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

26 Hugh Walpolecompanion, Scott the fireside story-teller, Thackeray themoral teacher, Dickens the exuberant improviser. Ofthem all only Jane Austen can seem to our time thedeliberate artist and she was, it is clear from her wordsabout the novel in Northanger Abbey, quite unselfconsciouslyso. No one, even Hazlitt, wrote about the novelas an Art. It was considered a pleasant minor occupationfor self-indulgent persons who had not quite as muchwork as they ought to have.The implications of this simple and natural innocencywere many. In the first place there was no necessity forany kind of Form or Shape. Form for many of the mid-Victorian novelists indeed was forbidden by their mannerof publication. What hope of technical Shape could youhave when your novel appeared in shilling numbersmonth by month to be continued indefinitely untilreaders were weary? What Shape could you have when,like Dickens, you were concerned with perhaps thecreation of four or five masterpieces at the same time?This manner of publication led also to a co-operation ofreader and writer which is to-day alas unknown. It istrue that a novelist of to-day may find his post loadedwith letters informing him that the moon has risen at thewrong time or that his heroine's baby is eating bacon sixmonths too early, but this is a co-operation post hoc. Inone of Lady Ritchie's delightful prefaces to her father'sworks she describes how a young lady in the country,weary of Amelia and Dobbin, wrote to Thackeray requestinghim to omit them for a number or two, and hewas only too glad to do so, for was not the young ladyin a manner writing his novel with him? I can onlyemphasise the sad change from then to now by asking youto allow your imagination to picture the indignation ofa modern novelist requested by a reader to abandon hisleading idea or alter his favourite grotesqueries! We are