understand each other, still less themselves. That an author should, as it were, be advocate and leave us to be judges, is a stimulating process, if only we will brace ourselves to the effort which he declines. But it has its dangers, and especially that which attends the self-styled painter who smears his colors for a chance-effect. To be workmanlike the artist must be a consummate draughtsman, as well as a powerful colorist. It is only where the details are drawn first, and rubbed out afterwards, that a lack of finish convinces. We must now pass on to our kindred sub-division of "nervousness." Ours is eminently a nervous, too frequently an hysterical epoch. It is not only the rapidity of mechanical pressure and competition, the absence of repose and privacy that contribute. It is, to a very large extent, the extraordinary, the warranted progress of womankind. The majority of modern novels is the work of women, and all of them seem impelled by the woman's point of view. They are mainly women's novels written for women, and sometimes against men. They often deal with difficult subjects in a manner that betrays superficiality and even ignorance. They are very impulsive, rather violent, and sometimes unselfcontrolled. They revel in sensibility; they frequently lack sense; and they are repeatedly deficient in what may be styled normality of

In

Do not let us be misunderstood. this category we do not, of course, rank George Eliot, Mrs. Ward, Mrs. Clifford, Miss Rhoda Broughton, and many others. But we do include (whatever her countervailing merits) the exaggerated sensibilities of Miss Marie Corelli, and the occasional morbidity of "Lucas Malet." Nay, more: many of our best writers, both American and English, are women; and the hysterical school certainly finds prominent exponents among men, prompted by the problemplay, of which Mr. Pinero's Iris is a representative example. The desire for a new thrill is universal, and hysterical fiction is remunerative. This we deplore. Hysteria no doubt has its place in life and in the novel which aims at portraying it, but its predominance in life and in narrative is disastrous. "mens sana in corpore sano" is imperative. To familiarize the public with flabbiness must prelude degeneration. The triumph, however, of emancipated woman has exercised a good as well as a bad effect on fiction. The heroine of last century tended to be insipid, and that of the century preceding to be a mere comforter of the man, however little he may have merited her consolations. In these respects Fielding's Amelia resembles Thackeray's. But Thackeray introduced an element which the eighteenth-century novelists wholly ignored-that of motherhood. Thackeray's mothers are Madonnamothers who hallow their surroundings, keeping and pondering the things

The

of peace in their hearts. Trollope, who followed Thackeray in the domestic restrictions of his women-whether arch, after Thackeray's model of Ethel, or meek, like Thackeray's Ameliafollowed him also in this, though with less depths of sanctity. Every one will recall the delightful picture of Eleanor Bold's baby-worship in her nursery. The nursery always leavens Trollope, and is only banished from Thackeray's historical novels, in one of which, bythe-bye, Beatrice forms an exception to Thackeray's wonted heroines. Now, motherhood has not forsaken the modern novel. The "mother" of our best writers is, however, no more the Madonna-mother. She has ceased to be submissive. She is aspiring, with a high sense of responsibility and with serious thought for education. One feels that George Eliot did not write in vain, and that she has quickened the sense of parental duty. It is a distinct improvement that Dickens' child-wives are no more. For good or for ill we now have women as actors in the community, and no reader of contemporary fiction can fail to perceive the worthier part assigned her. On the other hand he cannot fail also to notice that her enlarged opportunities and increased energies are sometimes at the expense of dignity. There is a want of reserve and of reticence. In becoming the comrade of man she exacts less deference. though on the higher plane she also exacts loftier ideals. These aspects are very evident both in Marcella and in Elinor, both of them-despite all the faults of constraint and bookishness which still adhere, at any rate to the former-are noble works, and have elevated the standard of modern literature. The "nerves" here are subordinated to will and aspiration, as they are not in romances dwelling on maternity merely from the side of a sweet or a bitter protection of offspring.

But can we say the same of the Mas

ter-Christian? It is in novels like this that we see the defects of the nervous fever that urges the high pressure of our day. Ours, we have also remarked, is an age of Democracy, and Democracy has transformed Society. Society used to be an élite; it is now a miscellany. There used to be a definite speech comprehensible by a definite class; there is now a Babel of indiscriminate sounds. The influence of mammon is great-that has always been so-but the prevailing thirst for excitement is greater. A new sensation is like a dram to the drinker; and under the democratic bias this thirst for sensation and for distraction is widespread. From highest to lowest

In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy.

The consequence is that contemporary fiction offers no social distinction to compare with its predecessors. Titles and celebrities figure, of course, in its pages, but they are generally merely the figure-heads for epigrams which their possessors could never have made, or opinions which they would be the last to understand. In an age when the company promoter addresses footmen as "esquires" fiction too becomes indiscriminating. So, too, with more intellectual Bohemia. It has ceased to be the jolly neutral ground of irresponsibility, and has joined the "omnium gatherum" befitting an age when actors are petted, and music-hall singers renowned:

Whom folly pleases, and whose follies please.

