vainly wander round?
What canst thou find, O seeker,
Which hath not long been found?

What canst thou know, O scholar,
Which hath not long been known?
What canst thou have, O spoiler,
Which dead men did not own?'

But I do not think so. I do not know whether she will be great. It is
enough that to-day she is already alone.

Form and the Novel

Every now and then a reviewer, recovering the enthusiasm of a critic,
discovers that the English novel has lost its form, that the men who
to-day, a little ineffectually, bid for immortality, are burning the
gods they once worshipped. They declare that the novel, because it is no
longer a story travelling harmoniously from a beginning towards a middle
and an end, is not a novel at all, that it is no more than a platform
where self-expression has given place to self-proclamation. And
sometimes, a little more hopefully, they venture to prophesy that soon
the proud Sicambrian will worship the gods that he burnt.

I suspect that this classic revival is not very likely to come about.
True, some writers, to-day in their cradles, may yet emulate Flaubert,
but they will not be Flaubert. They may take something of his essence
and blend it with their own; but that will create a new essence, for
literature does not travel in a circle. Rather it travels along a
cycloid, bending back upon itself, following the movement of man.
Everything in the world we inhabit conspires to alter in the mirror of
literature the picture it reflects; haste, luxury, hysterical
sensuousness, race-optimism and race-despair. And notably publicity, the
attitude of the Press. For the time has gone when novels were written
for young ladies, and told the placid love of Edwin and Angeline;
nowadays the novel, growing ambitious, lays hands upon science,
commerce, philosophy: we write less of moated granges, more of tea-shops
and advertising agencies, for the Press is teaching the people to look
to the novel for a cosmic picture of the day, for a cosmic commentary.

Evidently it was not always so. Flaubert, de Maupassant, Butler, Tolstoy
(who are not a company of peers), aspired mainly 'to see life sanely and
to see it whole.' Because they lived in days of lesser social
complexity, economically speaking, they were able to use a purely
narrative style, the only notable living exponent of which is Mr Thomas
Hardy. But we, less fortunate perhaps, confronted with new facts, the
factory syste