Has, then, the mild and favorite blossom, the fabula romanensis, which was so abundant in the Middle Ages, which has grown so luxuriantly and given so general delight in modern times,has it no place in the natural history of literature? Shall it be mentioned only as an uncompleted something else,as an abortive effort of thought,as a crude mélange of elements that have not been purified and fused together in the focus of the mind? And were the Muses right in refusing to admit it into their sacred realm of art?
An affirmative answer can hardly be true; for an absurdity appears in the reduction that it would cause in the quantity of our veritable literature, and in the condemnation that it would pass on the tastes of many most intelligent writers and readers. Yet a comparison of the novel with the classical and pure forms of literature will show its unlikeness to them in design, dignity, and essential quality.
It was a favorite thesis of Fielding, often repeated by his successors, that the novel is a sort of comic epopee. Yet the romantic and the epic styles have nothing in common, except that both are narrative. The epic, the rare and lofty cypress of literature, is the story of a nation and a civilization; the novel, of a neighborhood and a generation. A thousand years culminate in the former; it sums up the burden and purpose of a long historical period; and its characters are prominent types in universal history and in highest thought. But the novel is the child of a day; it is the organ of manners and phases, not of principles and passions; it does not see the phenomena of earth in heavenly or logical relations, does not transform life into art, and is a panorama, but not a picture. So long as man and heroism and strife endure, shall Achilles, Godfrey, Satan, and Mephistopheles be types; for they are artistic expressions of essential and historical realities. But though the beck of curiosity lead us through the labyrinthine plot of a novel, long as Gibbon's way through the Dark Ages, yet, when we have finished it, the bubble collapses, the little heavens which had been framed about us roll away, and most rarely does a character remain poetically significant in the mind.
A contrast of any page of an epic with one of a romance will show their essential unlikeness. Note, for instance, the beginning of the "Gerusalemme Liberata." The first stanza presents "the illustrious captain who warred for Heaven and saved the sepulchre of Christ,the many deeds which he wrought by arms and by wisdom,his great toil, and his glorious achievement. Hell opposed him, the mingled populations of Asia and Africa leagued against him,but all in vain, for Heaven smiled, and guided the wandering bands beneath his sacred ensigns." Such are the splendid elements of the poem, outlining in a stanza the finest type, objects, and scenery of mediaeval heroism. The second stanza invokes the Muse,"Not thou whose brow was wreathed with the unenduring bays of Helicon, but thou who in angelic choirs hast a golden crown set with immortal stars,do thou breathe celestial ardor into the poet's heart!" Then follows an allusion to a profound matter of temper and experience. He prays that "the Muse will pardon, if sometimes he adorn his page with other charms than her own; for thus, perhaps, he may win the world to his higher meanings, shrouding severe truths in soft verses. As the rim of the bitter cup is sweetened which is extended to the sick child, so may he, by beauties not quite Christian, attract mankind to read his whole poem to their health." Such is the stately soaring of the epical Muse, the Muse of ideal history. Scholars find Greece completely prefigured in Homer, and the time may come when Dante and Tasso shall be the leading authorities for the history of the Middle Ages, and Milton for that of the ages of Protestantism.
In such comparison novels are insignificant and imbecile. Though, like "Contarini Fleming," they may begin with a magnificent paragraph, and fine passages be scattered through the volumes, they are yet rarely stories of ideas as well as persons, rarely succeed in involving events of more than temporary interest, and rarely, perhaps, should be called great mental products.
Not less strikingly does the difference between the epic and the novel appear in their different uses. The one is the inspiration of great historical action, the other of listless repose. The statesman, in the moment of debate, and in the dignity of conscious power, finds sympathy and encouragement in a passage of his favorite epic. Its grand types are ever in fellowship with high thoughts. The novel is for the lighter moment after the deed is done, when he is no longer brunting Fate, but reclining idly, and reflecting humorously or malignly on this life. The epic is closely and strongly framed, like the gladiator about to strike a blow: the novel is relaxed and at careless ease, like the club-man after lighting his pipe. The latter does not bear the burden of severe responsibility, but is a thing of holidays and reactions. Still, as of old, it answers to the contemplative castellar cry,"Hail, romancer! come and divert me,make me merry! I wish to be occupied, but not employed,to muse passively, not actively. Therefore, hail! tell me a story,sing me a song! If I were now in the van of an army and civilization, higher thoughts would engross me. But I am unstrung, and wish to be fanned, not helmeted."
It has sometimes been claimed that the romantic style is essentially lyrical. But though the idea from which many novels start was perhaps the proper germ for one or more lyrics, it never attains in romance a pure and unincumbered development. We may illustrate the different intellectual creations founded on a common conception by imagining how one of Wordsworth's lyrical fancies might have been developed in three volumes of romance instead of three stanzas of poetry.
"She dwelt among the untrodden ways,
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love."
The first line, romantically treated, would include description, soliloquy, and narrative, to show that in solitude the maiden had habits, duties, something to think about and be interested in. The accidental approach of some cosmopolitan visitor would give occasion to illustrate dramatically the contrast between life in retirement and in society. Some novelists also would inflict, either by direct lecture or by conversation of the actors, very admirable reflections on the comparative advantages of the two conditions. The second line would perhaps suggest only geographical lore and descriptions of scenery, though historical episodes might be added. The third line would involve a minute description of dress, complexion, stature, and wild gracefulness. In a psychological investigation it would come out what strange and simple notions she entertained of the great world, and what charming qualities of unsophisticated character belonged to her as she merrily or pensively went through her accustomed tasks. The fourth line, in which love is the text, would swell into mammoth proportions. New characters would be especially necessary in this culminating part of the story; and though they should be "very few," they would long occupy the novelist with their diverse excellencies or villanies, their rivalries and strategies. It is probable that the complete development of the stanza à la romance would give a circumstantial history of the maiden from her birth, with glimpses more or less clear of all the remarkable people who dwelt near or occasionally visited the springs of Dove. Thus the same conception would become a stanza or a volume, according as its treatment were lyrical or romantic.
It need hardly be shown that the novel is not a drama, not a history, nor fable, nor any sort of philosophical treatise. It may have sentences, paragraphs, or perhaps chapters, in every style and of the highest excellence, as a shapeless architectural pile may rejoice in some exquisite features or ornaments; but combined passages, though they were the collected charms of literature, do not make a work of art. The styles are mixed,a certain sign, according to Lessing, of corruption of taste. Novels present the anomaly of being fiction, but not poetry,of being fruits of imagination, but of imagination improvising its creations from local and temporal things, instead of speaking from a sublime stand-point and linking series of facts with processions of ideas. Sources of history, guides of philosophical retrospection, they may come some time to be; yet one cannot check a feeling of pity for the future historian who, in searching the "Pickwick Papers" for antiquities, finds himself bothered and confused by all the undisciplined witches of Mr. Dickens's imagination.