It is not surprising that he made the historical novel a literary
vogue all over Europe. In the second place, he began in his novels of
Scottish character a sympathetic study of nationality. He is not,
perhaps, a fair guide to contemporary conditions; his interests were too
romantic and too much in the past to catch the rattle of the looms that
caught the ear of Galt, and if we want a picture of the great fact of
modern Scotland, its industrialisation, it is to Galt we must go. But in
his comprehension of the essential character of the people he has no
rival; in it his historical sense seconded his observation, and the two
mingling gave us the pictures whose depth of colour and truth make his
Scottish novels, _Old Mortality, The Antiquary, Redgauntlet_, the
greatest things of their kind in literature.
(3)
The peculiarly national style of fiction founded by Fielding and carried
on by his followers reached its culminating point in _Vanity Fair_. In
it the reader does not seem to be simply present at the unfolding of a
plot the end of which is constantly present to the mind of the author
and to which he is always consciously working, every incident having a
bearing on the course of the action; rather he feels himself to be the
spectator of a piece of life which is too large and complex to be under
the control of a creator, which moves to its close not under the
impulsion of a directing hand, but independently impelled by causes
evolved in the course of its happening.
Pages:
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261