Since the Elizabethans

Cosmopolis, 1 October 1896, pages 42-58, 6,722 words

It has not been sufficiently, if it has been remarked at all, that Slav and Celtic fiction differ fundamentally from Saxon, and in this respect, that while the former make invariably for primary ideas, the latter is uniformly contented with secondary. But only since the Elizabethans is the Saxon satisfied with the representation of the mere appearance of life. Shakespeare’s tragedies are pure elucidations of moral truths. “Hamlet” illustrates the case of a man whose dreams are in conflict with circumstances; "Macbeth” is the drama of ambition; “Othello” is the infuriated male, the struggle for the female; “Lear,” parental altruism; “Romeo and Juliet,” the rapture of adolescent love; “Antony and Cleopatra,” the boundless madness of the love-passion when it takes a man in middle age.

The transition from Shakespeare to Balzac is the easiest in literature, and in "La Cousine Bette,” his most dramatic novel, the primary idea which sustains the narrative is the persistence of the amorous temperament in an elderly man, and in “Les Mémoires de deux Jeunes Mariées” we are confronted with the eternal problem: Shall we choose a life of pleasure or of duty? Shall a woman cultivate her senses, or shall she devote herself to her home, her children, and the advancement of her husband’s interests? The "Chef d'oeuvre Inconnu” relates the story of a celebrated painter who has been engaged for years upon a picture which he believes to be his finest. He has always refused to show the picture; and when at last, yielding to the entreaties of his friends, he uncovers it, they can distinguish no design, only a mass of multicoloured crustations, out of which in one corner appears a miraculously painted foot, all that remains of the original picture, all that the labour of years has not obliterated. Possibly it will be well to note here that the intention of this article is not with symbolism but with primary ideas, and that the two must not be confused, though indeed the alliance is as close as that of values with chiaroscuro. The symbol begins the moment the writer perceives that his character represents an idea. To us all Othello is a symbol of jealousy; Hamlet, of doubt. Lucien, in “Illusions Perdues,” summarises all that is inherently enchanting and imaginative in a young man, Philip, in “Un Ménage de Garçon,” all the surly ferocity of a soldier by nature, a drunken soldier reeking of foul tobacco, a thief who robs his mother, his aunt, his brother; a wretch incapable of aught else but physical courage, and redeemed by it in sufficient measure to be endurable to the reader. But as Balzac’s novels are brought together under the general title of the “Human Comedy,” as many of his themes are comedy themes, it may be well to point out how, like Shakespeare in his lighter pieces, he conveys a sense of the eternal in the comment with which he surrounds his characters. Does not every scene in “Twelfth Night,” no matter how farcical, seem to breathe the sensation that all is dream “and we the shadows of the dream”? That beautiful sadness was the subconsciousness of Shakespeare’s mind, and the subconsciousness of Balzac’s was a passionate will to live. So we rise from the comedies happily sighing, and from the novels eager to understand life.

