The life of man is not the subject of novels, but the inexhaustible
magazine from which subjects are to be selected; the name of these
is legion; and with each new subject - for here again I must differ
by the whole width of heaven from Mr. James - the true artist will
vary his method and change the point of attack. That which was in
one case an excellence, will become a defect in another; what was
the making of one book, will in the next be impertinent or dull.
First each novel, and then each class of novels, exists by and for
itself. I will take, for instance, three main classes, which are
fairly distinct: first, the novel of adventure, which appeals to
certain almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies in man;
second, the novel of character, which appeals to our intellectual
appreciation of man's foibles and mingled and inconstant motives;
and third, the dramatic novel, which deals with the same stuff as
the serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature and moral
judgment.
And first for the novel of adventure. Mr. James refers, with
singular generosity of praise, to a little book about a quest for
hidden treasure; but he lets fall, by the way, some rather
startling words. In this book he misses what he calls the "immense
luxury" of being able to quarrel with his author. The luxury, to
most of us, is to lay by our judgment, to be submerged by the tale
as by a billow, and only to awake, and begin to distinguish and
find fault, when the piece is over and the volume laid aside.
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