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Even if this be not in itself a recommendation sufficient to enlist the interest of novel-readers, Olivia Raleigh is something more: it is a work of art: there is in it nothing crude or hasty or ill-digested. Around the four or five prominent characters all the interest centres, and the attention is not distracted by any wearisome episodes that have nothing to do with the main story.
All knowledge would be reduced to gossip, infinitely diffuse, perhaps enlisting our dramatic feelings, but yielding no intellectual mastery of experience, no practical competence, and no moral lesson. The world would be a serial novel, to be continued for ever, and all men mere novel-readers.
Well-beloved novel-readers and gentle patronesses of romance, assuredly it has often occurred to every one of you, that the books we delight in have very unsatisfactory conclusions, and end quite prematurely with page 320 of the third volume.
It is not likely that in the broad sense he will ever be a popular writer, for the mass of novel-readers are an idle and pleasure-loving folk, and no mere idler and pleasure-seeker will read Meredith often or read him long at a time. The little book which the angel gave to John of Patmos, commanding that he should eat it, was like honey in the mouth, but in the belly it was bitter.
He himself said that he was read by journalists, by his fellow novelists, and by boys. Envious admiration might prompt a less successful writer to exclaim, 'Well, isn't that enough? No, for to be truly blest one must have women among one's readers. And there are elect ladies not a few who know Stevenson's novels; yet it is a question whether he has reached the great mass of female novel-readers.
It happens, rather unluckily, that this is particularly true of the first seventy pages of the first volume. We fear that many professional novel-readers may break down in the course of these pages; and we confess ourselves to have been a little discouraged.
Had The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse been directed against France instead of in favour of France, it goes without saying that it would have come to the United States without the imprimatur of the American Embassy at Madrid, and that there would have appeared no sudden rage for the author among the generality of novel-readers. His intrinsic merits, in sober retrospect, seem very feeble.
We men, and particularly novel-readers, are liberal even generous, in our views; but it is not in human nature to stand that! Now, if a woman can not put her feet up and smoke, how in the name of heaven, can she seriously read novels? Certainly not sitting bolt upright, in order to prevent the back of her new gown from rubbing the chair; certainly not reclining upon a couch or in a hammock.
This division of time allowed me to produce over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, and if kept up through ten months, would have given as its results three novels of three volumes each in the year; the precise amount which so greatly acerbated the publisher in Paternoster Row, and which must at any rate be felt to be quite as much as the novel-readers of the world can want from the hands of one man.
Miss Yonge is also a favourite, and unlike a large class of novel-readers in England, standard works are not neglected by them for fiction. No matter at what time you enter the public library here, you are sure to find ladies of all ages coming to change their books, the contents of this library, be it remembered, consisting chiefly of French classics.
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