Were the stories and characters of Balzac taken away from him, he would be still a great writer; on the love of parents for their children, of husbands for their wives, of lovers for their mistresses, of mistresses for their lovers, of scholars for ideas, on the joy of life, the peace of the grave, the vanity of work, the impulse to accomplish, Balzac has spoken as profoundly as Shakespeare. Even the necessity of worship he understands, and expresses it as sympathetically as Pascal. To compose pretty sentences on the subject of the colour of the seas and trees, to skim the surface of any secondary emotion, is to establish a claim to be considered a graceful writer, such as R.L. Stevenson undoubtedly was; but to be a great writer it is surely necessary to say profound things on profound subjects. It seems strange that contemporary criticism should have entirely forgotten what seems an obvious truth, and that writers should be judged according to the infinite measure of their superficiality. Balzac and Landor thought otherwise. On every subject on which the heart may be moved they have said something penetrating, something essential. If the reader will turn from Balzac to his favourite Saxon novelist, Fielding or Thackeray, he will find there men and women admirably observed in their superficial appearances; he will find men and women depicted as we see them; each will be stamped with his or her age, and with the habits and customs of his or her class. But the emotions which move them will be always secondary emotions. In “Tom Jones” and "Vanity Fair” no mention is made of religion, but in Trollope it induces an attendance in church, and if the young lady’s sweetheart goes to India a little slumming. But no one surrenders the world for an idea, nor society for a love-passion, And “Tom Jones” illustrates the moderation —- I use the word as synonymous with materialism — that Saxon literature fell into even as early as the middle of last century. The book was written when sexual relations were alluded to more openly in literature than they are now; of this literary licence Fielding took full advantage, and produced a novel which for sheer outspokenness knows no rival amid English novelists. But in literature the result is the same whether the writer accepts the materialism of the back parlour or the smoking-room. The Established Church prefers the tone of the former to that of the latter, and, no doubt, very rightly; but we are not discussing ethics but literature, and that we do not express ourselves as openly as Fielding is an unimportant literary accident. The essential is that the Saxon discovered the materialist novel in “Tom Jones,” and liked it so much that he has gone on producing it ever since. Thackeray improved its form, Dickens enriched it with genial caricatures, Eliot painted it over with bleak Protestant positivism; but in essentials it has not changed, for the character of the race has not changed for the last hundred and fifty years. The ideas we find in “Tom Jones” are on the same plane as those we find in Trollope.

And the quality of mind which the first pages of “Tom Jones” reveal determines, not only the exact depth of the author’s mind, but the mind of the English novel ever since. We are at once confronted by a good-natured shallow optimism which would convince us that, on the whole, everything is for the best, that if we are not rich it is probably our own fault, that we certainly will be rich some day if we are industrious. Meanwhile there is the prosperity of others to admire. This is Fielding’s outlook, and immediately the worldly possessions of Mr. Allworth afford him the liveliest satisfaction. He admires the house and ground, thinking how much they cost, and the assumption that Mr. Allworth is the most virtuous of men, since he owns such a handsome property, is not far distant. Indeed, one of the charms of the book is the author’s unbiased faith in his own jovial materialism; his jovial optimism seems part of the big bounding style; it bounces along like a brig in a brisk breeze, and for a while, until the moral void of the narrative begins to be perceived, it is almost a physical pleasure to read. So free and so fluent is the narrative, that the reader may say, indeed he should say, that any pupil, whether of Tolstoi, Flaubert, or Balzac, may take a lesson from Fielding in tale-telling. But having said so much, he should beware of saying more. Adventitiously he will be encouraged to praise, for he will certainly remember Thackeray’s often quoted appreciation, “That since Fielding no one had painted the portrait of a man.” Since he remembers it, I would have him consider this saying in relation to what he is reading. I would have him ask himself if he learns any more about Tom Jones from the text than that he was not wanting in physical courage, and that he liked wenches; and then, if the portrayal of these two qualities is sufficient to constitute a portrait of a man? If so, a man differs no wise from a bull-terrier. Man may be better, or he may be much worse; but he cannot be the same as a bull-terrier, and for the not insufficient reason that he happens to be a man. However this may be contested, it does not seem to have struck Fielding when he created, or Thackeray when he criticised the creation, that to differentiate Tom Jones from the pure dog it was necessary to endow him with a conscience. For the purpose of this argument it is not necessary that we should attach any further meaning to the word conscience than the complexity occasioned in the instincts by the intelligence. And as this complexity is man, it does not seem to be unduly exacting to ask that a portrait of a man should include a conscience, a morality or an immorality. As Fielding’s portrait stands it signifies, not a man, but a bull-terrier masquerading in the guise of a man.

Of Squire Western it is not necessary to say much. The reader will easily perceive that the Squire represents no moral quality whatever; he merely likes hunting and drink, oaths are his habit of speech, and, like Gilray’s caricatures, he admirably illustrates the life of the time. Sophia, the heroine, is a white sheet of paper bearing this inscription: A virtuous young lady, admirably brought up, and, therefore, innocent of passions, tastes, or prejudices. Lady Bellaston is the only well-known character in fiction about whom nothing is known. She is Lady Bellaston, and she took Tom Jones into the dining-room.

