core.

ON FICTION.

F the many striking characteristics of the present age, the disposition to review our opinions and beliefs is one of the most noticeable: and not only to review, but to go more deeply into all questions, divesting them of the prestige of association and custom, and seeking to penetrate to their inmost That our whole life needs careful revision in this spirit, is a truth of which, happily, we are beginning to be conscious; and great at this moment are the efforts going on to diffuse sounder views in Religion, Politics, and Philosophy. There is, however, a certain class of minds to whom these subjects, vast as they are, are not all important; a class composed of individuals who, without turning their back on active duties, find time to indulge their taste for Poetry and Fiction. That these should have their share of the benefits in question is but simple justice in other words, whilst seeking to diffuse the new principles among Philosophers and Politicians, we must remember that Literature is also to be imbued with the same spirit. That Literature is in fact sadly behind hand, would soon be made evident if its followers were put to a close examination. The subject of Fiction, for instance, is one whereon we have most widely erred, tho indeed, there are few speculative questions the right understanding of which so materially affects our moral and spiritual progress.

What, we ask, is the end of Fiction, according to the majority? To amuse, 'to give pleasure,' 'to relax the mind,' 'or rather,' say those who fancy they are taking high ground, 'to offer a faithful transcript of life.' None of these opinions is entirely erroneous, each end proposed being an end, tho a subordinate one. We content ourself, therefore, with calling attention to the fact that they all are subordinate, and consequently suggesting that the end remains to be sought.

That the end of Fiction, as of all beside, is to minister in some form or other to Man, every opinion, true or erroneous, takes for granted. We differ only when, descending from generalities to particulars, we seek to ascertain the nature of the ministrations in question. This difference of opinion will, of course, be inevitable so long as we regard the subject, as it were, from opposite directions; and therefore, the first step towards harmony must be the fixing on some central

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truth which we are willing to accept as the basis of our speculations. Now, it appears to us, on the principle of the greater including the less,-that, given the end of Man, we have the end of all that ministers unto Man,—so that, if the end of Man be to know and glorify God, the end of Fiction must be to assist in the acquirement of this knowlege. Hence, like Nature, like Art, like every other surrounding influence, the primary object of Fietion is to teach, not to amuse; and it is because subordinate ends have been suffered to usurp the place of this primary one, that so many have failed to see both its power and its beauty. It being, we trust, established, that Fiction is not the playmate of man but his teacher, it remains to show the nature and mode of its operation; in other words, to point out the particular influence it seems destined by God to exercise. a

There is a certain class of minds whose whole interest is merged in things cognizable by the senses,-who wonder at the infatuation with which people quarrel over Ideas,—and who regard literary men, in the words of Napoleon, as mere 'manufacturers of phrases.' With all such persons we have no concern, for the simple reason that to them Fiction is not; just as to the blind and deaf the whole world of sight and sound, to all practical purpose, has ceased to exist. But, leaving this, happily, small minority, let us turn our attention to the great mass of mankind, and enquire what natural wants and desires appear to find their appointed answer in Fiction.

It has been quaintly but significantly asked by Carlyle: Will the whole Finance Ministers, and Upholsterers, and Confectioners of modern Europe, undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one shoeblack happy? They cannot accomplish it above an hour or two.' And this because there is in man a craving that no material food can satisfy, a void that not all the realities which the world has to offer can fill. The shoeblack is to be made happy, tho not by upholsterer or confectioner; he is to be made happy by him who can best cater for the imagination, and who, reading all the secrets of his individual nature, translates them into the one language common to humanity. Hence, the true Monarchs of the world are ever the great Masters of Fiction, for theirs is a moral rather than a material domain; and the man who declared that, when George the fourth was King of England Walter Scott was King of the English,' uttered a spiritual truth of the highest significance. The end of Fiction, then,—as we shall all feel if we analyze its influence on our minds,—is to satisfy that restless craving which rejects outward and visible objects, and, continually reaching forward towards the Invisible and Unseen, must be met by fresh supplies from the great store

