ill-composed painting is a plain offence to the eye, however skilfully
it may copy life. The same thing is true of a novel, perhaps, if the
fault is very bad, very marked; yet it would be hard to say that even
so it is necessarily fatal, or that a novel cannot triumphantly live
down the worst aberrations of this kind. We know of novels which
everybody admits to be badly constructed, but which are so full of
life that it does not appear to matter. May we not conclude that form,
design, composition, have a rather different bearing upon the art of
fiction than any they may have elsewhere?

And, moreover, these expressions, applied to the viewless art of
literature, must fit it loosely and insecurely at best--does it not
seem so? They are words usurped from other arts, words that suppose a
visible and measurable object, painted or carved. For criticizing the
craft of fiction we have no other language than that which has been
devised for the material arts; and though we may feel that to talk of
the colours and values and perspective of a novel is natural and
legitimate, yet these are only metaphors, after all, that cannot be
closely pressed. A book starts a train of ideas in the head of the
reader, ideas which are massed and arranged on some kind of system;
but it is only by the help of fanciful analogies that we can treat the
mass as a definite object. Such phrases may give hints and suggestions
concerning the method of the novelist; the whole affair is too
nebulous for more. Even if a critic's memory were infallible, as it
can never be, still it would be impossible for him to give a really
scientific account of the structure of the simplest book, since in the
last resort he cannot lay his finger upon a single one of the effects
to which he refers. When two men stand looking at a picture, at least
their two lines of vision meet at a point upon the canvas; they may
dispute about it, but the picture stands still. And even then they
find that criticism has its difficulties, it would appear. The
literary critic, with nothing to point to but the mere volume in his
hand, must recognize that his wish to be precise, to be definite, to
be clear and exact in his statements, is hopelessly vain.

It is all undeniable, no doubt; from every side we make out that the
criticism of a book--not the people in the book, not the character of
the author, but the book--is impossible. We cannot remember the book,
and even if we could, we should