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It is a grand thing. I went on, and got to thinking of it; I almost forgot that I was not still in the woods. What a sweeping thing I see it! The American! It would have to be a three-volume novel, I fear it would be as huge as Les Miserables! It is the Civil War! I am haunted by that fearful struggle. Is there anything more fearful in history, any more tremendous effort of the human spirit?
He watched her calmly, but did not offer to follow when at last she flew. Time, true to his reputation, was hurrying away even these sweet summer days, and still the love affairs of our little beauties seemed no nearer settlement than at first. In the opinion of impatient observers, their wooing was as long drawn out as that of Augustus and Araminta in an old-fashioned three-volume novel.
I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat not, possibly, of literature but at least of physical and moral endurance and the courage of Ajax. In the fated year I came to live with my father and mother at Kinnaird, above Pitlochry.
The lesson of excision and condensation has been taught by writers as different in tone as Mérimée, Turgénieff, and Stevenson. "The three-volume novel is extinct," as Mr. Kipling stated in the motto prefixed to the poem called "The Three-Decker," in which, with a commingling of satire and sentiment, he chanted its requiem.
Several three-volume duodecimo men of fair currency were placed about the centre of the table; while the lower end was taken up with small poets, translators, and authors, who had not as yet risen into much notice. The conversation during dinner was by fits and starts; breaking out here and there in various parts of the table in small flashes, and ending in smoke.
The three-volume collection of Browning's Poems, and Dramatis Personae which followed to clench it, had nearly, if not quite, done the same for him. The Defence of Guenevere and The Life and Death of Jason, Atalanta, Chastelard, and most of all the Poems and Ballads, had launched an entirely new poetical school with almost unexampled pomp and promise on the world.
As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial climate.
The fickle French soon wearied of the series of unsuccessful attempts on the Consul's life, and some began to suspect the true state of affairs. "They're on to our scheme, General," said Fouche, after a while. "You've got to do something new." "What would you suggest?" asked Napoleon, wearily. "Can't you write a book of poems, or a three-volume novel?" suggested Talleyrand.
She knew how narrowly she escaped being sentimental, and would often joke about her danger in that respect. "This lovely summer weather makes me sickly sentimental," she told me once. "I feel like the heroine of a three-volume novel written by a young lady of eighteen, and I think continually of him. I don't know in the least who he is, but that makes no difference.
In biography and fiction it was less strong, but it had a complete set of the Waverley Novels in one of the early three-volume editions. When he went to Mr. M'Gregor's, John used often to take butter churned by his mother to the village shop, and the basket in which he carried it was capacious enough to hold a good load of books from the library on the return journey.
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