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

Women Novelists of the 'Seventies 67Does it, in Mrs Oliphant's own words, concerning its'nobler arts', exhibit a masterly combination, construction,a humorous survey of life and a deep apprehensionof its problems? Is it of imagination all compact, thatimagination which, as Jean Ingelow said, is ' the crown ofall thoughts and powers', though 'you cannot wear acrown becomingly if you have no head (worth mentioning)to put it on'? Is it the creative outcome of a centraland comprehensive experience of life, and rich and vividand truthful in characterisation? What ardour of mindwent to its making, and what passion of heart? Whatkind and quality of philosophy underlies it? Are thesenovels puppet work, but exquisite, a variegated patchworkof cleverness, a relief to ' fine' and exclusive feelings,a rousing challenge or a deadly malediction? And last—the question that covers most ground—are they works ofart?A little quiet reading makes many of these questionslook rather too solemn and superior. Few novels writtenby anybody will survive so exacting a catechism. Highstandards are essential; but what wilts beneath their testmay still have a virtue and value of its own. And we canbe grateful even for small mercies. In general the novelsthat enjoy a brief but vigorous heyday—the idolatry ofthe few, or the intoxication of the many—so succeedsimply because they deal with current themes and theses,or are a lively and entertaining peepshow of their passingday's fads, fashions, fantasies and fatuities. Havingserved their purpose ill or well, they perish, or, rather,escape from view. And man has had as active a hand inthis manufacture as woman. May to-morrow's brilliantmasterpiece then be as modest as it can!The role of the rival however, in literature as in life, isa restless and invidious one, and the mere steady approximationof the work of either sex to that of the other would5-2