Our criticism has been oddly incurious in the matter, considering what
the dominion of the novel has been for a hundred and fifty years. The
refinements of the art of fiction have been accepted without question,
or at most have been classified roughly and summarily--as is proved by
the singular poverty of our critical vocabulary, as soon as we pass
beyond the simplest and plainest effects. The expressions and the
phrases at our disposal bear no defined, delimited meanings; they have
not been rounded and hardened by passing constantly from one critic's
hand to another's. What is to be understood by a "dramatic" narrative,
a "pictorial" narrative, a "scenic" or a "generalized" story? We must
use such words, as soon as we begin to examine the structure of a
novel; and yet they are words which have no technical acceptation in
regard to a novel, and one cannot be sure how they will be taken. The
want of a received nomenclature is a real hindrance, and I have often
wished that the modern novel had been invented a hundred years sooner,
so that it might have fallen into the hands of the critical schoolmen
of the seventeenth century. As the production of an age of romance, or
of the eve of such an age, it missed the advantage of the dry light of
academic judgement, and I think it still has reason to regret the
loss. The critic has, at any rate; his language, even now, is
unsettled and unformed.
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