• Fiction is not the Playmate, but the Preceptor of Man, in the most emphatic sense, because Truth exercises an additional power by being connected with the Imagination and Affections in the mode of its exhibition. The bare or naked Truth is not the living Truth, but simply its skeleton, and Truth so bare, is always barren-it cannot reform, because it cannot influence the feelings of Man. Hence, in this view, 'Fiction' includes a great variety of composition, both in Literature and Art, Poetry and Prose. Paintings and Statuary, Allegories, Myths, Fables, Parables, Poems, Novels, Tales, Romances, are but various forms of Fiction. But they are not, therefore, necessarily vehicles of Falsehood. In the case of the Paradise Lost' or Power's Eve, the Fables of Esop and the Parables of Christ, this would be generally acknowleged-why not in the modern forms of fiction? Sadly wanting in the spirit of Truth, our modern religionists are too superstitious and particular about the form thereof.-Ed.

house of Ideas. Hopeless is the state of that man who can conceive of nothing better than the world by which he is surrounded; who could neither improve the characters of his friends, redress the wrongs of society, nor become himself a holier and nobler being, if the power of realizing and actualizing his own Idea bore any proportion to the vividness of the Idea itself. 'Discontent,' the poet says, 'is Immortality,' but we cannot too carefully observe that this refers to discontent with ourselves. To walk about God's world fretting and fuming at our trials, and to think ourselves hardly dealt with when calamity overtakes us,this is far from being the feeling by which Immortality is evidenced. On the contrary, it is the Spirit which, accepting all God sends us as wise and good for us, quarrels only with its own weakness, wickedness, and shortcomings, that proclaims our belief in the existence of a holier world than the present, and a higher dominion than that of sense. Now, all careful watchers of their internal life are aware that in the continual conflict between soul and sense, the former is most commonly defeated, and that it needs all their faith and energy, with divine grace superadded, to maintain the supremacy of Spirit over Matter. And why so? Because it is the tendency of all surrounding influences to make us more and more the slaves of our senses, and to lead us to forget the fundamental principle of Spiritualism-that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth.' More especially in the present age is there danger of our going into bondage to Materialism, not, as our forefathers accepted it, as a system of speculative philosophy, but as a practical rule of life. We would not be understood to mean that this belief in our senses is necessarily and essentially evil; what we desire to show is, that it is an incomplete and impartial thing, and must be complemented and supplemented by the opposite or antagonist truth. Hence, the vocation of the Poet, the Artist, and the Musician; hence the dignity which, to the true spiritualist, ever surrounds their office; alone, they oppose the mighty current of Material and Visible Ascendancy, so continually threatening to bear down all before it.

By the word Poet, however, we mean far more than is commonly included in the term, and we also mean less. The true Poet is the Creator, the originator, the Life-giver, the man who has power to clothe the Abstract in the Vestments of flesh and blood: but he who, like Pope, merely puts commonsense truisms into rhyme, or, like Moore, strings fanciful conceits on the sweet thread of harmony, may be an excellent Versifier, or an accomplished Lyrist, but has no pretensions to any title higher than these. Hence the common interpretation of the word Poet, is too narrow,-in that it excludes all who do not arrange their thoughts according to rhythmical and metrical laws; and it is also too broad,—in that it includes all who do, without requiring that the thoughts themselves be of any particular order or stamp. Thus, according to our definition, the Poet may be a Novelist as easily as a Lyrist,—and write Sonnets or Romances as his taste may lead him; he is as free to refuse rhyme and rhythm as to choose them. If we want to find the essential characteristics of the Poet, we must look more to the nature of his thoughts, and less to their mere external form; we must not measure him by the length of his robes, but by the proportions of his figure; nor judge him by the dialect he uses, so much as the story he tells.