When man wandered the world a solitary animal, he composed sun and nature myths; as man acquired knowledge through reflection and observation of his own nature, he recomposed the already ancient myths, introducing into them a vague likeness of human passion; as man’s knowledge of man grew still more precise, he wrote stories about men and women — men and women who had done great deeds. So between the Greek and Elizabethan dramatists the difference is one of form: in intention Hamlet and Orestes are the same. But there is nothing in Fielding and Thackeray which recalls Shakepeare or Marlowe; the similarity, however, between Lear and the Père Goriot is proverbial. We cannot read Tourgueneff and not think of the perfect simplicities of antiquity, nor Tolstoi and not think of the splendid fecundity of Michael Angelo. If you would have an illustration from Ireland, I point to Goldsmith’s Vicar, which is surely a part of the great tradition, at least nearer to it than anything in Dickens or Eliot. It was in the last two hundred years that the great change in Saxon literature came about, and the dates coincide with England’s great commercial prosperity. Shall we then seek the reasons of the change in ease and comfort of living, and in preoccupation of material advancement, or in the enormous increase in population? Shall we say that man cannot imagine heroic incarnations of the passions when he is always watching the habits of his next-door neighbours?

We read of violent ends in the newspapers, so we do not doubt that the passions are the same now as ever they were; but from much proximity it happens that we cannot believe that Mrs. So-and-so, who lives over the way, is capable of jumping into the Thames for love of Lord So-and-so, whose brougham we observe daily before her door. But, however we may doubt the strength of Mrs. So-and-so’s love-passion, we cannot ignore the brougham, nor do the exigencies of our social life permit us to be silent regarding the various stories, in which dinners at the Savoy, boxes at the opera, and presents of jewellery play a prominent part. Then, for one who can describe a love-passion pursuing its course to the edge of life and over it, a thousand can narrate the externals of Mrs. So-and- so’s life; and for one reader who can understand the former literature, a million will devour the latter. In this flagrant materialism an important step was taken when the novelist decided to be silent regarding the exact relations of Lord So-and-so and Mrs. So-and-so, while reproducing every incriminating fact. The advantages of the new method are obvious. The writer sets all his readers wondering what the truth is, thereby gaining the attractiveness of the law court, and the shallow reader is tricked into belief in the writer’s refinement. “He has never said anything coarse; we can take her guilty or innocent, as we please. He knows that we are competent judges on such matters, and could safely leave the case of Becky Sharp in our hands.” Such is the judgment of the common mind. The more subtle mind will ask, why was the incident selected (the famous scene in which Rawdon Crawley knocks down Lord Steyne), if the exact relations between Lord Steyne and Becky Sharp are not to be set before the reader? Such an incident should be the concrete expression of a moral crisis in the lives of three people. If she is not guilty, the scene is not a symbol but a mere gesticulation; if she is guilty, Thackeray, by not declaring the fact, shuts himself out from all contemplation of the woman’s inner self. She becomes a mere exteriority, and the incident itself as unimportant as any other item of social news. If ever there was any doubt as to Thackeray’s race, his treatment of this scene would set it at rest. Yet another point which criticism has overlooked is that Thackeray is as reticent regarding Becky’s temperament as he is about her conduct. He does not even tell us if she was a sensual woman, an extraordinary omission; for surely in depicting an adventuress it was imperative to be explicit on that point. Shakespeare thought so. He has indicated the voluptuous temperament of his Egyptian Queen, and how it reveals Antony to us. Think of Balzac’s Madame Marneffe, or Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, or Tourgueneff's Irene. Or if the reader will have practical experience, La Pompadour’s confidences to Madame du Hausset. But I will not stop to argue that a cold woman cannot be an adventuress. However that may be, it is certain that Thackeray is silent where the whole literary tradition declares he should have been explicit.

