Masters of the English Novel | Page 3

Wilton," the prototype of later books like "Gil Blas" and "Robinson
Crusoe,"--these were the early attempts to give prose narration a closer
knitting, a more organic form.
But all such tentative striving was only preparation; fiction in the sense
of more or less formless prose narration, was written for about two
centuries without the production of what may be called the
Novel in the modern meaning of the word. The broader name fiction
may properly be applied, since, as we shall see, all novels are fiction,
but all fiction is by no means Novels. The whole development of the
Novel, indeed, is embraced within little more than a century and a half;
from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present time. The term
Novel is more definite, more specific than the fiction out of which it
evolved; therefore, we must ask ourselves wherein lies the essential
difference. Light is thrown by the early use of the word in critical
reference in English. In reading the following from Steele's "Tender
Husband," we are made to realize that the stark meaning of the term
implies something new: social interest, a sense of social solidarity:
"Our amours can't furnish out a Romance; they'll make a very pretty
Novel."
This clearly marks a distinction: it gives a hint as to the departure made
by Richardson in 1742, when he published "Pamela." It is not strictly
the earliest discrimination between the Novel and the older romance;
for the dramatist Congreve at the close of the seventeenth century
shows his knowledge of the distinction. And, indeed, there are hints of
it in Elizabethan criticism of such early attempts as those of Lyly, Nast,
Lodge and others. Moreover, the student of criticism as it deals with the
Novel must also expect to meet with a later confusion of nomenclature;
the word being loosely applied to any type of prose fiction in contrast
with the short story or tale. But here, at an early date, the severance is
plainly indicated between the study of contemporary society and the

elder romance of heroism, supernaturalism, and improbability. It is a
difference not so much of theme as of view-point, method and
intention.
For underlying this attempt to come closer to humanity through the
medium of a form of fiction, is to be detected an added interest in
personality for its own sake. During the eighteenth century, commonly
described as the Teacup Times, an age of powder and patches, of
etiquette, epigram and surface polish, there developed a keener sense of
the value of the individual, of the sanctity of the ego, a faint prelude to
the note that was to become so resonant in the nineteenth century,
sounding through all the activities of man. Various manifestations in
the civilization of Queen Anne and the first Georges illustrate the new
tendency.
One such is the coffee house, prototype of the bewildering club life of
our own day. The eighteenth century coffee house, where the men of
fashion and affairs foregathered to exchange social news over their
glasses, was an organization naturally fostering altruism; at least, it
tended to cultivate a feeling for social relations.
Again, the birth of the newspaper with the Spectator Papers in the early
years of the century, is another such sign of the times: the newspaper
being one of the great social bonds of humanity, for good or bad,
linking man to man, race to race in the common, well-nigh
instantaneous nexus of sympathy. The influence of the press at the time
of a San Francisco or Messina horror is apparent to all; but its effect in
furnishing the psychology of a business panic is perhaps no less potent
though not so obvious. When Addison and Steele began their genial
conversations thrice a week with their fellow citizens, they little
dreamed of the power they set a-going in the world; for here was the
genesis of modern journalism. And whatever its abuses and
degradations, the fourth estate is certainly one of the very few widely
operative educational forces to-day, and has played an important part in
spreading the idea of the brotherhood of man.
That the essay and its branch form, the character sketch, both found in
the Spectator Papers, were contributory to the Novel's development, is

sure. The essay set a new model for easy, colloquial speech: just the
manner for fiction which was to report the accent of contemporary
society in its average of utterance. And the sketch, seen in its delightful
efflorescence in the Sir Roger De Coverly papers series by Addison, is
fiction in a sense: differing therefrom in its slighter framework, and the
aim of the writer, which first of all is the delicate delineation of
personality, not plot and the study of the social complex. There is the
absence of plot