ellectual manipulation and transmutation into art
of what is spiritually ridiculous in manners and society--he is both in
narrative and in dialogue the greatest between Shakespeare and Mr. George
Meredith. And with both our sympathy is imperfect. We have learned to
be sentimental and self-sufficient with Rousseau, to be romantic and
chivalrous with Scott, to be emotional with Dickens, to take ourselves
seriously with Balzac and George Eliot; there are touches of feeling in
our laughter, even though the feeling be but spite; we have acquired a
habit of politeness--a tradition of universal consideration and respect;
and our theory of satire is rounded by the pleasing generalities of Mr.
Du Maurier on the one hand and the malevolent respectability of Mr. W. S.
Gilbert on the other. It is an age of easy writing and still easier
reading: our authors produce for us much in the manner of the
silkworm--only their term of life is longer; we accept their results in
something of the spirit of them that are interested, and not
commercially, in the processes of silkworms. And M. Guy de Maupassant
can write but hath a devil, and we take him not because of his writing
but because of his devil; and Blank and Dash and So-and-So and the rest
could no more than so many sheep develop a single symptom of possession
among them, and we take them because a devil and they are incompatibles.
And art is short and time is long; and we care nothing for art and almost
as much for time; and there is little if any to choose between Mudie's
latest 'catch' and last year's 'sensation' at Burlington House. And to
one of us it is 'poor Fielding'; and to another Fielding is merely gross,
immoral, and dull; and to most the story of that last journey to Lisbon
is unknown, and Thackeray's dream of Fielding--a novelist's presentment
of a purely fictitious character--is the Fielding who designed and built
and finished for eternity. Which is to be pitied? The artist of
_Amelia_ and _Jonathan Wild_, the creator of the Westerns and Parson
Adams and Colonel Bath? or we the whippersnappers of sentiment--the
critics who can neither read nor understand?

THE END

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND REVIEWS***

******* This file should be named 22280.txt or 22280.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http: