Art. II.-THE NOVEL OF MISERY.

1. Nell Horn; Le Termite; L'Impérieuse Bonté; La Charpente. By J.-H. Rosny. Paris: Plon, Savine, etc., 1886– 1900.

2. Workers in the Dawn; The Unclassed; Demos; The Nether World. By George Gissing. London: Smith

Elder, etc., 1880-1889.

3. The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot (in Many Inventions). By Rudyard Kipling. London: Macmillan, 1893.

4. Tales of Mean Streets; A Child of the Jago. By Arthur Morrison. London: Methuen, 1894-1896.

5. Liza of Lambeth. By William Somerset Maugham. London: Unwin, 1897.

6. East-End Idylls. By A. St John Adcock.

Bowden, 1897.

London:

7. Mord Em'ly. By W. Pett Ridge. London: Pearson, 1898. 8. Maggie: a Child of the Street. By Stephen Crane. New York: Appleton, 1896.

9. Out of Mulberry Street. By Jacob August Riis. New York: Century Co., 1898.

And other works.

IN considering the influence which Victor Hugo had upon the literature of France, one is struck by its persistence; and, strange as it would have seemed twenty years ago, his influence has remained more in the art of fiction than in the art of poetry. At least, this is the case at the present day. It is generally thought that the romantic movement, of which he was the principal apostle, was superseded by the realistic or naturalistic movement; but, as a matter of fact, the earlier movement, so far as fiction is concerned, has survived the later one. Between 1831, when Notre Dame de Paris' was published, and 1862, when ‘Les Misérables' appeared, there arose a new convention in the arts of the novel and the drama, which was directly opposed to the convention of the cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears.' The novels of Balzac, and more especially of Flaubert, the plays of the younger Dumas and Augier, and the scientific criticism of Taine, were the expression of this new convention. The idealistic novel, however, did not disappear. Victor Hugo, in Quatre-vingt-treize,' which appeared in 1874, was of Vol. 196.-No. 392.

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course faithful to the imaginative conception; and moreover, the second-rate romantic work of an early day, with its insipidly noble and devoted hero, its sentimentality, and its fine, but unconvincing, motives, still lived on somewhat obscurely. 'Le Voeu d'une Morte,' by the late M. Zola, which was published about 1867, is an uninspired production of this second-rate romanticism.

Throughout his career M. Zola has been an example of the persistence of the romantic movement. It would, of course, be unfair and uncritical to estimate him by his first essays; but even in the works of his prime, in Germinal,' 'L'Assommoir,' and 'La Débâcle,' for instance, has he not entirely followed the methods of Victor Hugo? There is the same unreal but effective personification of material objects-the cathedral in Notre Dame' and the tavern in 'L'Assommoir'; the sea in ‘Les Travailleurs de la Mer' and the mine in Germinal,' or the railway engine in 'La Bête Humaine'; the French Revolution in 'Quatre-vingt-treize' and the French army in ‘La Débâcle.' In the novels of each writer there are many pages that seem copied from a badly edited encyclopedia; and the characters of both novelists are not individuals but symbols of some single human passion, creatures of one idea, whose living representatives usually obtain care and comfort, but not liberty. M. Zola was in no sense a realist, so far as the word denotes a writer who describes that which he has seen, and that only. He obtained his facts in the same way as the other romanticists; that is to say, by aid of an imagination that fed on books. The story of 'L'Assommoir,' for instance, was taken from Le Sublime,' by Denis Poulet; and the local colour, even in regard to some of the names, was obtained from the same source. Again, to the making of 'La Débâcle'-the story of a campaign in which the novelist took no part-there went, M. Zola tells us, more than a hundred works.

If the question of the degree of genius be excepted, the only difference between Victor Hugo and M. Zola, as novelists, is in regard to the spirit in which they regard humanity. This difference, however, is fundamental, and it is the explanation of M. Zola's apparent originality of method. The author of 'Les Misérables' had so high an opinion of human nature, even at its worst, that, described with his dazzling rhetoric, a conviet appeared an herois

soul, beside whom, it has been said, a man of the middle classes who fights against temptation and leads an honest life, seems like a sinner beside a saint. The author of 'La Terre' went to the other extreme, picturing mankind, with equal rhetorical exaggeration, as vicious and hideous animals, compared with whom the goat were continent and the tiger mild.

Few writers before the time of Zola could claim any mastery in representing the facts of existence. Till then novels had been tales more or less after the manner of the 'Arabian Nights.' They lacked the central conviction that the life of man was a nightmare of sensuality, crime, drunkenness and nervous disorders. Moreover, the people who lived before the age of Taine and Claude Bernard had not shaped their existence in accordance with the very latest scientific and pathological hypotheses. many cases they even struggled against the circumstances of their lot and overcame them, which was an absurd thing to do, having regard to the novelist's idea of the law of environment. Worse still, they were often described with dangerously contagious sympathy as possessing virtues which had no place in a 'realistic' conception of the universe.

