544 



NOVKI.S 



on chivalry, partly on pastoral romance ; thrir 

 strength lav in their itniil>iiititiiui nf sentiment iiml 

 swagger, MM latter Inn-rowed from the chivalry 

 romances, tlio former from the pastorals; ami their 

 one merit, perhaps, was licit they provoked sonic 

 excellent satires, -iirh as Itoilcaii's Hems c |,. 

 Unman,' Furetifcre's Hiiiiiun ]tt>ur<in>iti, Sorcl's 

 litrgtr AVrrrir.ii/<f/if. Scanon's l!"imtn Coiiinjiif, 

 ami Mm Lennox H / > . 



But a far more important variety of fiction dime 

 into existence in Spain in the time, and partly 

 through the inllucnce, of the chivalry romances. 

 These were every day growing wilder ami wilder 

 and more ami mure regardless of all common sens.- 

 and olwervance of decent probability, when a little 



book, culled The Lift of LatarUlo at Tonnes, made 

 its appearance. It did not pretend to IN- a satire 

 or even a protest against the romances in fashion ; 

 it merely suggested that a story just as interesting 

 anil amusing might he got out of real, everyday life, 

 without magicians, giant*. Hying dragons, or en- 

 chanted palaces, .seeing that tastes varied, and that, 

 as Jean Saugrain of Lyons put it in the French 

 translation of 1560, it" was not everylmdy that 

 took delight in reading of heroic deeds. Ami 

 in fact the Luzarilio is studiously nnheroic, and 

 the exact opposite of a romance of chivalry. The 

 hero is a lieggar boy, or rather a lieggar-man's boy; 

 hunger and thrashings are the dragons and giants 

 he has to encounter; his adventures and achieve- 

 ments are cheating and outwitting his masters; the 

 empire of Trehi/ond that crowns his career is the 

 office of town-crier of Toledo, and the princess that 

 bestows her hand upon him, the doubtful house- 

 keeper of a sly old priest. It was the first genuine 

 attempt at realism in literature,, and for the first 

 time in the history of fiction readers found them- 

 selves taking pleasure in the creations of the story- 

 teller, not because they were remote from ordinary 

 experience, but because they were familiar. Find- 

 ing favour, as a matter of course it had successors. 

 It was followed by the ijuxtu jtirurencn novels, the 

 talcs of Spanish rogue and vagalioml life, of whirh 

 <ii'.nuin de Alfiirnclir, Marrus de Obregun, ami 

 Qnevedo's Vida del Buscon are the best-known 

 examples. They took up with this phase of life 

 partly in deference to the precedent of La:iiril/n, 

 partly liecause it was a life rich in adventures and 

 incidents, but chiefly because it was a phase of life 

 familiar and real to all readers in Spain in the 17th 

 century. And not in Spain alone, apparently, for 

 the truth of the picaresque novels seems to have 

 been recognised wherever there were readers in 

 Kurope ; the liest of them were translate*! almost 

 immediately into Fieneh, and very soon into 

 English, Italian, (ieruian, ami Dutch, and, as 

 repeated editions show, took their place every- 

 where among the acknowledged purveyors of 

 amusement. In (Germany, indeed, they may be 

 saiil to have laid the foundation of the novel in 

 (irininielshaiis-eu'i- StUlflioiMMIU, am! in Kngland 

 we need only turn to Defoe for proof of their 

 inllucnce. Colonel Jack and Mull t'lnnilcr.t are 

 picaresque novels pure and simple, with their 

 parentage stamped upon their features, and there 

 are marks about <'<i/itin ,s'/</''' '"'< and lioxana 

 that show them to lie of the family. 



