NOVEL. It will be as well to draw a distinction at starting between romances and novels; the one term includes all fictitious narratives of the kind called romantic, whether in prose or verse; the other is used to designate that species of romance which is most common at present. ;Phase who are accustomed to look upon all literary composition as depending for its changes on that prevalent tone and character of society, which are usually known by the name of the spirit of the age, will easily allow that imaginative writings are not excepted from the general rule; that they are in fact the expres sion of the age in which they appear. It remains then for us to find out, if possible, what relation they bear to that prevalent tone of society to which we have already alluded, as the spirit of the age.
A comparison between the novel and other imaginative composi tions, such as narrative, lyrical, or dramatic poetry, will show that while the latter depend for their effect on our tastes and sympathies as men, the former requires us to be interested In the circumstances of theislot as well as in the characters themselves. The interest excites' by Iliad,' and by' Hamlet,' exists independently of our knowledge of the history of Troy or of Denmark ; and hence the universal celebrity of those poems. They have been read and will be read with delight, not only by one age or country, but by all. They exhibit picture,' of humanity ; and, as such, do not depend for their popularity on the fact of their readers being Interested by the customs which they describe or the scenes in which the stories are laid. It is as a man, not as a prince of Denmark, that we are Interested in Hamlet. If !letter and Andromache had been natives of the South Sea Islands, we should have read the description of their parting with as much sympathy as we do now.
In novels, on the contrary, we require, in order to be fully satisfied, to be interested in the circumstances, the dress, manners and language of the characters, as well as in the characters themselves But those circumstances, the outeranl dress of the story, are precisely those parts In which the peculiarities of ago and country are developed—those which render the hero of the novel an individual, not the representative of a class. If we acknowledge thus far, we shall see that the interest
which the novel excites depends on more causes than that of the narrative or dramatic poem. But being a tnoro intense, it is also a more confined, interest ; and thus we see why the ponderous romances of the 17th century have ceased to delight the world, while the Iliad ' is as fresh to us as it was to Plato or Cicero.
This additional source of interest however is that which depends in itself on the peculiarities of the age in which any one novel or class of novels appears. Thus the stilted romance of Elizabeth's time was the legitimate offspring of a taste then very prevalent for an ideal state of pastoral life called Arcadian. The readers in that day were the higher ranks, the court and the nobility, and the novel both led and followed their taste. In another country we find romances of chivalry particularly current when the age of chivalry was nearly passed, and when the realities of Moorish warfare had been succeeded by it fashionable enthusiasm unaccompanied by action. Such were the novels which Cervantes began by caricaturing and ended by sur passing.
Sir Walter Scott's novels are in like manner the legitimate creation of their age. Percy's Reliquee ' and some other books had giveu a retrospective turn to literature. Men began to find that Pope and Dryden, or even Milton, did not contain all that was worth knowing in the literature of England. A race of antiquaries sprang up, and with them an antiquarian novelist. Giithe's famous saying about Shakepere, which Carlyle has so cleverly applied to Scott,—" that Shakspero formed his characters from within outwards, Scott from without inwards," is so true, that any one who bears it in mind while reading Scott will not fail to see that the attraction of the Waverley novels' depends more on the dresses and decorations than on the actors.