In

It must not be overlooked that the new movement, which did away with all this, was essentially the adoption of a rigorously materialistic standpoint. In regard to method of construction and to style, there is little or no similarity between Balzac, Flaubert, the De Goncourt, Zola, Maupassant and Huysmans. The main point of agreement is their theory of materialism, of which Balzac's novels are the most complete, and Zola's novels the most extreme, expression. According to this theory, man, when all pleasant illusions are put aside, is a machine driven by a few well-defined appetites common to all animals, and only dominates his fellow-beasts by reason of being craftier, fiercer, and more devilish. This was called reality; and to write novels based on this fundamental conception of human nature was to be a realist. And the realist, recognising the gulf that separated him from the novelists of an earlier day, was no longer content to be a mere man of letters. He bestowed upon himself the title 'homme de science.' The ennobling and purifying power of literature had no more place in his work than

it would have had in a scientific monograph on earth

worms.

Scientific monographs however do not enjoy a very large sale; and the realist did not wish to be a man of science in this respect. Consequently he had to find some other means of making his novel attractive to the general public. This was easily done. Not having the delight which an artist would have had in appealing to the higher instincts of a reader, the realist appealed to his worst. This was the triumph of the novel of misery. Of all classes of society the lowest was that which the realists loved most to describe. Here, they explained, was man, unsophisticated by civilisation, in all the vileness and bestiality of nature. To picture him required not art, but merely insensibility. With this, one was able to treat of matters so horrible in themselves that a gift of description, which, if employed on the wholesome aspects of life, would be regarded as commonplace and insignificant, appeared remarkably powerful and effective.

M. J.-H. Rosny in 'Le Termite,' a poor and unpleasant novel of French literary life between 1880 and 1884, analyses this development of the realistic movement. The aim for him and for a hundred other writers of that day was to descend into the foulest places (boyaux) of low life. Unconsciously they formed a code of composi tion by which charm was interdicted, and only trivial situations and an entirely materialistic standpoint permitted. It appeared artistic to exaggerate defects; and blame was attached to any optimism in regard to mankind, collectively and individually. The formula of the note-book, of life taken down as life, of the verity of the thing seen, of the spoken word, of the real occurrence, became sacred. Suppression was forbidden, transformation of facts disallowed, and any use of a constructive conception condemned. There was, above all,' M. J.-H. Rosny says, the abolition of all that was noble, generous, disinterested and beautiful, in the evolution of the beings evoked.' (Le Termite,' p. 35.)

About this time, MM. Rosny-for J.-H. Rosny is the nom de guerre of two brothers-were amongst the most able of the younger realists. M. Huysmans said in 'Làbas' that J.-H. Rosny was the best of Zola's pupils, but this was too generous an abdication of his own position.

That MM. Rosny at first imitated very closely the author of 'L'Assommoir' is clearly seen in their earlier works, such as 'Le Bilatéral,' a study of the Parisian socialists and anarchists. Another of their first novels, 'Nell Horn, de l'Armée du Salut,' is perhaps a better example for our present purpose, as it deals with the lower classes in London. In this it resembles most of the other novels of misery which we propose presently to examine as representing the beginning and the end of the realistic movement in England.

'Nell Horn' justifies so completely MM. Rosny's condemnation of the French realistic novel of the eighties, that we are surprised they should have recently republished it. It is a disagreeable book, badly written and badly put together. An unwonted sense of pity is wholly insufficient to redeem its faults; and, save for the fact that it was written by authors who afterwards produced works of singular and attractive qualities it would long since have been justly forgotten. The style is very irritating, consisting partly of French words strung together on an English idiom, and partly of a somewhat less enigmatical diction, which, however, has none of the merits of sound French prose.

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No doubt, in 1882, when MM. Rosny appear to have been in London, the subject seemed a very promising one. It occurred to a young English author also about the same time. Let me get a little more experience,' Mr George Gissing said, and I will write a novel such as no one has yet ventured to write, at all events in England.' The horrors of the slums of Paris were almost exhausted; and for a French novelist, London, as the scene of description, was in itself a fine discovery. Even the Anglicisms were, at that time, meritorious. Zola had been accustomed to put into print expressions that no man with a feeling of self-respect would dare to use in any society. If his pupils surpassed him by using phrases which had never been uttered by man on earth, it was only to obtain a similar effect of reality!

The story of Nell Horn may be told in a few words. She was a pretty working girl, who joined the Salvation Army, and by chance became acquainted with a Frenchman staying for a while in London. She thought he honestly wished to marry her. He, however, deceived