ARTICLE V.

MR. HOWELLS AND THE SCHOLASTIC EPOCH IN NOVEL WRITING.

THE careful and discriminating perusal of Mr. Howells's novels must disclose, even to the most unwilling eyes, some notable failings at those very points where romancists, as a rule, excel their literary brethren. He is manifestly deficient in imagination, and, therefore, in creative ability. In the best sense of the word, his personages do not live, and hence do not appeal to the sympathy of the reader. He has but a vague conception of the movement resulting from the action of one character upon another, and thus it happens that there is hardly more semblance of a plot in any of his stories than in a well-written biography. But no intelligent person, in this country, at least, would deny his power. The search for the distinctive quality in his work must, then, go beyond the mere conventionalities of novel writing, beyond facility and elegance in style or purity in diction. A recent discussion which he unexpectedly provoked has involved rather a display of acrimonious temper than of critical judgment. The suggestions made in this article are presented only as the opinion of a single reader. Those who shall exclaim, "This is only a paradox," are cautioned beforehand not to be overhasty with their conclusions. It happened that the present writer, on the same day when he obtained a copy of "A Modern Instance" purchased a small, rough, second-hand volume of Claudian's poems. The latter, to judge by an autograph on the title-page, had once belonged to a well-known dignitary of the Catholic Church, but its only interest for us at this time is due to a scrap of paper left among its pages by some oversight, upon which the sometime owner had writ

ten, in Latin, a scholastic demonstration of the thesis, "Fides extinguit naturale recta rationis lumen." It was, apparently, a merely tentative setting forth of the author's plan. He might make many such sketches before he would be satisfied to elaborate his idea. But imperfect though it was, the scrap looked like the germ of one such ponderous treatise as was the frequent production of medieval philosophy, with its minute subdivisions, its bewildering maze of propositions and counter propositions, objections, replications, proofs, citations, dependent propositions, scholia, problems no sooner propounded than solved, and conclusions that seemed like discoveries, but were, in reality, mere restatements of the original theorem. Every one who has taken up a work of this kind, and pored over it with the patient diligence of a student, can testify to the real attractiveness of this abstruse dialectic, even when exercised upon such unprofitable subjects as the bodily presence of angels, the relation of disembodied spirits to space, the logical distinction between Peter and Paul, which prevented the one from ever accidentally becoming the other, the diet of a chimæra bombinans, and the like delights of the great Aquinas's subtle and disputatious successors. One feels a sort of factitious intellectual greatness in himself as he follows this triumphal march of argument. The clear, cold, literal accuracy of statement, the absence of all rhetorical figures that would obscure the purpose of the writer, the deductions that can not be gainsaid by one who has accepted the premises, afford pleasure of a kind furnished by no other literature down to the present day. This pleasure is the furthest possible remove from that to be found in things. seen, it is devoid of every element of action; it is so abstract, so exclusively mental, that one finds difficulty to express it in words. The inevitable result of an excessive zeal in the study is intellectual arrogance, and a dangerous contempt for those pursuits that have a real and not a supposititious value.

But what has this to do with Mr. Howells? The Latin

fragment alluded to did not recur to memory until a pretty systematic reading of his works had been completed, and a tenable theory was sought to explain their method. Those who desire to do so may content themselves with the specious statement that these novels illustrate the scientific mode of thought prevalent in these modern times, but those who look more carefully into the matter will be convinced that science, in the ordinary sense of the term, has but an accidental relation with Mr. Howells's work. Modern in material, in the lessons they teach, in the social errors they condemn, his writings renew a spirit that is wholly of the past. He may have desired to apply the inductive, the experimental method, but he has not succeeded in his appeal to the scientific consciousness. It was the futile attempt to harmonize the actual status of these novels with the brash and hasty generalizations which had satisfied the majority of critics, and the subsequent groping after a better hypothesis that caused to be remembered the accidental coincidence which has been mentioned.

