Dramatic episodes, fine pieces of description,
above all the presence of many interesting and remarkable
people--while there is so much that instantly springs to light when
the book is mentioned, it seems perverse to say that the book is not
before us as we write of it. The real heart and substance of the book,
it might even be urged, stands out the more clearly for the obscurity
into which the less essential parts of it subside.
And true it is that for criticism of the author's genius, of the power
and quality of his imagination, the impressions we are able to save
from oblivion are material in plenty. Of Richardson and Tolstoy and
Flaubert we can say at once that their command of life, their grasp of
character, their knowledge of human affections and manners, had a
certain range and strength and depth; we can penetrate their minds and
detect the ideas that ruled there. To have lived with their creations
is to have lived with them as well; with so many hours of familiar
intercourse behind us we have learnt to know them, and it matters
little that at any particular moment our vision of their work is bound
to be imperfect. The forgotten detail has all contributed to our sense
of the genius which built up and elaborated the structure, and that
sense abides. Clarissa and Anna and Emma are positive facts, and so
are their authors; the criticism of fiction is securely founded upon
its object, if by fiction we mean something more, something other,
than the novel itself--if we mean its life-like effects, and the
imaginative gifts which they imply in the novelist.
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