Was he silent on the temperament of his principal character because he wished to soothe the prejudices of his generation? It seems to me that the entire structure of his novel depended on his keeping silence on this one point. If she was a cold woman, Lord Steyne need not have been her lover, then the episode would have assumed a foolish and futile air, unless, indeed, a volume was written to explain it; if she was a passionate woman, Lord Steyne certainly was her lover, in that case, too, a volume would have to be written explaining her feeling for her husband before and after, her feeling for Lord Steyne, and a multitude of other things — in a word, Thackeray would have found himself in the midst of primary emotions. Not having the strength to cope with them, he exercised his very great tact, and cheated the reader by some frivolous remarks to the effect that, if he looks beneath the waves and discovers the monsters that lurk there, he does so on his own responsibility; the author will vouch that he has allowed no trace of their tails or fins to appear above the surface.

Becky Sharp is a wonderful portrait of the externals of a woman’s life, but has Thackeray endowed her with any morality? In other words, do we know more of her than we do of a woman with whom we have been on visiting terms for many years, and with whose visible fortune we are perfectly acquainted? I think not, for such limitations were deliberately planned by Thackeray. He had decided that he would paint the visible world as it appears to us, and he never allowed himself to be tempted beyond the limits of this design, and, judged by his intention, his success is complete. If little else, Thackeray was, at least, an admirable artist. The characters in “Vanity Fair” are known to us as the friends we meet in clubs and drawing-rooms. They are drawn in firm clear outline; their habits, manners, and habitual gestures have been well observed and understood, and the result is a set of cartoon portraits marvellously well executed; so well that as long as we are with them we can find no fault; it is not until we leave them that we become conscious that we only know them as we know our acquaintances, that we cannot think them or dream them; they pass and repass; but we learn no more about them; from the point of view of a human menagerie, we can find no fault in "Vanity Fair.” We would ask if it is any more?

Thackeray’s practice of staying the progress of his narrative so that he may comment on his characters and matters concerning them has often been questioned. It would have been to more purpose if, instead of questioning a method which has served the art of Shakespeare and Balzac, criticism had applied itself to the task of explaining what quality of mind Thackeray exhibits in these digressions.

Surely there are two Thackerays: the designer of the four families, the Osbornes, the Sedleys, the Rawdon Crawleys, and the Pitt Crawleys — it would be rash to say that “Vanity Fair” was not the most originally and grandly designed of all novels, and that its spacious corridors are not decorated with the most magnificent set of outline portraits in the world — and the amiable author of many little reproofs to young ladies who want to be married. In all novels, except “Tom Jones” and "Vanity Fair,” the designer of character and the commentator stand on the same intellectual plane. In “Tom Jones” the difference is striking enough, in "Vanity Fair” it is overwhelming; for the design of “Vanity Fair” is immeasurably superior to that of “Tom Jones” but the comment is hardly better. In some ways it is worse, for the timbre of Fielding’s voice is more genial, more open, more manly. In one book the good Saxon farmer is holloaing in his woods and fields, in the other the Saxon farmer has left his farm and gone up to town. The voice is smoother, it is even a little mincing, and has acquired a peculiar middle-class gentility. Hearing it, we imagine a genial old gentleman attired in a white waistcoat and wearing spats on his boots.... To speak of Thackeray as cynic, as satirist, is, when we think of it, one of the worst literary vulgarities of our time. While reproving young ladies and frightening dowagers, he is the very Saxon optimist, and in perfect maturity. For satire we have to go to Swift. His violence, his excess, his idealism is Celtic. With what splendid fury he attacks human nature at its roots; and his roar awakens sensations of primaeval caves and awful forests; his teeth and claws are long and strong as those of a savage animal, and he buries them in the primary lusts of man — his is not the domestic play of an admirable Victorian tabby cat that from the hearthrug inflicts an amiable scratch on the hand of a young lady who hopes she may find an eligible husband.

