It is a scope so wide and so little explored hitherto that the novel
may now be starting upon a fresh life, after the tremendous career it
has had already. The discovery of the degree to which it may be
enhanced dramatically--this may be a point of departure from which it
will set out with vigour renewed; perhaps it has done so by this time.
Anyhow it is clear that an immense variety of possible modulations,
mixtures, harmonies of method, yet untried, are open to it if it
chooses to avail itself; and I should imagine that to a novelist of
to-day, entering the field at this late hour, the thought might be a
stimulating one. There is still so much to be done, after a couple of
centuries of novel-writing without a pause; there are unheard-of
experiments to be made. A novel such as The Ambassadors may give no
more than a hint of the rich and profound effects waiting to be
achieved by the laying of method upon method, and criticism may
presently be called on to analyse the delicate process much more
closely than I now attempt; it is to be hoped so indeed. Meanwhile it
is useful to linger over a book that suggests these possibilities, and
to mark the direction in which they seem to point.
The purpose of the novelist's ingenuity is always the same; it is to
give to his subject the highest relief by which it is capable of
profiting. And the less dramatic, strictly speaking, the subject may
be--the less it is able, that is to say, to express itself in action
and in action only--the more it is needful to heighten its flat,
pictorial, descriptive surface by the arts of drama.
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