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Updated: May 20, 2025
I recognize the beauty of the style, the consistency of the character-drawing, the absolutely perfect Queen Anne atmosphere. There was never an historical novel written by a man who knew his period so thoroughly. But, great as these virtues are, they are not the essential in a novel.
On the other hand, no coterie of Wits and Templars could kill a book like Joseph Andrews. To say nothing of the opportunities afforded by the novel for more leisurely character-drawing, and greater by-play of reflection and description its reader was an isolated and independent judge; and in the long run the difference told wonderfully in favour of the author.
But it needs only a perusal of the Memoirs of the Markgravine of Baireuth, Princess of Prussia, to give the grotesque picture a certificate of historical veracity. Not only the character-drawing, but the very plot, is founded on those Memoirs, written in a less sophisticated age than our own, and the authenticity of which is undisputed.
The story is splendidly constructed; its style is strong and inimitable, and its action and character-drawing deserve the highest praise. As a story per se it has merit beyond anything that we have read for some time. But, as we have said, it fails to come up to some of the standards we have set.
What are we to say, for example, of Cleopatra, or of Shylock, or of Macbeth? Richard II, on the other hand, is as clearly a piece of psychology as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet is a piece of character-drawing.
Drama of this kind must, it is clear, lack many of the qualities which are usually associated with the dramatic art; there is no room in it for variety of character-drawing, for delicacy of feeling, or for the realistic presentation of the experiences of life.
When an enthusiastic reviewer says that I have passed at one stride into the very first class of contemporary writers, I do not feel particularly elated, though I am undeniably pleased. I find my conception, my structure, my style, my descriptions, my character-drawing, liberally and generously praised. There is no doubt that the book has been really successful beyond my wildest hopes.
Collegians, when they attempt character-drawing, create monstrosities, but a practised writer should be able to create men and women capable of moving through a certain series of situations without shocking in any violent way the most generally applicable principles of common sense.
It was no longer enough, as in the old days, to feel the charm and incantation of a line or a word; he wished to penetrate the secret, to understand something of the wonderful suggestion, all apart from the sense, that seemed to him the differentia of literature, as distinguished from the long follies of "character-drawing," "psychological analysis," and all the stuff that went to make the three-volume novel of commerce.
Collegians, when they attempt character-drawing, create monstrosities, but a practised writer should be able to create men and women capable of moving through a certain series of situations without shocking in any violent way the most generally applicable principles of common sense.
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