But whether George
Borrow ought to go into the section devoted to philosophers, or the
section devoted to novelists, or the section devoted to liars, nobody
else has ever known, even if he did.
But the strongest case of this Victorian power of being abruptly
original in a corner can be found in two things: the literature meant
merely for children and the literature meant merely for fun. It is true
that these two very Victorian things often melted into each other (as
was the way of Victorian things), but not sufficiently to make it safe
to mass them together without distinction. Thus there was George
Macdonald, a Scot of genius as genuine as Carlyle's; he could write
fairy-tales that made all experience a fairy-tale. He could give the
real sense that every one had the end of an elfin thread that must at
last lead them into Paradise. It was a sort of optimist Calvinism. But
such really significant fairy-tales were accidents of genius. Of the
Victorian Age as a whole it is true to say that it did discover a new
thing; a thing called Nonsense. It may be doubted whether this thing was
really invented to please children.
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