Victor Hugo's romances occupy an important position in the history of
literature; many innovations, timidly made elsewhere, have in them been
carried boldly out to their last consequences; much that was indefinite
in literary tendencies has attained to definite maturity; many things
have come to a point and been distinguished one from the other; and it
is only in the last romance of all, "Quatrevingt-treize," that this
culmination is most perfect. This is in the nature of things. Men who
are in any way typical of a stage of progress may be compared more
justly to the hand upon the dial of the clock, which continues to
advance as it indicates, than to the stationary milestone, which is only
the measure of what is past. The movement is not arrested. That
significant something by which the work of such a man differs from that
of his predecessors goes on disengaging itself and becoming more and
more articulate and cognisable. The same principle of growth that
carried his first book beyond the books of previous writers carries his
last book beyond his first. And just as the most imbecile production of
any literary age gives us sometimes the very clue to comprehension we
have sought long and vainly in contemporary masterpieces, so it may be
the very weakest of an author's books that, coming in the sequel of many
others, enables us at last to get hold of what underlies the whole of
them--of that spinal marrow of significance that unites the work of his
life into something organic and rational. This is what has been done by
"Quatrevingt-treize" for the earlier romances of Victor Hugo, and,
through them, for a whole division of modern literature. We have here
the legitimate continuation of a long and living literary tradition; and
hence, so far, its explanation. When many lines diverge from each other
in direction so slightly as to confuse the eye, we know that we have
only to produce them to make the chaos plain: this is continually so in
literary history; and we shall best understand the importance of Victor
Hugo's romances if we think of them as some such prolongation of one of
the main lines of literary tendency. When we compare the novels of Walter Scott with those of the man of
genius who preceded him, and whom he delighted to honour as a master in
the art--I mean Henry Fielding--we shall be somewhat puzzled, at the
first moment, to state the difference that there is between these two. Fielding has as much human science; has a far firmer hold upon the
tiller of his story; has a keen sense of character, which he draws (and
Scott often does so too) in a rather abstract and academical manner; and
finally, is quite as humorous and quite as good-humoured as the great
Scotsman. With all these points of resemblance between the men, it is
astonishing that their work should be so different. The fact is, that
the English novel was looking one way and seeking one set of effects in
the hands of Fielding; and in the hands of Scott it was looking eagerly
in all ways and searching for all the effects that by any possibility it
could utilise. The difference between these two men marks a great
enfranchisement. With Scott the Romantic movement, the movement of an
extended curiosity and an enfranchised imagination, has begun. This is a
trite thing to say; but trite things are often very indefinitely
comprehended: and this enfranchisement, in as far as it regards the
technical change that came over modern prose romance, has never perhaps
been explained with any clearness. To do so, it will be necessary roughly to compare the two sets of
conventions upon which plays and romances are respectively based. The
purposes of these two arts are so much alike, and they deal so much with
the same passions and interests, that we are apt to forget the
fundamental opposition of their methods. And yet such a fundamental
opposition exists. In the drama the action is developed in great measure
by means of things that remain outside of the art; by means of real
things, that is, and not artistic conventions for things. This is a sort
of realism that is not to be confounded with that realism in painting of
which we hear so much. The realism in painting is a thing of purposes;
this, that we have to indicate in the drama, is an affair of method. We
have heard a story, indeed, of a painter in France who, when he wanted
to paint a sea-beach, carried realism from his ends to his means, and
plastered real sand upon his canvas; and that is precisely what is done
in the drama. The dramatic author has to paint his beaches with real
sand: real live men and women move about the stage; we hear real voices;
what is feigned merely puts a sense upon what is; we do actually see a
woman go behind a screen as Lady Teazle, and, after a certain interval,
we do actually see her very shamefully produced again. Now all these
things, that remain as they were in life, and are not transmuted into
any artistic convention, are terribly stubborn and difficult to deal
with; and hence there are for the dramatist many resultant limitations
in time and space. These limitations in some sort approximate towards
those of painting: the dramatic author is tied down, not indeed to a
moment, but to the duration of each scene or act; he is confined to the
stage almost as the painter is confined within his frame. But the great
restriction is this, that a dramatic author must deal with his actors,
and with his actors alone. Certain moments of suspense, certain
significant dispositions of personages, a certain logical growth of
emotion,--these are the only means at the disposal of the playwright. It
is true that, with the assistance of the scene-painter, the costumier
and the conductor of the orchestra, he may add to this something of
pageant, something of sound and fury; but these are, for the dramatic
writer, beside the mark, and do not come under the vivifying touch of
his genius. When we turn to romance, we find this no longer. Here
nothing is reproduced to our senses directly. Not only the main
conception of the work, but the scenery, the appliances, the mechanism
by which this conception is brought home to us, have been put through
the crucible of another man's mind, and come out again, one and all, in
the form of written words. With the loss of every degree of such realism
as we have described, there is for art a clear gain of liberty and
largeness of competence. Thus, painting, in which the round outlines of
things are thrown on to a flat board, is far more free than sculpture,
in which their solidity is preserved. It is by giving up these
identities that art gains true strength. And so in the case of novels as
compared with the stage. Continuous narration is the flat board on to
which the novelist throws everything.