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In fact, I have gravely planned a comparative view of you, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, in your different qualities and merits as novel-writers. This, I own, betrays my ridiculous vanity, and I may probably never bring the business to bear; but I am fond of the spirit young Elihu shows in the book of Job "And I said, I will also declare my opinion."
Why, for instance, should modern novel-writers turn the patient adjective into an overworked little drudge, and compel it to do thrice the labor that it can effectually perform?
Look at your fashionable novel-writers, he! he!—and, above all, at your newspaper editors, ho! ho!’ ‘You will, of course, except the editors of the from your censure of the last class?’ said I. ‘Them!’ said the man in black; ‘why, they might serve as models in the dirty trade to all the rest who practise it.
I should almost be glad if Woolcomb would walk in and talk to me; or Twysden reappear, take his place in that chair opposite me, and begin one of his tremendous stories. Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conversations with, even draw the likeness of, people invisible to you and me. Is this making of people out of fancy madness? and are novel-writers at all entitled to strait-waistcoats?
"I have learned it from English novel-writers: if a man wants to convince his hearers that something is true history and no fable, he must describe externals in detail, that they may see what an eye-witness he was. Well, I shall leave out all description of the horses' trappings.
The progress of a love-story is tedious to all those who are not concerned, and I leave such themes to the hack novel-writers, and the young boarding-school misses for whom they write. It is not my intention to follow, step by step, the incidents of my courtship, or to narrate all the difficulties I had to contend with, and my triumphant manner of surmounting them.
Fifty years ago, Carlyle, in whom the truth was always alive, but in whom it was then unperverted by suffering, by celebrity, and by despair, wrote in his study of Diderot: "Were it not reasonable to prophesy that this exceeding great multitude of novel-writers and such like must, in a new generation, gradually do one of two things: either retire into the nurseries, and work for children, minors, and semi-fatuous persons of both sexes, or else, what were far better, sweep their novel-fabric into the dust-cart, and betake themselves with such faculty as they have to understand and record what is true, of which surely there is, and will forever be, a whole infinitude unknown to us of infinite importance to us?
People go on putting down neck or nothing till it's a pretty fool's business. I should like to pack all novels and novel-writers out of the world together! The world never will be wise till that is done; nor will you either. In the mean time, however, it is as well that I have found you awake, else I must have woke you to prove that you cannot conceal from me, not even for once, how old you are.
I may mention that she was of what novel-writers call medium size, with features exquisitely regular, eyes ravishingly black, and a deep olive complexion, which though charms enough for one, were enhanced by tresses of black, silky hair, that fell down below her waist.
Surely our novel-writers make a great mistake in divesting their rascals of all gentle human qualities: they have such and the only sad point to think of is, in all private concerns of life, abstract feelings, and dealings with friends, and so on, how dreadfully like a rascal is to an honest man.
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