Robert Louis Stevenson [74]
regards are exceedingly interesting and indeed fascinating from the point of view of autobiographical study, they are, and cannot but be, a drawback on fiction or the disinterested revelation of life and reality. Instead, therefore, of "the visible world," as the only thing seen, Stevenson's defect is, that between it and him lies a cloud strictly self-projected, like breath on a mirror, which dims the lines of reality and confuses the character marks, in fact melting them into each other; and in his sympathetic regards, causing them all to become too much alike. Scott had more of the power of healthy self-withdrawal, creating more of a free atmosphere, in which his characters could freely move - though in this, it must be confessed, he failed far more with women than with men. The very defects poor Carlyle found in Scott, and for which he dealt so severely with him, as sounding no depth, are really the basis of his strength, precisely as the absence of them were the defects of Goethe, who invariably ran his characters finally into the mere moods of his own mind and the mould of his errant philosophy, so that they became merely erratic symbols without hold in the common sympathy. Whether WALVERWANDSCHAFTEN, WILHELM MEISTER, or FAUST, it is still the same - the company before all is done are translated into misty shapes that he actually needs to label for our identification and for his own. Even Mr G. H. Lewes saw this and could not help declaring his own lack of interest in the latter parts of Goethe's greatest efforts. Stevenson, too, tends to run his characters into symbols - his moralist-fabulist determinations are too much for him - he would translate them into a kind of chessmen, moved or moving on a board. The essence of romance strictly is, that as the characters will not submit themselves to the check of reality, the romancer may consciously, if it suits him, touch them at any point with the magic wand of symbol, and if he finds a consistency in mere fanciful invention it is enough. Tieck's PHANTASUS and George MacDonald's PHANTASTES are ready instances illustrative of this. But it is very different with the story of real life, where there is a definite check in the common-sense and knowledge of the reader, and where the highest victory always lies in drawing from the reader the admission - "that is life - life exactly as I have seen and known it. Though I could never have put it so, still it only realises my own conception and observation. That is something lovingly remembered and re-presented, and this master makes me lovingly remember too, though 'twas his to represent and reproduce with such vigor, vividness and truth that he carried me with him, exactly as though I had been looking on real men and women playing their part or their game in the great world."
Mr Zangwill, in his own style, wrote:
"He seeks to combine the novel of character with the novel of adventure; to develop character through romantic action, and to bring out your hero at the end of the episode, not the fixed character he was at the beginning, as is the way of adventure books, but a modified creature. . . . It is his essays and his personality, rather than his novels, that will count with posterity. On the whole, a great provincial writer. Whether he has that inherent grip which makes a man's provinciality the very source of his strength . . . only the centuries can show.
The romanticist to the end pursued Stevenson - he could not, wholly or at once, shake off the bonds in which he had bound himself to his first love, and it was the romanticist crossed by the casuist, and the mystic - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Markheim and Will of the Mill, insisted on his acknowledging them in his work up to the end. THE MODIFIED CREATURE at the end of Mr Zangwill was modified too directly by the egotistic element as well as through the romantic action, and this point missed the great defect was missed, and Mr Zangwill spoke only in generals.
M. Schwob, after having related
Mr Zangwill, in his own style, wrote:
"He seeks to combine the novel of character with the novel of adventure; to develop character through romantic action, and to bring out your hero at the end of the episode, not the fixed character he was at the beginning, as is the way of adventure books, but a modified creature. . . . It is his essays and his personality, rather than his novels, that will count with posterity. On the whole, a great provincial writer. Whether he has that inherent grip which makes a man's provinciality the very source of his strength . . . only the centuries can show.
The romanticist to the end pursued Stevenson - he could not, wholly or at once, shake off the bonds in which he had bound himself to his first love, and it was the romanticist crossed by the casuist, and the mystic - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Markheim and Will of the Mill, insisted on his acknowledging them in his work up to the end. THE MODIFIED CREATURE at the end of Mr Zangwill was modified too directly by the egotistic element as well as through the romantic action, and this point missed the great defect was missed, and Mr Zangwill spoke only in generals.
M. Schwob, after having related