Great Authors Who Wrote Novels.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 337, 23 May 1885, Page 20

Great Authors Who Wrote Novels.

None of our English thinkers of the first, second,or even. third rank have resorted toromance as a vehicle of thought. The only possible exceptions that occur to me are Swift,. Dr. Johnson and Miss Martineau ; but " G ulliver, " " Rasselas " and « Deerbrook, 7r are romances only by courtesy for their authors. Abroad there have been examplesof men, of foremost intellectual force who have written novels. Of these qu£ only — Goethe — has written a true novel in a, vein worthy of himself. And it is to " Wilhelm Meister " that we may most aptly go for analogues to the George Eliot cycle of novels. Of course, as a poet, as a secular force of European rank, Goethe himself standsapart. But in his " Wilhelm Meister " we have those meditations upon life, human nature and society, that supreme culture, and a certain Shakspearian way of looking down upon the world as from a vantage-ground afar, which again and again recur in GeorgeEliot and give her the unique impression of tragic mystery among modern novelists.

Then again, Voltaire Rousseau, and Diderot Avrote prose fictions which may, by a stretch of language, be called novels. But the wit of " Candide," the pathos of the " Religieuse," the passion of " Heloise," do not make up a tale fit to be placed beside " Silas Marner," as a complete gem of art in thetrue field of romance. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Goethe, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, may take rank above George Eliot in the sum of Iho intellectual impulse they gave to their time. But none of them, unless it be the author of the " Miserable^," can be said to be her equal in the painting of real life and actual manners.