Ch. 16 - A Humble Remonstrance

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WE have recently (12) enjoyed a quite peculiar pleasure: hearing,
in some detail, the opinions, about the art they practise, of Mr.
Walter Besant and Mr. Henry James; two men certainly of very
different calibre: Mr. James so precise of outline, so cunning of
fence, so scrupulous of finish, and Mr. Besant so genial, so
friendly, with so persuasive and humorous a vein of whim: Mr. James
the very type of the deliberate artist, Mr. Besant the
impersonation of good nature. That such doctors should differ will
excite no great surprise; but one point in which they seem to agree
fills me, I confess, with wonder. For they are both content to
talk about the "art of fiction"; and Mr. Besant, waxing exceedingly
bold, goes on to oppose this so-called "art of fiction" to the "art
of poetry." By the art of poetry he can mean nothing but the art
of verse, an art of handicraft, and only comparable with the art of
prose. For that heat and height of sane emotion which we agree to
call by the name of poetry, is but a libertine and vagrant quality;
present, at times, in any art, more often absent from them all; too
seldom present in the prose novel, too frequently absent from the
ode and epic. Fiction is the same case; it is no substantive art,
but an element which enters largely into all the arts but
architecture. Homer, Wordsworth, Phidias, Hogarth, and Salvini,
all deal in fiction; and yet I do not suppose that either Hogarth
or Salvini, to mention but these two, entered in any degree into
the scope of Mr. Besant's interesting lecture or Mr. James's
charming essay. The art of fiction, then, regarded as a
definition, is both too ample and too scanty. Let me suggest
another; let me suggest that what both Mr. James and Mr. Besant had
in view was neither more nor less than the art of narrative.

But Mr. Besant is anxious to speak solely of "the modern English
novel," the stay and bread-winner of Mr. Mudie; and in the author
of the most pleasing novel on that roll, ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS
OF MEN, the desire is natural enough. I can conceive, then, that
he would hasten to propose two additions, and read thus: the art of
FICTITIOUS narrative IN PROSE.

Now the fact of the existence of the modern English novel is not to
be denied; materially, with its three volumes, leaded type, and
gilded lettering, it is easily distinguishable from other forms of
literature; but to talk at all fruitfully of any branch of art, it
is needful to build our definitions on some more fundamental ground
then binding. Why, then, are we to add "in prose"? THE ODYSSEY
appears to me the best of romances; THE LADY OF THE LAKE to stand
high in the second order; and Chaucer's tales and