That which had not been
achieved by the fierce facts of Cobbett, the burning dreams of Carlyle,
the white-hot proofs of Newman, was really or very nearly achieved by a
crowd of impossible people. In the centre stood that citadel of atheist
industrialism: and if indeed it has ever been taken, it was taken by the
rush of that unreal army.
CHAPTER II
THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS
The Victorian novel was a thing entirely Victorian; quite unique and
suited to a sort of cosiness in that country and that age. But the novel
itself, though not merely Victorian, is mainly modern. No clear-headed
person wastes his time over definitions, except where he thinks his own
definition would probably be in dispute. I merely say, therefore, that
when I say "novel," I mean a fictitious narrative (almost invariably,
but not necessarily, in prose) of which the essential is that the story
is not told for the sake of its naked pointedness as an anecdote, or for
the sake of the irrelevant landscapes and visions that can be caught up
in it, but for the sake of some study of the difference between human
beings.
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