By all
means let us have Harry's account if we must have somebody's, but
perhaps there is no such need. There seems to be none; it is surely
time to take the next step in the process I am trying to track.
X
And the next step is to lay aside the autobiographic device which the
novelist was seen to adopt, a few pages ago, in the interest of drama.
When it has served as Dickens and Thackeray made it serve, it seems to
have shown the extent of its power; if the picture of a life is to be
still further dramatized, other arts must be called into play. I am
still assuming that the novel under consideration is one that
postulates--as indeed most novels do--a point of view which is not
that of the reader; I am supposing that the story requires a seeing
eye, in the sense I suggested in speaking of Vanity Fair. If no such
selecting, interpreting, composing minister is needed, then we have
drama unmixed; and I shall come across an example or so in fiction
later on. It is drama unmixed when the reader is squarely in front of
the scene, all the time, knowing nothing about the story beyond so
much as may be gathered from the aspect of the scene, the look and
speech of the people. That does not happen often in fiction, except in
short pieces, small _contes_. And still I am concerned with the kind
of book that preponderantly needs the seeing eye--the kind of novel
that I call distinctively pictorial.
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