characters, confessing her disappointment in the fiction of the time (the early thirties), conclude,—[1]
"These novelists make the last mistake you would suppose
them guilty of, they have not enough romance in them to paint
the truths of society. * * * By the way, how few know what
natural romance is: so that you feel the ideas in a book or play
are true and faithful to the characters they are ascribed to, why
mind whether the incidents are probable?"
Trollope reinforces the idea:[2]
"No novel is worth anything, for the purpose either of tragedy
or comedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters
whose names he finds upon the pages. * * * If
there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational."
And Meredith expresses on at least two occasions his
opinion of the value of realism. An embittered authoress
determined to make her next novel a reflex of her bitterness.
Considering that type, she—[3]
"* * * mused on their soundings and probings of poor
humanity, which the world accepts as the very bottom-truth
if their dredge brings up sheer refuse of the abominable. The
world imagines those to be at our nature's depths who are impudent
enough to expose its muddy shallows. * * * it may
count on popularity, a great repute for penetration. It is true
of its kind, though the dredging of nature is the miry form of
art. When it flourishes we may be assured we have been over-enamelling
the higher forms."
