oached, colonised, and annexed with
a success that is not denied. There is scarcely any aspect of the
interestingness of life which is not now rendered in prose fiction--from
landscape-painting to sociology--and none which might not be.
Unnecessary to go back to the ante-Scott age in order to perceive how
the novel has aggrandised itself! It has conquered enormous territories
even since _Germinal_. Within the last fifteen years it has gained. Were
it to adopt the hue of the British Empire, the entire map of the
universe would soon be coloured red. Wherever it ought to stand in the
hierarchy of forms, it has, actually, no rival at the present day as a
means for transmitting the impassioned vision of life. It is, and will
be for some time to come, the form to which the artist with the most
inclusive vision instinctively turns, because it is the most inclusive
form, and the most adaptable. Indeed, before we are much older, if its
present rate of progress continues, it will have reoccupied the dazzling
position to which the mighty Balzac lifted it, and in which he left it
in 1850. So much, by the way, for the rank of the novel.

II

In considering the equipment of the novelist there are two attributes
which may always be taken for granted. The first is the sense of
beauty--indispensable to the creative artist. Every creative artist has
it, in his degree. He is an artist because he has it. An artist works
under the stress of instinct. No man's instinct can draw him towards
material which repels him--the fact is obvious. Obviously, whatever kind
of life the novelist writes about, he has been charmed and seduced by
it, he is under its spell--that is, he has seen beauty in it. He could
have no other reason for writing about it. He may see a strange sort of
beauty; he may--indeed he does--see a sort of beauty that nobody has
quite seen before; he may see a sort of beauty that none save a few odd
spirits ever will or can be made to see. But he does see beauty. To
say, after reading a novel which has held you, that the author has no
sense of beauty, is inept. (The mere fact that you turned over his pages
with interest is an answer to the criticism--a criticism, indeed, which
is not more sagacious than that of the reviewer who remarks: "Mr Blank
has produced a thrilling novel, but unfortunately he cannot write." Mr
Blank has written; and he could, anyhow, write enough to thrill the
reviewer.) All that a wise person will as