Painters speak of an undefinable but easily discernible something which they call quality. If a picture have quality, a bit of brown background or grey foreground enchants the eye and attracts the fingers. In literature there is a near equivalent to what painters call quality. It is not style, for what | speak of transpires in translation; it is the charm that the mind of the writer exercises upon you. Let me try to explain. The quality of Shelley’s mind is like the blue of the sky, the quality of Landor is like marble, the quality of Balzac is like silk. But if I may pass from sight to sound I think I shall bring my meaning a little closer. Shakespeare’s mind is like a great orchestra of violins, there are other instruments, but the violin predominates, especially the ‘cellos; Balzac’s orchestra is as vast, but the quality of sound is not so beautiful, there is, perhaps, a little too much brass in it. Tourgueneff’s orchestra is smaller; it is composed principally of wood wind. He enchants us with the magic of flutes. If these comparisons convey my sensation to the reader, he will admit at once that the quality of Thackeray’s mind must be compared to the piano.

“All happy families resemble one another, every unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion,” is a sentence which instantly captures you with its sweetness. We are drawn at once in all our tenderest sympathies to a man who could think like that. And with this phrase Tolstoi begins his novel, “Anna Karenina,” and though it be only necessary to read this first sentence to perceive that Tolstoi is Thackeray’s intellectual superior, the two books, if considered together, show that Tolstoi was under considerable obligations to Thackeray for the form of his novel. The conception of a story to be told in four parts, each part being a separate family, two of these families being aristocratic, two commercial, with the idea that these families should overlap, and that a governess should supply the central point and connecting link between the four families, was Thackeray’s own conception; and the largeness of the conception has only to be stated to be perceived. The limitations of Thackeray’s talent compelled him to exhibit society from the point of view of a human menagerie, and, admitting the validity of the intention, we must admire the admirable fitness of the design for the purpose for which it was designed. It is one of those designs which, when invented, serve for all time. It is impossible to improve on the shape of the pyramid, or that of the sonnet. Such designs impose themselves; and, once the desire to paint a social picture awoke in Tolstoi’s mind, he was, willy-nilly, forced to accept Thackeray’s formula. Probably Tolstoi never said, "Here is a magnificent design, but Thackeray has not carried his portraits any further than an outline. I will take his design and fill it with portraits of men’s passions.” Yet this is exactly what happened. The two novels resemble each other more closely in their structure and intention than any other two great novels with which I am acquainted. In the first place the intention of both is identical, a comprehensive vision of life as represented by the wealthy classes. In the second place the form is the same. Like "Vanity Fair,” “Anna Karenina’ is a story divided into four parts, and each part consists of a separate family — Anna and her husband, Anna and Vronsky, Levin and Kitty, Stepan and Dolly; and these similarities of form are sufficient to establish the obligation that “Anna Karenina” is under to “Vanity Fair.”

In the management of the four families as much constructive skill is displayed in one as the other. In “Anna Karenina” the families are of the same rank; two commercial families are not set against two aristocratic families as in “Vanity Fair,” for Tolstoi’s intention was to contrast moral aspects rather than social differences. We have a wife who deceives a husband, a husband who deceives a wife; we have a love marriage, and a pair of lovers whom society will not recognise. The links which bind these four families are subtly forged. Anna is Stepan’s sister. Vronsky was first in love with Kitty, he abandoned her for Anna; Levin was in love with Kitty, but she preferred Vronsky; it was not till long afterwards, till she had recovered from her disappointment, that she consented to accept Levin. The modifications introduced by Tolstoi into Thackeray’s construction are slight, but the very first sentence notifies a difference not only in the intelligence of the two men, but a radical difference in their attitude of mind. From the first few pages of "Vanity Fair” the reader will gather that it has no moral significance whatever. The moral significance of “Anna Karenina” is as obvious as that of Othello. Each character stands as a sign for a human idea. Anna represents the woman who cannot live a life that is not in accordance with her principles, and is thereby goaded into an act of violence. In her case the act takes the form of suicide. Of this conflict of temperaments in the same person Thackeray would not have had the dimmest notion; he would have understood nothing more than a woman who committed suicide because she found herself becoming more and more an outcast from society. Levin represents the man who, perplexed by the cruelty and deceit of worldly life, seeks for some clue to guide him out of the labyrinth. Even the most perverse will admit that Thackeray was not capable of such a conception; if such an idea was presented to him, he would, as far as he could understand it, have thought it a bore. But one character at least is common to both books, Rawdon Crawley and Vronsky. The comparison is a fair one. They are both young, they are both soldiers, they belong to the upper classes, their tastes are the same…. They are intended by their authors to represent the average honesty and intelligence. Now, tell me if there is anything in Thackeray’s portrait as searching as the following lines: —

