Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1887 — Novels and Novelists. [ARTICLE]

Novels and Novelists.

If one were asked to name the classic novelistß of the EngUsh-speakihg world he would probably mention) Defoe, j Swift, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Dr. Johnson , (Rasselatt) and Goldwin among the earlier ones, and Godwin, I Maturin, Anne Kadcliffe, Jane Porter, Begne Maria Koche, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Burney, Jane Austen, Charles Brockden Brown (the American super- ( naturalist), Bulwer, Disraeli, Captain • Marryatt, Beckford, Hope, Cooper, J Lever, Dickens, George Eliot and Hawthorne. The above names wou’d TVOVconld-net, be^omitted. Of course, others might be included in the list. For instance, Scott’s son-in-law, Lockhart, was a novelist of distinction in his day, but he never was a favorite novelist of the entire English-speaking world as most of the above writers were and are. He was never a universal household novelist, as they were and still are. “Robinson Crusoe,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” Mrs. Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and Mrs. Radcliife’s “Mysteries of TTdolpho/’ and Johnson’s “Rasselas” are housepold books, world-books. Meantime the army of the Englishwriting novelists, living and dead, defies enumeration, like the autumnal leaves or the sands on the seashore. And the cry is, in all critical, journalistic, and review quarters that still they come. Meantime, the above writers of fiction remain the masters in that department of literature. Their supremacy is not disputed. Taine calls Scott the Homer of modern citizen life. Bulwer and Disraeli (I use the names by which they were originally and long known as writers) delineated, for the most part, the patrician life of England, and this they did with masterly pens, although they were most versatile writers, especially Bulwer was such, as the long list of his novels indicates. Dickens and Thackeray for a time, with their gush and satire of rank and caste, threw them into the shade, but they, or their novels, have re-emerged and are almost as much read as ever they were. Time does not dispel the charm of “Contarini Fleming” and “Coningsby,” and is not likely to. So with a number of Bulwer’s novels. Such as “Paul Clifford,” “Eienzi,” “The Last of the Barons,” etc., they must be read as long as Scott’s are. What a splendid picture of the stirring age of the “Last of the Roman Tribunes” is Bulwer’s novel of that name. Years ago some of our hypercritics were fond of declaiming from the lecture rostrum against Bulwer and Disraeli and in praise of Thackeray and Dickens. But the two former were as great in their way as were the two latter. As for -Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” torevert, abruptly,- to the earlier English novelists, its pages are not readable at the present time. Fielding was a great delineator of character and profoundly versed in the English human nature of his time, which was apt to be coarse, brutal and sensual. In fact, his “Squire Westerns” and “Tom Joneses” are too gross to be tolerated at this era. The reader of “Tom Jones” now would need to bathe himself thrice in running water by way of purification. Fielding’s “Parson Adams” is worthy to take its place alongside of “Don Quixote.” Richardson’s once famous novels of “Pamela” and “Clarissa Harlowe” would now be found too tedious in the perusal for the most determined novel reader. Smollett’s “Roderick Random” gives us vivid delineations of the rough old naval officers of the Commodore Trunnion sort, who made British men-of-war in the first half of the eighteentli century literally floating infernos by their brutalities. “Don Quixote.” “Gil Bias,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Tale of the Tub,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Tristram Shandy," “The Vicar of Wakefield,” “Easselas,” “Wilhelm Meister,” and “The Sorrows of Wertlier,” “Vathek,” Schiller’s “Ghost Seer," “The Nouvelle lleloise,” “Consuelo,” “Jane. Eyre Hope’s “Anastasius,” and “Uncle Tom's Cabin” are the unique books in the field of fiction, veritable world-books.— Boston, Traveller.

Growing Old GrjNeftilly. It is an easy matter to grow old, but not so easy to grow old gracefully, to accept the situation calmly, and submit resignedly to the inevitable. But few persons on the sunny side of three score and ten will admit that they are growing old. Most persons attribute any signs of decay, or any increasing physical disability incident to the ravages of time, to some cause which they can get away from—too close application to business, too long continuance ,in the same business, too much hard work at manual labor, or too close confinement at the desk or counter, climate, temporary derangement of the digestive organs, etc. They don’t seem to dream that they cannot do as much work as ever they did, and believe that they could do it if surroundings and circumstances connected with their business were changed. Nor does it seem to occur to them that the cold of the winters is not more intense than when they were younger, and that it is the thinness of the blood and the slower and more feeble pulsations of the heart, incident to advancing years, which make the winters seem harder and longer. Nor can they be convinced that their loss of appetite or impaired digestion are tne natural results of old age, or that if food were cooked differently or the proper remedies applied they could not eat just the same kind of food and as much of it as when young and in active life. They grow irritable and sometimes despondent, and finally determine to break loose, from their moorings, change their bus> ness and their location, engage in new work and surround themselves by new scene* and new influences, only to find in a short time that they are iio better off, can do no more work, and eat no more, nor relish their food better than before the changes were made. Nor is this all, nor the worst feature of it. They soon find themselves not adapted to their new business and unable roundings, and the balance of their days are spent in regretting that they left tne old homestead and severed the ties, business and social, which had so long bound them* to the place where the comforts and conveniences they had earned and established could never

again be’ enjoyed. And as years advance persons seem to forget that there is a certain point in their lives when the wheels of progress withiu themselves run very slowly or stop still, while those of the business and social world still move forward. They cavil at, complain and find fault with eveiytliing they cannot enjoy. They seem to forget that the things they now condemn in others much younger than themselve-, they once indulged in and enjoyed. They find fault with and complain at the manner of conducting public and private affairs by younger and more ambitious hands, forgetting that they too once did the same and ignoring the fact, that if they now know better ways of doing the same thing it ' is the result of scores of years of experience, an experience these younger heads are having just as they have had. There is nothing done as they would do it, and nothing rightly done if not done their way. —Cedar Bapids Times.