It is a long distance between the scholastic treatise and the modern novel, not only in point of time, but in every outward feature. The two forms of literature are so divergent that they can be compared only in degree, each in its own kind. It is not necessary to carry the analogy beyond the bounds of reason, nor to be obliged, in order to demonstrate that an analogy exists, to apply it, sentence by sentence, as one would prove the similarity of two given geometrical figures. If the history of the novel as literature beginning with the vague mediæval romance and ending with the clean-cut narrative of the present day tallies, in any measure, with the course of philosophy from the vague theorizing of the Neo-Platonists to the clean cut dogmatism of the "Quæstiones Quodlibetales," in that measure the analogy would be just. If any writings known as novels gave a pleasure to the mind similar to that felt in a scholastic demonstration, the analogy, in so far as these writings were concerned, would be quite sufficient for the

present purpose. The careful and repeated perusal of "A Modern Instance" and "An Undiscovered Country" was the occasion of a real gratification to the logical faculty. No works ostensibly of the imagination ever were colder than these. None ever shone with more of the dry light of reason, and few ever attracted so high an interest, while casting aside all the ordinary attractions of romance. The author has shown himself not only incapable of a plot and of broad, truly human characterization, but he has evinced a practical contempt for those things which steadily, since the time of Scott and Dickens, have been slipping from the grasp of the whole army of novel writers. What stands Mr. Howells in place of a plot is a progressive ratiocination, by which he reaches his conclusion as infallibly and almost as automatically as if he had followed strictly the scholastic method. It would be possible by reducing the narrative to its elements, and translating its language in accordance with the formulas of logic, to make an abstract of "An Undiscovered Country;" for example, in a chain of interdependent syllogisms, the one which implies and contains all the rest being this: The fact of immortality can be experimentally demonstrated only by the communication or manifestation of disembodied spirits; but such communication or manifestation of disembodied spirits. is impossible; therefore, the fact of immortality can not be experimentally demonstrated. The conclusion is embodied in the closing sentences of the book: "If Boynton has found the undiscovered country, he has sent no message back to them, and they do not question his silence. They wait, and we must all wait."

We should see, upon a careful analysis of the work, how intimately the argument involves all the characters who are represented. One must hesitate to assert of Boynton any thing save that he is the somewhat rhetorical embodiment of the major premise in the syllogism that has just been given; of Egeria, that she has any reason for being, save a superstitious interpretation of the word influence; of

Ford, that he is any thing more than a cynical negative; of the different members of the Shaker community that they are more than indistinct expressions of the common life and belief of their sect. Dialogue and description, even in the hands of the clumsiest writer, never fail to give some hint of individuality to a group of personages in a romance. Mr. Howells, with his masterly skill in the art of expression has either unconsciously failed, or he has avoided the task of rounding his characters to any thing comparable with human and living completeness. As visible and embodied abstractions they are possible, like the shades in Virgil's Hades, but as lovers, for instance, or farm hands, actual creatures of flesh and blood going about this earth on any errand whatsoever, they are, to say the least, problematic.

The narrative is simple enough, as we all know. It opens with a spiritualistic séance in Boston, the principal figures being those of Dr. Boynton, a devoted seeker after some experimental proof of the soul's immortality; his daughter Egeria, a medium; and Ford, a young man of science. The love of these two young people, vaguely hinted at the outset, forms no part of the story until near the close. The doctor finding that the results of the séance were brought about by fraud, quits the city with his daughter, and by a series of blunders and misfortunes is finally brought to the hospitable care of a family of Shakers. Here he hopes among honest people who are spiritualists to succeed in the great purpose of his life. But his daughter falls ill from the excitement and hardships she has endured, and upon returning to health proves no longer clairvoyant. It happens that the skeptical Ford, whose attitude or sphere is held by Dr. Boynton to be antagonistic, is entertained in the Shaker family on the very night when the experiment fails, and Boynton, attributing his disappointment to this unwelcome presence, becomes so grievously disturbed that he falls in an apoplectic fit. The slow and mysterious progress of his disease, after the first seizure, leaves him to