There is nothing more that can usefully be said about a novel
until we have fastened upon the question of its making and explored it
to some purpose. In all our talk about novels we are hampered and held
up by our unfamiliarity with what is called their technical aspect,
and that is consequently the aspect to confront. That Jane Austen was
an acute observer, that Dickens was a great humourist, that George
Eliot had a deep knowledge of provincial character, that our living
romancers are so full of life that they are neither to hold nor to
bind--we know, we have repeated, we have told each other a thousand
times; it is no wonder if attention flags when we hear it all again.
It is their books, as well as their talents and attainments, that we
aspire to see--their books, which we must recreate for ourselves if we
are ever to behold them. And in order to recreate them durably there
is the one obvious way--to study the craft, to follow the process, to
read constructively. The practice of this method appears to me at this
time of day, I confess, the only interest of the criticism of fiction.
It seems vain to expect that discourse upon novelists will contain
anything new for us until we have really and clearly and accurately
seen their books.
And after all it is impossible--that is certain; the book vanishes as
we lay hands on it. Every word we say of it, every phrase I have used
about a novel in these pages, is loose, approximate, a little more or
a little less than the truth.
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