of every critic
with the English bourgeoisie novels, describing the petty, humdrum life
of the middle classes, was simply the want of art in the writers; the
failure on their part to see that a literal transcript of nature is poor
stuff in literature. We do not need to go back to Richardson's time for
illustrations of that truth. Every week the English press--which is even
a greater sinner in this respect than the American--turns out a score of
novels which are mediocre, not from their subjects, but from their utter
lack of the artistic quality. It matters not whether they treat of
middle-class life, of low, slum life, or of drawing-room life and lords
and ladies; they are equally flat and dreary. Perhaps the most inane
thing ever put forth in the name of literature is the so-called domestic
novel, an indigestible, culinary sort of product, that might be named the
doughnut of fiction. The usual apology for it is that it depicts family
life with fidelity. Its characters are supposed to act and talk as people
act and talk at home and in society. I trust this is a libel, but, for
the sake of the argument, suppose they do. Was ever produced so insipid a
result? They are called moral; in the higher sense they are immoral, for
they tend to lower the moral tone and stamina of every reader. It needs
genius to import into literature ordinary conversation, petty domestic
details, and the commonplace and vulgar phases of life. A report of
ordinary talk, which appears as dialogue in domestic novels, may be true
to nature; if it is, it is not worth writing or worth reading. I cannot
see that it serves any good purpose whatever. Fortunately, we have in our
day illustrations of a different treatment of the vulgar. I do not know
any more truly realistic pictures of certain aspects of New England life
than are to be found in Judd's "Margaret," wherein are depicted
exceedingly pinched and ignoble social conditions. Yet the characters and
the life are drawn with the artistic purity of Flaxman's illustrations of
Homer. Another example is Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd."
Every character in it is of the lower class in England. But what an
exquisite creation it is! You have to turn back to Shakespeare for any
talk of peasants and clowns and shepherds to compare with the
conversations in this novel, so racy are they of the soil, and yet so
touched with the finest art, the enduring art. Here is not the realism of
the photograph, but