Life' can be satisfied with the explanation that he thought story-telling simple or childish. He gave his life and his health to the task, and none knew better than he how much of a strong man's toil it cost him. Nor can we believe for a moment that Scott and Fielding, ashamed in a jolly sort of way of their art, had no faith in its existence. The old fable of Fielding going to bed fuddled with claret and getting up the next morning to add another chapter to 'Tom Jones' It is largely a matter of definition. It is not enough to say that the modern novel is a novel of idea and that the old is not. It is not enough to deny the consciousness of art to the great masters, who created as easily as they breathed, and to grant it to the writers of to-day. There is no quality in any modern novel which may not be found in 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Clarissa' or 'Tom Jones,' carries its own refutation upon or Vanity Fair' or 'Great it. or Great Expectations.' And when Mr Walpole tells us that the earlier novelists had no sense at all of the solemnity of their task, we cannot but think he is making himself a victim of his own words. Fielding and Scott," he says, were, in a jolly kind of way, half ashamed of their art; it was, in fact, no art to them at all. Scott wrote Guy Mannering' in six weeks, and concealed his name as the author of those wonderful novels because there was something a little childish and simple about storytelling." Now we would say in answer to this, firstly, that the time 66 66 it. In that story of English life, which Gibbon thought worth more than all the glories of the Hapsburgs, there is not a touch that is not calculated, nor a phrase that is not finished. When in 'Jonathan Wild ' Fielding showed the world what irony could achieve, he must perforce have watched every page, every line, lest there should be, perchance, a lapse in that irony. We can imagine no definition of art which would grant the sacred quality to Mr George Moore, for instance, and withhold it from Scott and Fielding. From Scott, who imagined a new world, and peopled it with men and women of his own invention Scott, indeed, seems to possess, not to say to engross, all the virtues of the novelist. None that we know has excelled him in the art of narrative. Recall 'The Antiquary 'or The Heart of Midlothian or Redgauntlet,' and ask yourself who has surpassed the author of these stories in the art of narrative. Compare The Fortunes of Nigel' with its origins- The Squire of Alsatia' and the rest -and try to match elsewhere the art wherewith the wizard translates dead history into living fiction. Do you search his pages for character? Are not Nicol Jarvie, Andrew Fairservice, Dandie Dinmont, our First James, and Meg Merrilees reward enough for your diligence? Do you look for the power of expression? Turn where you will to the pages on which he uses the vernacular, and confess that you cannot find a line awry to eye or ear. So also Mr Walpole thinks that Dickens and Thackeray and their contemporaries" were were little aware of what they were about." He says that "the farthest direction into which their consciousness led them was towards the cure of social evils." It seems to us that they cared far less for "social evils than did their bold bad successors for the "sexual problem." It was towards the practice of their art that their consciousness led them. Dickens' life was one long struggle with the material of his art. That he had faults none will deny. Can any one deny that as a writer of prose, as a painter of landscape in words, as an inventor of humorous character and humorous phrase, he has had few rivals, save only Shakespeare himself? When, as in the prose of Mrs Gamp, he reaches his greatest height, he is not far from the prose of Falstaff. He touches the splendour of the epic. Shall we say that there is no artistry here? We have disagreed with some of Mr Walpole's conclusions. But it is the best proof of the sincerity and vitality of his argument that it prompts discussion. And even if he does not give the older writers credit for the consciousness 1 which certainly was theirs, he takes his craft very seriously, and writes no word without sincerity. Moreover, he sees no limit to the work which fiction may achieve. "It is not enough," thus he concludes his lecture, for him [the Novelist] to note the tiny earthly changes from day to day that go on around him, not enough for him to analyse the marks and scratches made by events upon his own tiny personality. Having created he must place his creations in a world that is larger than his mortal eye can scan, and that has more meaning in its truth and in its beauty than his mortal brain can grasp." So he is with the masters in sympathy after all. 1 Was Thackeray unconscious of what he was doing, we wonder, when he beat the table with his fist at a certain passage of 'Vanity Fair,' and proclaimed that it was genius? Printed in Great Britain by "I DO believe an English newspaper is the most various and extraordinary composition that mankind ever produced. An English newspaper, while it informs the judicious of what is really doing in Europe, can keep pace with the wildest fancy in feigned adventures, and amuse the most desultory taste with essays on all subjects and in every style." So wrote James Boswell, some time early in 1767, in the manuscript of his 'Account of Corsica'; and, as he gave the last flourish with his quill, he may well have smiled and glanced at the last number of the 'London Chronicle,' in which several "various and extraordinary compositions owed their existence solely to his own fertile fancy. No one, I think, without the evidence which I am about to present, would have suspected the astonishing amount of his VOL. CCXVIII.