R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

24 Hugh Walpolethe author of Orlandol May we not be sure that theauthor of Pendennis would rejoice at the moral freedomof this year of 1928? he would not in these days be compelledto tell lies about Pendennis' little laundress eventhough Sir William Joynson Hicks were his HomeSecretary.On the other hand we may conceive that Walter Scott,studying the new books in Mr Wilson's handsome bookshopin Oxford Street would, in spite of his generousmind and noble ability to discover the best in everybody,wonder where his own genius of narrative and action hadgone to. He would find, I fear, at this moment, not onesingle worthy example of that enthraHuig aspect of thenovelist's art.We are in fact allowed neither pessimism nor optimism.If, with Mr Guedalla and Mr Desmond McCarthy, webelieve that the art of the novel is dying, it is only becauseour studies of the modern novel in England have beenlimited to a few altogether indifferent hours, our realinterests being elsewhere. On the other hand the torrentof fiction that to-day deafens our ears and frightens ourstability does, I must confess, make it difficult for us tobelieve in the survival of the fittest; at times even themost ardent novel reader among us must wish that theform had never been invented; it is only the novelwriters who are never weary.With our eyes on the 'seventies, however, looking aswe must both back and forth, certain facts must benoticed. One is that, up to 1870, the English novel wasthe most English thing in England, another that it hadbeen consistently regarded as a happy accident ratherthan an Art, and a third that it had in general grown sovirtuous that it kept touch with real life only with greatdifficulty.This Englishness of the English novel has not I think