That this principle excludes from the list of poets as many novelists as versi

fiers, we are of course prepared to admit. It is not for Fiction as it is that we contend; but for Fiction as it may be, ought to be, and shall be. The principle we started from was, that the end of Fiction is not understood, and this is as true of the majority of writers as it is of the majority of readers: indeed, the mistake in both cases is of precisely the same nature,—the writer seeking merely to amuse, and the reader merely to be amused. Until Fiction be regarded in its true light as a lever for lifting man towards Heaven, it can never take that place in the world which it was destined to occupy; and when it is so regarded it cannot fail to be found a principal agent in the mighty work of moral and spiritual culture. How and why this is the case it is scarcely necessary to explain; since all must know that we apprehend most readily that which comes to us thrö the medium of the affections. How few are there, even among educated persons, capable of receiving deep impressions from abstract principles; and, of course, what to these is difficult and hard is to all beside them utterly impossible. The child will learn as much of virtue as your daily conduct exhibits,—that which you merely inculcate in words falls idly on his ear: and how many of us, in this respect, continue children to the end of our days. The lofty, abstract ideas of the Philosopher, must be put into bodily form by the creative power of the Poet: they come to us cold, and chilly, and statue-like, until he have breathed into them the true Promethean fire of Genius; then, thrö the heart-hold they have gained, they speedily master the intellect, and become the governing principles of life. Hence, the Poet, after all, is more essential than the Sage; for he is High Priest to the many, whilst the latter ministers but to the few; and he is also greater, inasmuch as it is far easier to express truths in the spiritual Sanskrit in which they were learned than to translate them into the language of ordinary life. Perhaps the whole difference between Genius and Talent turns on this very point; the latter teaching the man of Science to enunciate his truths in scholastic technicalisms, the former enabling the Poet to interweave them with all that is beautiful and goodly, and thereby give them a hold on our affections, and a permanence in our memories, which they might not otherwise have attained. It would be easy to refer to books in which principles of all kinds are embodied, the story being a mere shell for the kernel of truth it contains. Whether we look at the political romances of D'Israeli, the theological tales of Miss Kennedy, an exquisite German story entitled 'the White Lady,' or those beautiful novels 'Deerbrook' and 'Grantley Manor,' we shall find this to be common to them all. Hence, there is one test by which every writer of fiction should be tried,—the greatness of the aim set before him. No ingenuity in constructing a story, no skill in developing it, must be suffered to stand in place of the presence of an Idea. To be popular and successful many other requirements are necessary, but this should always be held of paramount importance; inasmuch as to deserve success is of higher moment than to achieve it, and better a book were never read than read without teaching some high and holy lesson.

And now, having discussed the subject generally, let us give a few moments' consideration to some of its leading particulars, and see how far the details with

which the majority of fictions abound, correspond to the idea which is, or ought to be, behind them.

One of the first objections we are disposed to make against the greater number of novels is, that they dwell too much on superficial and external considerations, seeking to rest their interest on that which is accidental, rather than on that what is essential to the subject, For instance, who can have grown conversant with the 'light literature' of the day (for alas! it is but too 'light'), without believing that Youth, Beauty, and Fame, are the highest objects of human desire, and to be old, ugly, or unknown, the greatest misfortune that can possibly fall to our lot? That none of the coveted conditions can be really essential to our happiness, is sufficiently evident from the fact that they are so rarely to be met with; the former remaining with us but a very short period, and the two latter never visiting the greater number of us at all. How much more healthful would be the general tone of our writings, if we accustomed ourselves to look at men less for what they have than for what they are: we should then see that even Beauty, the most personal of the three conditions, is a possession and not a quality, since the beautiful may at any moment become plain. Of course we are now referring to beauty of form and complexion, since it is this with which romance writers so liberally endow their heroines: Spiritual beauty, or that which shines thrö form, is as much a quality as virtue itself, for the very sickness which destroys and defaces the one, only renders the other more perfect and divine.

The mistake is repeated with reference to external position. We cannot believe it is the man that dignifies the station; but endeavor, by conferring upon our hero the adventitious advantages of rank and title, to invest him with an interest unborrowed from the mind. How eminently this fails with all but the very shallowest readers, it is quite unnecessary to affirm, and towards them it is cruel and unjust in the highest degree, since it tends to rivet the chains by which they are bound to externalism, and to perpetuate the slavery they are held in.

The class of errors next to be excepted to, we can call by no other name than 'the Vulgarities of Fiction'; including all the extraordinary and preternatural events, the unexpected hair-breadth escapes, and the perfect innocence and unmitigated villainy, in which inferior writers delight. To this class belong the popular expedients of bringing home old uncles from India, just as the hero's fáte is hanging in the balance, and of making him save the life of his mistress's father when the latter has refused to surrender on easier terms. It includes also the partiality for unnecessary and unmeaning mysteries; and delights to make the catastrophe turn on the concealment of some circumstance which the reader has been all along in an agony to whisper to the hero. That all this is utterly wrong and false it would be an insult to the understanding of our readers to prove: and it does seem strange that people in general are not more resentful of such outrages on their common sense and knowlege of life.

Here, however, it would be unjust not to admit, that many things which seem unnatural in fiction, have, nevertheless, actually taken place; and that the development of some particular idea may sometimes oblige us to have recourse to representations of an uncommon character. The higher class of fictions, to the attentive and thoughtful reader, will furnish abundant instances of the truth of this latter remark: but it must be unnecessary to point out how far this is