FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   >>  
and conscious art. If 'Robinson Crusoe' were kept away from schoolboys it would doubtless be read pleasurably by adults. I. PRUDENCE THE NOVELIST'S HIGHEST MORALITY 20. The novel, then, as being a work of art, must fail to teach the lesson of life in its completeness: as an inferior work of art, it has peculiar weaknesses of its own. However extensive the influence of the literature of fiction may have been, its intensity has been in inverse proportion. A great poem, once made our own, abides with us for ever. "Amid the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,"[18] the spirit, returning to it, may gain a fresh assurance of its _own_ birthright, and purify itself, as in a river of Lethe, for an ideal transition to its proper home. The novel, itself the reflex of "the fretful stir unprofitable," can exercise no such power. It can but make us more at home in the region from which a great poem transports us. The value of that experience of the world, which it is its object to impart, is commonly overrated in our day. In the form in which it is imparted by the novelist, we have perhaps had too much of it without his aid. Our external environment is quite enough in our thoughts: we are not too reluctant to admit that we are what we seem to be, dependent for good or evil on circumstances which we do not make for ourselves. This dependence is in itself, no doubt, a fact; but it ceases to be so for us when we contemplate it in forgetfulness of that spring of potential freedom which underlies it, and of the law of duty correlative to freedom. To the exclusive consideration of it we owe those profitless recipes for eliciting moral health from circumstances which are the plague of modern literature, and which one of our ablest writers has lately condescended to dispense, in an essay on "organisation in daily life." This circumstantial view of life, if we may use the term, being the only one that the novelist can convey, prudence is his highest morality. But it may be doubted whether prudence is what any one has great need to learn. The plain man, who fronting circumstances boldly on the one hand, looks reverently to the stern face of duty on the other, can dispense with its maxims. For the moral valetudinarian small benefit is to be gained from a doctor who will "Read each wound, each weakness clear, Will strike his finger on the place And say, 'Thou ailest
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   >>  



Top keywords:

circumstances

 

prudence

 
novelist
 

freedom

 

dispense

 

literature

 

fretful

 
underlies
 

potential

 

contemplate


forgetfulness

 

spring

 

doctor

 
gained
 
profitless
 

consideration

 

exclusive

 
correlative
 

ailest

 

finger


recipes
 

ceases

 
dependence
 

strike

 

weakness

 

dependent

 

highest

 

reverently

 

convey

 
morality

boldly

 

fronting

 

doubted

 
modern
 

maxims

 
ablest
 
plague
 

health

 

benefit

 
valetudinarian

writers

 
circumstantial
 
organisation
 

condescended

 

eliciting

 

overrated

 

weaknesses

 
However
 
extensive
 

influence