he other, or directly ethical
result.

The artistic result of a romance, what is left upon the memory by any
really powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated and
refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it; and yet something as
simple as nature. These two propositions may seem mutually destructive,
but they are so only in appearance. The fact is, that art is working far
ahead of language as well as of science, realising for us, by all manner
of suggestions and exaggerations, effects for which as yet we have no
direct name; nay, for which we may never perhaps have a direct name, for
the reason that these effects do not enter very largely into the
necessities of life. Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that
often hangs about the purpose of a romance: it is clear enough to us in
thought; but we are not used to consider anything clear until we are
able to formulate it in words, and analytical language has not been
sufficiently shaped to that end. We all know this difficulty in the case
of a picture, simple and strong as may be the impression that it has
left with us; and it is only because language is the medium of romance
that we are prevented from seeing that the two cases are the same. It is
not that there is anything blurred or indefinite in the impression left
with us, it is just because the impression is so very definite after its
own kind, that we find it hard to fit it exactly with the expressions of
our philosophical speech.

It is this idea which underlies and issues from a romance, this
something which it is the function of that form of art to create, this
epical value, that I propose chiefly to seek and, as far as may be, to
throw into relief, in the present study. It is thus, I believe, that we
shall see most clearly the great stride that Hugo has taken beyond his
predecessors, and how, no longer content with expressing more or less
abstract relations of man to man, he has set before himself the task of
realising, in the language of romance, much of the involution of our
complicated lives.

This epical value is not to be found, let it be understood, in every
so-called novel. The great majority are not works of art in anything but
a very secondary signification. One might almost number on one's fingers
the works in which such a supreme artistic intention has been in any way
superior to the other and lesser aims, themselves more or less artistic,
that generally go hand in hand wit