ternal to the man, as in Defoe, be made subservient to
that display of character in which Addison had shown himself a master,
and let them become steps in the development of a love-plot, and the
novel--the novel of the last century, at any rate--is fully formed. As
was the self-contented, and therefore uncreative and prosaic, thought of
the age, which produced the novel, such the novel itself continued to
be. Man, comfortable and acquiescent, wished to amuse himself by a
reflex of the life which he no longer aspired to transcend. He wanted to
enjoy himself twice over--in act and in fancy; or, if the former were
denied him, at least to explore in fancy the world of pleasure and
excitement, of which circumstances abridged or disturbed his enjoyment
in fact. In "the smooth tale, generally of love,"[12] the novelist
supplied the want.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "We have not the least doubt that, if Addison had written a novel,
on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any that we
possess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered, not only as the
greatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the great
English novelists."--Macaulay, 'Life and writings of Addison.'

[12] "A small tale, generally of love."--Johnson's Dictionary.

C. THE MODERN NOVEL A REFLECTION OF ORDINARY LIFE

13. This Johnsonian definition may be objected to as merely accidental,
and as inconsistent with the romantic character which the novel assumed
in the hands of Sir Walter Scott. It expresses, however, adequately
enough the view which the popular novelists prior to Scott took of their
own productions. Cervantes, though in his own great work attaining that
rhapsody of grotesqueness which lies on the edge of poetry, had yet
established the idea of the novel as the antithesis of romance. These
novelists, accordingly, if they are not always telling the reader (like
Fielding), seem yet to be always thinking to themselves, how perfectly
natural their stories are. It is on this naturalness they pride
themselves; and naturalness, in their sense, meant conformity to nature
as it is commonly seen. This is the characteristic feature of the class.
Whether, like Richardson, they analyse character from within, or, like
Miss Austen, develop it in the outward particularities of an unruffled
life--whether they describe, like Fielding, the buoyancy of a generous
animalism, or, like Miss Edgeworth and Miss Burney, the precise
decencies of con