d feeble in result. It is one thing to write about the inn at Burford,
or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite another to
seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with a
legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting
logic, the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite
another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax or of Hamlet.
The first is literature, but the second is something besides, for it is
likewise art.

English people of the present day[18] are apt, I know not why, to look
somewhat down on incident, and reserve their admiration for the clink of
teaspoons and the accents of the curate. It is thought clever to write a
novel with no story at all, or at least with a very dull one. Reduced
even to the lowest terms, a certain interest can be communicated by the
art of narrative; a sense of human kinship stirred; and a kind of
monotonous fitness, comparable to the words and air of "Sandy's Mull,"
preserved among the infinitesimal occurrences recorded. Some people
work, in this manner, with even a strong touch. Mr. Trollope's
inimitable clergymen naturally arise to the mind in this connection. But
even Mr. Trollope does not confine himself to chronicling small beer.
Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's wife, Mr. Melnotte dallying in
the deserted banquet-room, are typical incidents, epically conceived,
fitly embodying a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If Rawdon
Crawley's blow were not delivered, "Vanity Fair" would cease to be a
work of art. That scene is the chief ganglion of the tale; and the
discharge of energy from Rawdon's fist is the reward and consolation of
the reader. The end of "Esmond" is a yet wider excursion from the
author's customary fields; the scene at Castlewood is pure Dumas; the
great and wily English borrower has here borrowed from the great,
unblushing French thief; as usual, he has borrowed admirably well, and
the breaking of the sword rounds off the best of all his books with a
manly martial note. But perhaps nothing can more strongly illustrate the
necessity for marking incident than to compare the living fame of
"Robinson Crusoe" with the discredit of "Clarissa Harlowe." "Clarissa"
is a book of a far more startling import, worked out, on a great canvas,
with inimitable courage and unflagging art. It contains wit, character,
passion, plot, conversations full of spirit and insight, letters
spa