And once more the democratic tendency is to substitute the easier for the hard. Cheap imitation, facilitated by cheap printing, careless haste, a paper currency, so to speak, of ideas, thought and style, becomes general, and is aided by what is most wrongly denominated

"diffused education." Chatter replaces converse, and imitation ousts originality; pinchbeck prevails. People will not stop to reflect in an age when progress means the material march of the moment. But, on the other side, to take a larger and truer view of "society," there is a much better mutual understanding of classes to be found in the novel than formerly. Dickens, to his great honor, inaugurated this movement; and the quickened public spirit that feels itself part of a community, realizes its membership of a whole, and believes in

Not what we give but what we share; The gift without the giver is bare

is a prominent result. Stories like No. 5, John Street have benefited the world, and are eminently "modern." They belong to the democratic movement, which has by now possessed the Universities; and in this meaning modern literature is more Christian than it has ever proved before. To eradicate caste, and yet preserve the patois, if we may so describe it, of classes is an aim of literature. Again, our bourgeoisie has become more amenable to ideas, and that most impervious section, the "middle-middles," catch the infection of movements which they share if they do not encourage.

But, allied to these modifications is a dreary sense of depression, a drab pessimism which has succeeded the gayer tints of excessive optimism. There is a despondent border-class that has for some time been under close observation, especially in the pages of Mr. Gissing and of Mr. Wells, of such as, under widened educational facilities, are sometimes doomed to ambition's failure. This particular form of pessimism is peculiar to our age, and almost confined to our country, where class-barriers are still strong enough to accentuate the pathetic hopelessness of the struggle.

Another direction in which Fiction has been influenced by Democracy is that of the Press. The cheap journals have multiplied like mushrooms, and ape their American cousins with importunate gossip and unfortunate English. This has not been without deteriorating results both to matter and style. The public for Fiction is much wider, and some of it is dieted on the smart cleverness and slovenly picturesqueness of these newspapers. That public gets what it expects. It resents leadership; it affects to govern opinion; but for it opinion is not a voice, but a shout. It eschews modulation. majority, it thinks, justifies its dictation; and collective ignorance figures dominant wisdom. It fancies it has convictions, but its beliefs are only the aggregate of its clamor, which grows as it goes-a snowball on some muddy road.

Its

But ours is also eminently a self-conscious era. It is forever looking at itself in the glass with a valetudinarian curiosity, and analyzing even its grimaces. Scientific psychology has appreciably changed the Novel. Psychology is no longer the nebulous hypothesis it was once. The doctrine-shall we say the dogma?-of evolution, and the development of comparative philology -for language rightly understood is a branch of psychology-has transformed the outlook. Here, too, the element of mystery is being ruthlessly eradicated.

Yes, the tumults of the soul
Wisdom puzzle, wit cajole,

sang Pindar all those centuries ago. Wisdom does not pretend to be puzzled now. Not satisfied with searching out the stars, cataloguing the earth, and taming electricity, it has mapped out and accounted for the passions and the emotions. The supreme problem of mutual influence is now being pursued in the phenomena of hypnotism. Psychology has tinged romance. Deeds

and emotions are now not so much portrayed as scrutinized, and Fiction is fast becoming more and more (in German phrase) motivirt. George Eliot was the first in England to apply these methods. She Germanized it. That the weight of scientific study and the new jargon of its terminology oppressed her later creations is undoubted. They exhale the lecture-room. But, none the less, in Romola she already employed the method with conspicuous success. And this is the more remarkable because the historical novel has always been, and still is, immune from the contemporary thought of its authors. It has always, since Scott, sought to animate the dry bones of the historian; and the greatest historical romance of days

nearer to our own-Mr. Shorthouse's John Inglesant-was in no way more signal than in its complete and sympathetic mastery of the Platonic spirituality of a portion of Carolean Anglicanism, steeped in the higher teaching of the Renaissance.

But what George Eliot achieved with ease of effort, others attempt with evident constraint. We seem to hear them puffing up their hill. The dust of their library chokes, the smell of their laboratory revolts, us. We feel that Fiction is not the arena for amateur scientists; still less the receptacle for torn-up university examination papers. And not the least curious sign of our times is that democratic frivolity relishes this ponderous play at science. It seems to descry in it one of those short cuts to knowledge of which it is so fond; to believe that it has secured a bargain, and that a sort of scientific clearance sale "at a great reduction" is proceeding at Mudies'. For our own part, we deprecate the innovation. The philosopher or the scientist who engages himself in Fiction should respect the boundaries of his province; and real depth of thought or learning is best shown by the exhibition of outcome, not of

process. It is as if the Venus of Milo were to be chalked all over with anatomical dimensions, or (what is left of her) to be offered to medical students for dissection.

