THE SPIRIT OF GREAT NOVELISTS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVI, Issue 1323, 28 August 1894, Page 6

THE SPIRIT OF GREAT NOVELISTS.

Art must concern itself with the effect of what it accomplishes. We cannot relate an ordinary incident to a friend, however carefully, without showing what we ourselves think and feel about the facts we are stating. Consciously or unconsciously, our very tones and expressions, our emphasis on one part of the story against another, will suggest, without any comment, on which side our sympathies and inclinations lie. All great novelists have thus written—just as we speak—from the heart as well as from the observation. Charles Dickens wept bitterly as he wrote the death of “ Little Nell.” The prayers and sermons of “ Dinah Morris,” as the authoress of “ Adam Bede” has assured us, “were written with burning tears as they surged up in her own heart.” The terrible scene of temptation and sin in “ The Ordeal of Richard Teveral ” is bathed by George Meredith in such a glow of moral indignation and pity—though without one word of comment—that the reader is filled with the same passion, and comes away awed and chastened as if by a personal experience. The tenderness of the oft-quoted “ cathedral scene ” in “Esmond,” whose “dear lady,” clasping him after long absence, cries, “ I knew you would come back, my dear, bringing your sheaves with you,” must have been drawn from the inmost soul of Thackeray. The tragedies of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were not set down by an impartial hand. They were forced into our vision by one whose whole soul was aflame with revolt against tyranny and love for the helpless and oppressed.—Leisure Hour.