o its real meaning. But the vulgar reader of our comic
novelists, when he has learnt from them a jest or a sentiment for every
occasion of life, fancies that nothing more remains unseen and unsaid.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] "Lover" in the original text of the essay. The error does not much
affect the argument.

[21] In Scott's 'Rob Roy.'

III. TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NOVEL

A. A WIDENER OF EXPERIENCE

22. But there is another side to this question which we must not allow
ourselves to overlook. We have shown what the novel cannot do, and its
ill effect on those who trust to it for their culture. We must not
forget that it has a proper work of its own which, if modern progress be
anything more than a euphemism, must be a work for good. Least of all
should it be depreciated by the student, who may find in it deliverance
from the necessary confinement of his actual life. For the production of
poetic effect, as we have seen, large abstraction is necessary. It is
with man in the purity of his inward being, with nature in its simple
greatness, that the poet deals. The glory which he casts on life is far
higher than any which the novelist knows, but it is only on certain of
the elements of life that it can be cast at all. The novelist works on a
far wider field. With choice of subject and situation he scarcely need
trouble himself, except in regard to his own intellectual
qualifications. Wherever human thought is free, and human character can
display itself, whether in the servants' hall or the drawing-room,
whether in the country mansion or the back alley, he may find his
materials. He is thus a great expander of sympathies; and if he cannot
help us to make the world our own by the power of ideas, he at least
carries our thought into many a far country of human experience, which
it could not otherwise have reached. We hear much in these days of the
sacrifice of the individual to society through professional limitations.
In the progressive division of labor, while we become more useful as
citizens, we seem to lose our completeness as men. The requirements of
special study become more exacting, at the same time that the perfect
organisation of modern society removes the excitement of adventure and
the occasion for independent effort. There is less of human interest to
touch us within our calling, and we have less leisure to seek it beyond.
Hence it follows that one who has made the most of his profession is apt
to feel