FullReads

“Tom Jones,” “Peregrine Pickle,” and “Tristram Shandy” are books a man is the better for reading, if he read them wisely. They teach him that literature, to be a living force, must deal with all sides of life, and that little help comes to us from that silly pretence of ours that we are perfect in all things, leading perfect lives, that only the villain of the story ever deviates from the path of rectitude.

This is a point that needs to be considered by both the makers and the buyers of stories. If literature is to be regarded solely as the amusement of an idle hour, then the less relationship it has to life the better. Looking into a truthful mirror of nature we are compelled to think; and when thought comes in at the window self- satisfaction goes out by the door. Should a novel or play call us to ponder upon the problems of existence, or lure us from the dusty high road of the world, for a while, into the pleasant meadows of dreamland? If only the latter, then let our heroes and our heroines be not what men and women are, but what they should be. Let Angelina be always spotless and Edwin always true. Let virtue ever triumph over villainy in the last chapter; and let us assume that the marriage service answers all the questions of the Sphinx.

Very pleasant are these fairy tales where the prince is always brave and handsome; where the princess is always the best and most beautiful princess that ever lived; where one knows the wicked people at a glance by their ugliness and ill-temper, mistakes being thus rendered impossible; where the good fairies are, by nature, more powerful than the bad; where gloomy paths lead ever to fair palaces; where the dragon is ever vanquished; and where well-behaved husbands and wives can rely upon living happily ever afterwards. “The world is too much with us, late and soon.” It is wise to slip away from it at times to fairyland. But, alas, we cannot live in fairyland, and knowledge of its geography is of little help to us on our return to the rugged country of reality.

Are not both branches of literature needful? By all means let us dream, on midsummer nights, of fond lovers led through devious paths to happiness by Puck; of virtuous dukes–one finds such in fairyland; of fate subdued by faith and gentleness. But may we not also, in our more serious humours, find satisfaction in thinking with Hamlet or Coriolanus? May not both Dickens and Zola have their booths in Vanity Fair? If literature is to be a help to us, as well as a pastime, it must deal with the ugly as well as with the beautiful; it must show us ourselves, not as we wish to appear, but as we know ourselves to be. Man has been described as a animal with aspirations reaching up to Heaven and instincts rooted–elsewhere. Is literature to flatter him, or reveal him to himself?

Of living writers it is not safe, I suppose, to speak except, perhaps, of those who have been with us so long that we have come to forget they are not of the past. Has justice ever been done to Ouida’s undoubted genius by our shallow school of criticism, always very clever in discovering faults as obvious as pimples on a fine face? Her guardsmen “toy” with their food. Her horses win the Derby three years running. Her wicked women throw guinea peaches from the windows of the Star and Garter into the Thames at Richmond. The distance being about three hundred and fifty yards, it is a good throw. Well, well, books are not made worth reading by the absence of absurdities. Ouida possesses strength, tenderness, truth, passion; and these be qualities in a writer capable of carrying many more faults than Ouida is burdened with. But that is the method of our little criticism. It views an artist as Gulliver saw the Brobdingnag ladies. It is too small to see them in their entirety: a mole or a wart absorbs all its vision.