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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises, V. James Fenimore Cooper (search)
ovelist turned out more authoritative than the premature conclusions of a generation of historians. It is only women who can draw the commonplace, at least in English, and make it fascinating. Perhaps only two English women have done this, Jane Austen and George Eliot; while in France George Sand has certainly done it far less well than it has been achieved by Balzac and Daudet. Cooper never succeeded in it for a single instant, and even when he has an admiral of this type to write about,s to be transported, or as a fainting appendage to the skirmish. The author might as well have written the romance of an express parcel. His long introductions he shared with the other novelists of the day, or at least with Scott, for both Miss Austen and Miss Edgeworth are more modern in this respect and strike more promptly into the tale. His loose-jointed plots are also shared with Scott, but Cooper knows as surely as his rival how to hold the reader's attention when once grasped. Like
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, The New world and the New book (search)
nse with the toy of royalty and the mechanism of separate classes, and to reach human nature itself. When we look at the masters of English fiction, Scott and Jane Austen, we notice that in scarcely one of their novels does one person ever swerve on the closing page from the precise social position he has held from the beginning.terature the brutalities of Haggard and the garlic flavors of Kipling, there was in America a student of life, who painted with the skill that Scott revered in Miss Austen, but not on the two inches of ivory that Miss Austen chose. He painted on a canvas large enough for the tragedies of New York, large enough for the future of AMiss Austen chose. He painted on a canvas large enough for the tragedies of New York, large enough for the future of America. Rich and luminous as George Eliot, he had the sense of form and symmetry which she had not; graphic in his characterization as Hardy, he did not stop, like Hardy, with a single circle of villagers. What the future critic will say, we too should be ready to perceive. If England finds him tiresome, so much the worse for En
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XXVI (search)
So strong has been the recent swing of the pendulum in favor of what is called realism in fiction, it is very possible that if Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales were to appear for the first time to-morrow they would attract no more attention than they did fifty years ago. Mr. Stockton has lately made a similar suggestion as to the stories of Edgar Poe. Perhaps this gives half a century as the approximate measure of the variations of fate—the periodicity of the pendulum. On the other hand, Jane Austen, who would, fifty years ago, have been regarded as an author suited to desolate islands or long and tedious illnesses, has now come to be the founder of a school, and must look down benignly from heaven to see the brightest minds assiduously at work upon that little bit of ivory, two inches square by which she symbolized her novels. Then comes in, as an alterative, the strong Russian tribe, claimed by realists as real, by idealists as ideal, and perhaps forcing the pendulum in a new dire
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XXVIII (search)
or model (musterhaft); or that, if it is, this model must necessarily be the Greek. All the rest, he thought, must be looked at historically, we appropriating from each the best that can be employed. If this world-literature be really the ultimate aim, it is something to know that we are at least getting so far as to interchange freely our national models. The current London literature is French in its forms and often in its frivolity; while the French critics have lately discovered Jane Austen, and are trying to find in that staid and exemplary lady the founder of the realistic school, and the precursor of Zola. Among contemporary novelists, Mr. Howells places the Russian first, then the Spanish; ranking the English, and even the French, far lower. He is also said, in a recent interview, to have attributed his own style largely to the influence of Heine. But Heine himself, in the preface to his Deutschland, names as his own especial models Aristophanes, Cervantes, and Molier
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, Index (search)
f, 221. American Civil War, literary influence of, 65. American press, as viewed by Irving, 2. Americanism, English standard of, 20. Andersen, H. C., 214. Anglomania, origin of, 64. Anti-slavery agitation, literary influence of, 66. Apologies, unnecessary, 120. Archer, the jockey, 205. Ariosto, Lodovico, 187. Aristophanes, 99, 229. Aristotle, 174, 232. Arnold, Sir, Edwin, 106, 110. Arnold, Matthew, 3, 5, 19, 20, 21, 22, 35, 38, 46, 91, 123, 195, 206, 208. Austen, Jane, 10, 15, 219, 229. Austin, Henry, 101. Austin, Sarah, 144. B. Background, the need of a, 113. Bacon, Lord, 114, 175. Bailey, P. J., 57. Bain, Alexander, 202. Balzac, H. de, 114. Bancroft, George, 107, 155. Bancroft, H. H., 172. Barker, Lemuel, 184. Bartlett, J. R., 216. Beaconsfield, Lord, 110, 167, 179, 180. Beecher, H. W., 60. Besant, Walter, 74. Bigelow, 54. Billings, Josh, 59. Black, William, 202. Blaine, J. G., 110. Blake, William, 218. Bonaparte, Napoleo
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