Fiction and In fiction it might ap pear as if the spirit which colored manifesta tions in the early years of the century perished before the later or even the middle years were reached. The centre of gravity may seem at any rate to have shifted somewhat violently between the dates of 'Sense and Sensibility,' and 'Vivian Grey) on the one hand, and of 'David 'Adam Bede' or 'Vanity Fair' on the other. Still wider may seem the interval between 'Esmond,' and 'Barnaby Rudge,' and 'Harry Richmond,' Jude the Obscure,' and 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.' But all the masterly fiction of the cen tury aims, through different avenues, at a like goal. It seeks the exact, the vivid, the sympa thetic and for the most part the optimistic rep resentation in narrative of the complexities and perplexities of human life and feeling. Whether the novelist rear his structure on historical re search or on autobiographical experience, on careful observation of contemporary society, or on imaginative speculation into human poten tialties, his success is due to his power of com bining in his chronicle artistic presentment of facts of experience with sane and practical in terpretation of thought and impulse.
None of the great novelists of the 19th cen tury failed at one or other period of their careers to emulate Sir Walter Scott's method of seeking in history material through which to work out their ambitions. Scott concentrated on the historical novel a mass of learning and a wealth of intuition which no successor in herited. But the spirit which animated his achievements in the art of fiction lived, albeit in attenuated condition, in the labors of Charles Dickens (1812-70) and William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), of George Eliot (1819 80) and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94). Thackeray reached the highest point of his career as an artist in fiction when he produced a story of the time of Queen Anne. Dickens in The Tale of Two Cities) and in Budge' brought all the vigor of his genius to vivify historic episodes of the century preceding his own. George Eliot proved herself more scholarly and more laborious, and there fore less successful than Dickens or Thackeray, when she sought in Romola to evolve a romance out of the history of the Florentine reforma tion. Robert Lows Stevenson, master of the most picturesque style among novelists since Laurence Sterne, made his most sustained bid for reputation by pursuing in the chronicles of Scotland the historical trail. The same category embraces the most notable work of lesser lumi naries like Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Kingsley and Charles Reade, with each of whose names an historical novel of eminence has to be asso ciated.
Not that the novel of current experience failed to flourish in increasing luxuriance as theyears of the century grew. The cultivation of fiction which reflected the foibles and aspira tions of contemporary society, absorbed throughout the epoch literary genius of the most varied and conflicting types. The most con
spicuous laborers in this field of endeavor were, during the early years, Jane Austen and Dis raeli, while their successors included Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, Thackeray Trollope and Charles Reade during the miLdle years of the century and George Meredith and Thomas Hardy during the last years. The century's yield of fiction in all its forms far exceeded in quantity that of any earlier epoch. The stream was continuously replenished and it maintained till near the end a level approxi mating to that of the first days. But even in fiction the creative energy failed to intensity as the epoch closed.
The drama was the only field of imaginative literature in which England of the 19th century failed to secure conspicuous and lasting triumphs. The standard of excellence which Shakespeare set in the 16th and early 17th cen turies was not likely to be reached again. But the dramatic productions of the 19th century proved of smaller value than the efforts of the 17th or 18th century, which, despite their in feriority to Shakespearean drama, maintained a level of permanent interest. No writer of comedy in the 19th century is comparable with Sheridan, not any writer of tragedies with Dry den or Otway. Writers like Browning and Swinburne, who devoted poetic genius to tragic or romantic drama, never acquired mastery of the true dramatic temper which belongs to the art of the theatre. They proved themselves capable of fine poetic declamation and were skilled in the use of poetic language, but their efforts resulted in the production of dramatic literature for the study rather than of drama for the stage. Bulwer-Lytton, Sheridan Knowles, Tom Taylor and T. W. Robertson are the only English playwrights of the early or central years of the 19th century any portion of whose work lived after its original production in the theatre. Taylor and Knowles essayed romantic drama. Lytton and the rest won their chief fame in the comedy of manners. But immortality was de nied them. None of these men courted with any effect the muse of tragedy. Such plays of theirs in the vein of comedy or romance as retained their vogue in a succeeding generation quickly lost the savor of freshness and seemed to breathe in a very short space of time an anti quated or a faded atmosphere. Their fame soon flickered. A chief cause of the failure of drama to attract during the 19th century any substan tial or efficient part of the literary genius of the era doubtless lay in the competing claims of the novel. The growing complexity of life and thought rendered it increasingly difficult to give, in the brief and graphic terms of drama, per manently satisfying expression to the com plexity of current aspiration and speculation. The art of fiction is freer of conventional re strictions than dramatic art, and gives fuller scope to endeavor, which seeks to interpret variegated experience and manifold human effort.