ENGLISH NOVELS AND ENGLISH LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 532, 12 June 1909, Page 9

ENGLISH NOVELS AND ENGLISH LIFE.

Mr. Edward Garnett contributes to the Now. York "Evening Post" a long article on "iilnglish. Novels , and 'English Lite" tliat is full.of interest to thoso : who find tho connection significant. His subject falls naturally into two parts, , and the discussion of tho "littlo group of remarkablo artists" which includes Mr. Conrad, Mr. Cunninghame Graham, Mr. W.'H. Hudson, and Mr..Hewlett, is held over for another occasion. Perhaps Mr. Conrad is the biggest of our active novelists, but he has not tfio samo immediate connection with English lifo-as some of the others. :Mr.- Garnett refers to tho remarkable exception of Mr. Hardy, but ho finds in the , Victorian novelist a "sustained optimistic note" which has now given way to somotliing that projects itself _ beyond tho characteristic Victorian, /liberalism. Gissing he believes to have been a logical development from Dickens's zeal for social reform, and Gissing let;iutho light to some dark places, but there is yet a great force of villadom "politically consolidated by fear of the Labour movement and the spread of Socialism." Mr. .Garnett finds in Mrs. Humphry Wa-rd a representative writer, not quito.of the best quality, with plenty, of moral earnestness and sone sen so of character, but working on a social class that is partly ideal and partly, perhap3, insignificant. Closer to tho social evolution is Mr. Jolin Galsworthy, of whom'it is said suggestively that: ho, lias had. tho moral courage to expose the, "bad conscience" of tho rich towards tho exploited nether world; ' He is of tho progressives, but wo are not sure that wo can follow Mr. Garnett. when ho says that what England .most wants in her writers i 3 spiritual a-nd niental audacity. We have had ti/fair infusion of this lately, arid ; |perhaps, there is work to ho done in making good the ground which nudacity lias invaded rather than occupied. Tho. art of fiction cannot be violently progressive with impunity,' and, perhaps, Mr. Wells, who is reviewed as the one novelist with a new source of. spiritual energy, owes more to'his scrutiny than to his daring. Mr. Garnett makes itlio distinction between Mr. Wells, "who is not 'a pure artist," and Mr. Galsworthy, who is, and though this may be formally maintained, wo doubt whether it is worth maintaining. Mr." Garnett. shows the spirit of a critic in singling out a particular novel of Mr. Anthony Hopo's as peculiarly individual and in his work unique, in an appreciative rpference to Mrs. Gertrude Bone, and, generally, in tho scope and proportion of his review. His discussion of the group headed by Mr. Conrad should bo worth read-ing.-V'Mancliester Guardian.". ; . .