LONDON LETTER
The Novel
It is sometimes supposed, when any new and excellent work of art appears, that a new era of creative work will be directly propagated. Certainly, great works of art do in some way mark or modify an epoch, but less often by the new things which they make possible, than by the old things to which they put an end. After Shakespeare, very little; after Dante, nothing; after Henry James, nothing in that kind. So the intelligent literary aspirant, studying Ulysses, will find it more an encyclopaedia of what he is to avoid attempting, than of the things he may try for himself. It is at once the exposure and the burlesque of that of which it is the perfection. And Ulysses is not a work which can be compared with any "novel."
And it is almost as difficult to compare what are called "novels" with each other. When a novelist is worth the pains, the only task is to find his particular topography, the characteristics of his universe, and judge their consistency; he can only be compared with others for the purpose of illustrating the general differences. Only in detail is comparison possible. There are at present, so far as my knowledge extends, three main types of English novel. Whether any one type has a future is doubtful, but a future novelist may still learn something from each. And so I do not know how to compare them with each other. I must mention them separately, without the shadow of a comparison between any representatives of each.
There is first the old narrative method, the tale, traditional in English fiction. The novelist has depended for his success upon a gift of invention, in plot, and an accurate knowledge of a social milieu. As Wells knows the Cockney (whom he has lately abandoned) as Bennett knows his Midlander (whom he has abandoned) so Mr Compton Mackenzie knows a certain theatrical world of London. Mr Mackenzie lays on, not so much sentiment, as coloured detail; and the reader has to accustom himself to the calcium light by which the actor is made visible. But a clever writer of this type,