-NO. MCCCXVIII. journalistic writing, nor its equally astonishing range and versatility. And this is one of the little ironies of fate, for Boswell intended that long ere this we should have known all about it. I have before me as I write one of the most amazing sets of books it has ever been my lot to examine: Boswell's own file of the London Chronicle (a newspaper which appeared three times a week) for the years 1767 to 1775 inclusive, with his contributions marked in his own hand. This remarkable set has recently, through the munificence of Mr R. B. Adam, become the property of the Yale University Library, where I have had the opportunity to study it thoroughly and at leisure. It is more than a marked file. For not only has Boswell meticulously indicated each of his own contributions with a distinctive mark G 66 (a star made thus, *), but he has also added occasional manuscript notes, intimate and personal. More than this, Boswell has drawn up in the front of the first three volumes (that is, from January 1767 to June 1768 inclusive) a complete manuscript index of all the paragraphs and essays contributed by James Boswell, Esq." In the three volumes there are roughly one hundred of these paragraphs and essays," ranging in length from a line or two to a whole newspaper page and more. He has not been content with merely marking and listing them. In this index every item is carefully set down as "fact or invention." The "facts " are news items with some actual basis of truth; the "inventions," which have every external appearance of being as genuine, were made up by James Boswell, Esq. There are, I rejoice to add, very few paragraphs indexed fact." The greater part of the entries are "feigned adventures calculated to "keep pace with the wildest fancy." As every one knows, Boswell made a tour to Corsica, then engaged in a war of independence with the republic of Genoa, in the late autumn of 1765. He was the first English tourist ever to make the journey. He remained on the island five weeks, and he came away with two great desires burning in his breast. The first was to be of some real service to Pascal Paoli and the brave Corsican patriots. The second was to write a book concerning his travels in Corsica-and to sell it. 66 It On 9th January 1766 1 (more than a month before he landed in England), the readers of the 'London Chronicle' were treated to a long paragraph which purported to be an extract of a letter from Rome," dated 5th December 1765. had really been dispatched by Boswell himself from Genoa a day or two after he set foot on the mainland: "You have been amused with reports of Britain's sending an embassy to the island of Corsica. I can, however, inform you for certain that a British subject has actually been there. About the middle of October, Mr Boswell, a Scots gentleman upon his travels over Europe, sailed from the port of Leghorn for the island of Corsica." The letter gives a brief résumé of the tour, but casts a shroud of mystery over the real object of Mr Boswell's visit, which, it is more than hinted, was of a political nature: "The Genoese have been not a little alarmed by it. People in this part of the world are curious to know what will really be the consequences of Mr Boswell's tour to Corsica." This letter "from Rome 1 Boswell's marked file, as I have said, does not begin until 1767, but these items, because of the information they contain, could have been written by no one else. must also have contained a series of addenda relating to Mr Boswell, with explicit directions as to how they should be "released" from day to day. For example, on 11th January the reader found what Mr Boswell said when he was presented to Paoli ; on the 14th, a description of the Corsican chief, and a list of the presents he gave Mr Boswell when that gentleman took his leave: a gun and a pair of pistols, and one of the large mountain dogs so famous in that island." People may have wondered vaguely about this Mr Boswell, for Corsica was at the moment a subject of more than passing interest, but these items by themselves were not enough to fix him in the public consciousness. However, on 11th January Boswell reached Paris, and settled down to an assiduous campaign of publicity, preparatory to his personal entry on the scene. On 23rd January there appeared on the front page of the Chronicle' a paragraph which would have roused the reader's interest if it still needed rousing. This was headed "Foreign Intelligence," and had every appearance of being authentic. An obliging foreign correspondent was at last in possession of "the true motives for a late expedition into Corsica." The object had been no less a scheme than to establish the Young Pretender as King of Corsica. "The above mentioned gentleman, with some of his friends, being sensibly touched with the misfortunes of the young Chevalier Charles Stuart, formed a project of beating the pulse of Signior Paoli, in order, if possible, to procure some kind of establishment of sovereignty for their high-born Prince in that island." Mr Boswell, we are told, was cordially received by Paoli, "but whatever intimations or insinuations Mr B. might hint or drop to the Corsican General have not as yet transpired." This was all, of course, about as far from the truth as anything well could be. Boswell certainly met the Old Pretender's secretary, Andrew Lumisden, at Rome in the spring of 1765, and became very intimate with him. If he made friends with the Pretender's secretary, he doubtedly was introduced to the Pretender himself, whom he guardedly calls in one of his letters of the period "a Scots gentleman of very ancient family." un But that he ever had any political negotiations with either the titular James III. or his son can be instantly denied. This paragraph is an "invention." Letters 'from Genoa and "Leghorn An obliging "Leghorn" continued to appear at frequent intervals. Mr Boswell still remained a figure of great mystery. He was known, at any rate, to have "a good many papers, about which he seemed very anxious, and he avoided talking freely of what he had seen in his singular tours." But on 13th |