“Vronsky’s life was especially happy, because he had formed a special code of rules which never failed to regulate what he ought to do. This code applied to a very small circle of duties, but they were strictly determined, and as Vronsky had never occasion to go outside this circle, he had never been obliged to hesitate about his course of action. The code prescribed unfailingly, that it was necessary to pay gambling debts, but not his tailor’s bills; that it was impossible to tell lies, except to women; the only persons legitimately open to deceit were husbands; that insults could be committed, but never pardoned. All these precepts might be wrong and illogical, but they were indispensable, and while fulfilling them Vronsky felt that he was calm, and had a right to hold his head high. Since his intimacy with Anna, however,” &c.

The material habits of a young soldier’s life were as well observed by Thackeray as by Tolstoi; but Tolstoi’s portrait has an inwardness which Thackeray’s has not. And as it is with his portrait of Rawdon Crawley, so it is with all Thackeray’s portraits. They are lacking in atmosphere, in chiaroscuro; there is no suggestion, they are externals. If this be not true, why is the remark so common, “I wonder what Becky really was inside?” Such a remark would not be possible about Hamlet, Madame Bovary, or Anna Karenina. We wonder less what Dobbin and Amelia were like inside, if the colloquialism be again permitted. We can think them more easily than we can think Becky Sharp and Rawdon Crawley. We do not see them as distinctly, it is true; but then we do not see Titian’s portrait of his daughter as distinctly as the latest photograph of the latest actress. Levin — who asks the eternal questions, what do we mean in this universe? we must mean something: what? — has been refused by Kitty. He has retired to his country estate in despair, and seeks relief from grief in attending to the details of his property, and in manual labour in the fields. The hay harvest has begun; he goes out with the mowers at daybreak, and wields the scythe through the fresh morning hours; when the sun stands over their heads, the mowers pause, and then they labour again. They eat, and sleep, and awake again to work. As the sun declines the grass grows heavier under the scythe; the day seems endless. The mowers are camping out; and lying on the hay there is no night, the sky has merely darkened, the night is merely the passing of a veil across the sky. Levin looks up at the pearly clouds that float about the moon, and reflects on the vanity of things. Nothing is worth our peace of mind, and such labour as he has endured brings a deep and holy peace. Then it were better to wed one of the peasant women who has worked with him. I remember that, as the veil of the summer night is withdrawn, he perceives coming along the roads in the grey light a coach laboriously drawn by four horses. One is, I think, leaning heavily against the pole; the driver is avoiding the ruts. Levin sees a face at the window; it is she! It is Kitty! She is journeying to her estate, situated at some little distance from his. Then his heart cries out. But I must turn to the book for the exact words.

