SOMETHING IN DEFENCE OF NOVELS AND NOVELREADING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3495, 8 March 1921, Page 48

SOMETHING IN DEFENCE OF NOVELS AND NOVELREADING.

I When Zachary Macaulay, father of the | historian, was editor of the Christian 1 Observer he received an anonymous I article defending fiction and eulogising 5 Fielding and other novelists available to ! the reader of those days. Though he did 1 not himself approve of novel-reading, he printed the article, never thinking that i it was by his own son, the future his- ! torian. and probably regretted his tolerance, for its publication caused quite i commotion among the subscribers to the journal, one of whom wrote stating that he had committed the obnoxious number to the flames and that he would withdraw his subscription. Nevertheless, says Sir George Trevelyn, in his biography of Lord Macaulay, Zachary Macaulay lived to himself the head of a family in

which novels were more read and better remembered than in any other in the United Kingdom, and the essayist and historian continued to defend novels in speech and writing from the days when he was called at Cambridge “the novelreading Macaulay” until he accomplished his declared wish of writing a history as interesting as fiction. In these days the prejudice against fiction as something intrinsically injurious has pretty well died out even among people of the strictest religious views; and religious journals commonly include a serial and a short tale with their more serious articles. The range and aim of fiction has been widened immensely; the novel has become a favoured medium for expounding all sorts of social and religious theories, and for exposing all kinds of abuses. “There is no department of life,” Mr Wells has said, “there is no problem, divine, human, or infernal, from which the novelist of the future will be warned off.” And Mr Wells acts up to this profession. Whence it follows that in reading a novel one may be absorbing sociology, popular science, or some modern philosophic or religious thought. The majority of novels, however, are still occupied with the novel’s true aim of telling a human story, and love, adventure, and the presentment of character still employ the author's powers and please his readers. And the novel-reading

public has increased prodigiously with the spread of education and the establishment of free libararies. Occasionally we see critics objecting to Mr Carnegie’s choice of a mode of public beneficence. The money lie has expended in endowing libraries, they say, is largely wasted, since the vast majority of readers take out novels only instead' of anything instructive. And in fact lists of volumes taken out shows that novels are read in immensely greater proportion than all other classes of literature lumped together. For most women a book means a novel, reading for them means fiction reading, and even many men confine their reading to newspapers and novels. That most people will choose fiction exclusively or chiefly in preference to other forms of literature must be ac cepted, but does it follow that in doing so they are wasting their time l 1 The critics’ implication that they are so doing shows a survival of the old idea that fiction is necessarily inferior in ethical and intellectual value to works dealing with historic or scientific fact, or moral truth. Jane Austen, over a hundred years ago, in a digression in “Morthar.ger Abbey.” vigorously combated this way of regarding fiction, and asserted the claim of "the novelist to respect. “Let us not ; desert one another: we are an injured | body. Although our productions have ! afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary

corporation in the world, no species, of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost- as many as our readers, and while the abilities of the nine hundredth nbridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogised by a thousand pens, there seems almost, a general wish of decrying the capacity- and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of s’ighting the per | formanops which have only genius, wit, and taste' to recommend them. ‘T am no novel reader ; I seldom look into novels; do not imagine that T often read novels : it is really very well for a novel.’ Such is the common "cant. ‘And what are you reading, miss?’ ‘Oh, it is only a novel!’ replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame. Tt is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda; or, in short, only

some yvork in which the. greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.” Cecilia and Camilla are titles of two of Miss Fanny Burney’s novels written towards the end of the eighteenth century. Belinda is the title of an early novel of Miss Edgeworth, published in 1801. Miss Austen is generous in her appreciation of the works of her sister novelists; her own possess in a higher degree the merits she extols in theirs. Well, if novel reading is still sometimes decried as waste of time—as of course it may be—at least the novel as a form of art is more respected than in those days. Jane Austen in this passage indicates wherein the true function of the novel lies—to represent human nature faithfully and to charm by graces of style. There are other things that go to make up a good novel, but it is on success in attaining these two aims that lasting reputation depends. But of course very few novels indeed of all the vast stream of modern production have the faintest hopes of becoming classics, or even of holding the popular favour for a generation ; the vast majority must be superseded by the productions of newer writers and be forgotten. That most novels must tie short-lived does not in the least imply that they were not yvorth writing, and that in their brief span of existence they satisfied no good object. If they have given innocent pleasure they have yvell justified their being. Rudyard Kipling, many- years ago, wrote a poem in praise of the old established three-volume novel of love and romance that was taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest. Such novels offer relief from the drao surroundings and tedious routine of the workaday life of most people. And yvhat can surpass fiction as a pastime and an anodyne for the feeble and the suffering ? Df course the fact that fiction of the lighter kind has such a power to fascinate and to lull indicates that it should not be the main pabulum of minds that should be active. The dislike of prudent mothers to see their voung daughters

devour novels indiscriminately is amply justified. There are so many other kinds of. books that all with an average amount of intelligence and education should desire to know "something of; there are so many novels capable, of broadening the mind and refining the taste, that it is a pity to neglect them for what merely pleases, and mav in too large doses enervate instead of refresh, as all amusements should do. Even for busy people, who justifiablv turn to a novel as a means of relaxation in a busy life, it is well to exercise some discrimination. There is so much bright and clever fiction that it is a pity to waste time over what is silly and insipid. The complaint one frequently hears that “all the novels are so stupid now.” “one can't find a hook worth reading,” etc., does little credit to the speaker’s knowledge or mowers of discrimination. There are scores, almost hundreds, of novels very well worth rending published everv year, and a few dozen that reallv demand to be read by reason of their literary merit or their bearing on the human problems of our time. Among these hundreds are novels grave and novels gav. novels of adventure and stories of quiet lives of obscure people, romantic novels and of painstaking psvoholngioal analysis, serious studies of life and aivv comedies —variety of choice sm-ely to please all minds and all moods.