But the psychologist in fiction is not always thus. Balzac initiated a psychological school in France, which M. Bourget, in shades fainter, if less delicate, has followed.

Against these severer novelists a romantic reaction has already set in. Before them, and in very different guises, we had the versatile bombast of Lytton, and the bizarre fancifulness of Ouida. In England, to-day, we behold a romantic revival of which Mr. Maurice Hewlett is arch-exponent. In America psychology has hardly modified Fiction at all. The American novel, in its later and most rapid developments, becomes more and more sociological, and tends to handle the forces of co-operative movements rather than to analyze individual emotions.

In connection with both science and America, a word must here be added on the decay of humor in modern fiction. Scarcely a single novelist of the past was devoid of it. In England, however, it is now almost dead. We say "almost" because Mr. Anthony Hope, Mr. Anstey Guthrie, Mrs. Clifford, occasionally Miss Fowler, but above all Miss Rhoda Broughton, are powerful exceptions. The last, to our mind, is our most humorous writer since Trollope, and through her humor she deserves to live. But in America there is a flood of humor which cannot be stemmed by science. True, the American humor is rather the spurt of high spirits allied to the youth of a nation than the individual creation of any one master. True also, that American humor consists mainly in what logicians would term suppressing a minor premise. It amuses by jumping at conclusions. True, further, that it tends to be journalistic, "smart," "up-to-date" hu

But

mor, something that no millionaire's counting-house can do without. none the less it is there; strong, buoyant, bracing, inextinguishable; laughing boisterously across the breezy Atlantic, while the European pessimists wail, and the impressionists whimper. It is the laugh, not perhaps, precisely of Homeric gods, but of very shrewd, good-natured and observant mortals. And, "for this relief, much thanks."

We started by asserting that despite its speed, its nervousness, its democracy, its mechanical and material turn, its self-consciousness, our generation was one of thought, of sadness, of suffering, and of sympathy. The magnetism of its thought is witnessed by the very haste of Demos to assume its semblance while it evades its reality. "Thought is free"--perhaps too free nowadays, when license is at times frantically mistaken for liberty. But there are many more now that wish to think than of yore. A thoughtful author has an audience, even if he has to educate them first. Our only complaint as to Fiction is that its thought is too often pedantic, too reminiscent of prigs and of dons, too obtrusive. Jane Austen, Thackeray, even Trollope were all, in their varieties, thinkers; but they shrank from being bores, and their thought was bathed in humor. One effect, however, of the thoughtfulness on Fiction must be recorded. It has banished the type of story which depends merely upon plot. Of the many that used to thrill us, Wilkie Collins and Miss Braddon alone maintain their popularity, because they combine other qualities with that of propounding and unravelling a mystery. In this domain Dr. Conan Doyle cannot compete with them, and he is too wise, in these latter days, to try his hand on a long and sustained "Sensational Novel." The sadness of our time is more peculiar to it. It is perhaps akin to its nervedegeneration. All humanity is the

spectator of a tragedy, wherein, after a while, it feels it too must act its part. The rough-and-tumble robustness of the eighteenth century has departed. The sal-volatile of the nineteenth has evaporated. Were ever spirits like those of Dickens? He romps in his rollicking exuberance. Thackeray wrote in a minor key, but he owns that schoolboy knack of fun which distinguishes Leech's drawings; Trollope owned it too-Trollope, who in so many qualities resembled his friend Millais; and, at an earlier date, the great Sir Walter owned it also, and not least when grappling with fate and worn by disaster and disease. Jane Austen, with her exquisite miniatures of tranquil selfcontentment, scarcely seems to have had any eye for suffering. It is only in her last novel-Persuasion-that she addresses herself to it at all. Of all our earlier novelists, the Brontës alone seem to have exercised the modern faculty for sympathy and for suffering, and their morbid organizations render them exceptional to their time.

The sympathy of present Fiction is more manifold than it could ever have been, for few can sympathize with the unknown. Sympathetic a great writer must always be, but now nearly all authors are forced to seem sympathetic. The links of communication have girdled the earth. The roar of humanity rises in one great volume, hourly and graphically recorded. There is no escape from conscription in the cause of mankind. Nor can we doubt the wholesomeness of the sign, despite the vagaries of the school that sobs over a blackbeetle, while it is callous towards a man. A cheerful instance of the enlarged sympathies of Fiction is to be found in books written for children. No side of child-life (including, if the pun be permitted, the "side" of the modern child) is left unrepresented or unprovided, and the Fairy-tale took a new start with Alice in Wonderland-a