"Horror seized him as he remembered his resolution of marrying a krestianka. In that carriage which flashed by him on the other side of the road, and disappeared, was the only possible answer to this life’s enigma which had tormented and puzzled him so long. She was now out of sight; the rumble of the wheels had ceased and scarcely could he hear the bells. The barking of the dogs told him the carriage was passing through the village. And now there remained only the lonely prairies, the distant village, and himself, an alien and a stranger to everything, walking solitary on the deserted highway. He looked at the sky; hoping to find there the mother-of-pearl tints which he had admired; and which personified for him the movement of his thoughts during the night. But he could find nothing that resembled the mother-of-pearl hues. There, at an immeasurable height, that mysterious change had taken place. There was no sign of the sea-shell, but in its place there extended over the whole level extent of the heavens a tapestry of cirrus clouds sweeping on and sweeping on. The sky was growing blue and luminous, and with tenderness and less of mystery it answered his question.

“‘No,’ he said to himself, ‘however good this simple laborious life may be, | cannot bring myself to it. I love her.’”

Now if we let our minds revert to the famous scene when Rawdon Crawley knocks Lord Steyne down, and flings the jewellery the Marquis has given Becky in his face, we must perforce be struck with its hollowness. For what sentiment do we gather from it? None, save one of violence. The scene is, as I have said, a gesticulation. Perhaps the scene when Anna is believed to be dying affords a closer parallel. She sends for her husband, and bids him be reconciled to Vronsky. She will die more easily if she knows that with her death their feud will cease.... They are reconciled, but she recovers; and with her life their hostility recommences. I need not quote; for told even thus simply its significance will be apprehended by everyone. Or shall I refer the reader to the wonderful scene in “The Maid’s Tragedy,” where the courtier is told by his wife on his wedding-night that she is the king’s mistress and loves the king? Or shall I choose one of the many beautiful scenes in Racine, where, though the vehicle of expression be courtly formula, the soul confesses its deepest secrets? Or shall I turn to Cervantes’ great symbolic tale for further illustration? Or shall I take one of Ibsen’s dramas — “The Master Builder,” for instance? But never will my point be conceded, whatever evidence I bring in support of it, for to do so would be an admission that hitherto England had not produced a great novelist. Yet, however we look at it, it seems clear that since the Elizabethans the Saxon race has abandoned primary ideas for secondary. My critics will therefore engage in argument showing that great literature can exist independently of ideas, or they will admit that late Saxon fiction must be considered on a lower plane than Celtic and Slav. And with the late Saxon, I fear I must include the Scotch Celt. For have Scott and Stevenson been really more concerned with the inner life than Thackeray or Trollope? In adventures they have indulged, but the narration of picturesque anecdotes brings us no nearer to the secret trouble of life than descriptions of material enjoyments in English country houses. Nothing is really effected by changing the circumstance from a pleasant armchair to a pirate ship on the Spanish Main. The same literature is often produced in both circumstances. In neither need there be (Thackeray and Stevenson are proof of it) any of that secret inquietude which never ceases in the soul of man. Twenty thousand pounds to our credit at the bank do not silence it; and if we are not killed in the boarding, the question comes, What then? There shall come a day when we too shall be overthrown. There is no moment when the secret fear of life is wholly dead; a faint tingle never dies out of our ears. Lovers clasp each other and vow that nothing shall part them. Why do they vow? It would be useless to explain myself further. I pass on to another point.... If in Thackeray and Fielding, and Scott and Stevenson, there is very little sensation of life’s inquietude, there is none whatever of the eternal mystery, and that is what is most human in man; his soul is full of it, and any accident may cause it to overflow — the mere sight of the sky, the high, cloudless sky, that it should exist, that he should see it and be able to think it, is enough.

“‘Do not I know,’ thought Levin, ‘that that is infinity of space, and not a vault of blue stretching above me? But, however I strain my sight, I can only see a vaulted dome; and in spite of my knowledge of infinite space, | have more satisfaction in looking at it as a blue vaulted dome than when I try to look beyond.’ Levin stopped thinking. He listened to the mysterious voices which seemed to wake joyfully in him. ‘Is it really faith?’ he thought, fearing to believe in his happiness. ‘My God, I thank Thee,’ he cried; and he swallowed down the sobs that arose, and brushed away with both hands the tears that filled his eyes.”