Hut it was through I/e Sage that the picaresque 

 novel came to be influential in shaping modern 

 fiction. Like a keen-eyed horticulturist who 

 detects in some wild plant useful properties that 

 may !K> indefinitely devclo|H>d by cultivation, or 

 germs that only need the gardener's skill to expand 

 into endlcHH varieties of form and colour, Le Sage 

 was the capabilities of this rough growth of Spanish 

 humour, ami how it* asperities might ! removed 

 without impairing its virtues. It may be said it 

 was no great discovery to perceive that disreput- 



able life is not the only one that affords material 

 ' available for a story of real life, that rascality and 

 roguery are not the only qualities from which 

 amusement may be extracted, and that whatever 

 may lie the artistic advantages of a scoundicl, 

 there is on the whole more to IM- made of a hero 

 who will be accepted by the render as a man and a 

 brother, lint this is only what is said of every dis- 

 covery as soon as men have come to look D|MB iU 

 consequences as matters of course. Great or 

 Mnall, however, this was I.e Sage's discovery, and 

 whether it was of importance or not th. 

 novel of real life and character will show. It 

 would l>e difficult, iierhaps. to define with pre- 

 cision the extent of Le Sage's share in the forma- 

 tion of this gieat necessary of 1 Hi h century exist- 

 ence, but of its reality there can 1* no question. 

 To takeonly one illustration out of many- in Iinriil 

 ''"/'/"rjiflil and elsewhere 1 lickens has left it on 

 lecord that the favourite stoiies of his boyhood 

 weie liinli'i-irk Hiinil'iiH and /'<;< tjrinr I'ii-).l, . a 

 training which shows its fmits in l',,l.irirl; and all 

 his early works ; but if </.-/ J:/H.\ was not in the 

 same way Smollett's primer in l.ction wo have his 

 own word for it that it was the model he set licfore 

 him when he undertook to '|>int out the folli< 

 ordinary Hie.' This much, at least, cannot U- dis- 

 puted, that he was one of the great masters of the 

 art of story telling, the first to show an ai' 

 knowledge of the value of details anil the right use 

 nf realism, and the first to make clear the dis- 

 tinction between the novel and prose fiction in 

 general. PaHtagnut ami (inllircr't Tnn-cls are 

 not novels, not because the ordinary characteristics 

 of the novel are wanting, but In-cause Rabelais and 

 Swift have merelv a-snnied the disguise of a story- 

 teller for the sake of gaining access to quarters 

 otherwise inaccessible, precisely as liurton put on 

 a pilgrim's dress in order to get into Mecca. In 

 Don Qttixvte and ///../( </<.,- there may lie 

 just as little of the conventional features of the 

 novel, but there is no disguise; they take their 

 places among the novels unchallenged, while the 

 title of Trial i-ii HI >'/</// inusi remain at h 

 questionable, for though it may lie called 'The Life 

 and Opinions of Tristram Shandy/ it is in reality 

 'the freaks and grimaces of the Kev. Laurence 

 Sterne.' Le Sage's theoir, so fnr as we mav infer 

 one from his practice, seems to have been that to 

 tell a story is the novelist's business, and to keep 

 to it with singleness of purpose his duty as an 

 artist. 



In the foregoing necessarily brief outline of the 

 history of the novel it will be seen that in ita 

 gmwtO there has been at work a process vi-iv 

 much like that which regulates other growths. One 

 form springs from another, supplants it through 

 lieing 1 letter adapted to surrounding circumstances, 

 and lasts just so long as the adaptation lasts. In 

 the novel, too, as in other eases, fmms that have 

 been in this way pushed aside have a tendency to 

 reappear if circumstances tavonr them. Tin 1 long- 

 winded sentimental novels of tln> 1Mb century wen- 

 only a reversion of the riniinin-i-x iii lut/iir linleiiie 



of the 17th in a soil that happened to suit th ; 



and in the novels of Ilmacc VValpole, Claia lieeve, 

 and Mrs Kadclill'e the spirit of the later romances 

 of chivalry asserted \\-t-ti. just as the spirit of the 

 older and truer chivalry romance found expression 

 in Scott. <>iirntiii Ihirinnil is a genuine romance 

 of chivalry, modified only by genius and modern 

 influences. In its extraordinary powers of multi- 

 plication and variation also the latter day novel 

 seems to IK- subject to natural law. The varieties 

 of wild animals and plants an- few, and seldom 

 strongly marked; hut no sooner does man for his 

 or comfort appropriate any living thing, 

 dog or pig, rose or cabbage, than it acquires a 