Scott has sent forth many heroes to die, but what do we learn but the bare fact that they died from a terrible thrust or blow? Of the yearnings of dying eyes for the sky and grass and sunshine, and the fear of a dying brain of the dark loneliness of death, we are vouchsafed hardly a word. The intimate pictures of the soul, intense and true as Prince Andrie’s death in “War and Peace,” are not to be found in Scott or Stevenson.

“Prince Andrie not only knew he was going to die, but he also felt that he was dying, that he was already half way towards death.

“He experienced a consciousness of alienation from everything earthly, and a strange, beatific exhilaration of being. Without impatience, without anxiety, he waited for what was before him; that ominous Eternal Presence, unknown, far away, which had never ceased all through his life to haunt his senses was now near at hand, and by virtue of that strange exhilaration which he felt almost comprehensible and palpable.”

And what revelation of the under life do we find in Thackeray or Fielding, of that vague, undefinable, yet intensely real life that lies beneath our consciousness, that life which knows, wills, and perceives without help from us? Surely it is in this under life, this unconscious will, that resides the true humanity, the humanity of the ages, of the long, long circumstances that preceded birth. It is there that we find the wonder and mystery of life. Thence proceeds all faith, all mission, and the inexplicable warnings, appellations, and impulses which we must obey. It is in the under life that the great novelist finds his inspiration, and the business of his art. He regards the brief circumstance of actual life as the raiment. The events which fill the great canvas of "Anna Karenina,’ and the still vaster canvas of “Peace and War,” are only important so far as they reveal what is passing beneath the surface. They are but signs and symbols, and the beauty of Tolstoi’s art is that nowhere can we determine the limits of either life; so beautifully are they interwoven that they are in the book as they are in life, indivisible forms of one and the same thing. The subconscious is the real life, out of which chance has beckoned us for a while; it is the life of the ages, and through it Tolstoi enables us to perceive affinities in all things. With what effect the wolf-hunt comes upon us in "Peace and War,” the capture and the binding of the savage animal. Does Tolstoi mean Napoleon, or is the likeness a chance one? Nothing in Tolstoi is disconnected, though we cannot point to the line of intersection. No one has pushed the principle of homogeneity so far. Organic matter is on the way to becoming vegetable, and vegetable matter is on the way to becoming animal, the animal is rising up to man, and man aspires towards God. In the wonderful scene of the mowers we have man in happy communion with the earth, of which he is but a part: all is in evolution. Yet not a trace of bleak positivism, rather a sublime pantheism, which seems to exalt all things to a vast spirituality. The chapter in which Levin goes out snipe-shooting thrills with a sense of this spirituality of man and things. The cold air, the shaking boughs of the birches, the restless clouds moving through bright spaces of wintry blue, the moss and peat and rushes under foot, the cry of the startled birds, and the quickening of man’s soul to the very rhythm of life. Such is Tolstoi’s interpretation; yet the scene is as vivid as anything in Flaubert, and more completely part and parcel of the whole. No part of the picture is given undue relief; nowhere a shadow of parti pris, of trick, or even method. The picture seems to exist merely in the result.

Of landscape nature “Vanity Fair” has nothing to show, not even Hyde Park, nor the beautiful spectacle of the season flowers in the window-sills. Does this conclude the list of Thackeray’s omissions? Not quite, for I cannot conclude without remarking that Tolstoi’s choice of a large canvas is more clear than Thackeray’s. Tolstoi wished to display life, not in detached figures, but in its endless co-relations; complexity is part of its mystery, and the mystery of life was always foremost in his mind. He wished to exhibit life in its wonderful continuity; he wished his picture to vanish at the covers and not to break off. There is something of this in “Vanity Fair,” but not enough to justify the size of the canvas: the scene in which Amelia accepts Dobbin, and where Becky Sharp is seen for the last time in company with Joe Sedley. There is also a scene surely where Rawdon goes to see his aunt. That too was conceived in the same intention. But —

GEORGE MOORE.