ABSTRACT
The difference between a French and an English novel of the present day is sufficiently marked. The novels of this country turn chiefly on material distinctions: they strive to show the forms which luxury takes in the privileged classes, and to exhibit the differences between the initiated in fashionable life and the pretenders to it—between the regularly trained and thorough-bred contenders in the race of pleasure, so called, and the ridiculous efforts of those whom "neither breeding nor education have qualified to enter the lists of fashionable celebrity. In our novels the man is but a part of his equipage; he is the principal person in his establishment, but not more necessary to its completeness, than the butler or the coachman. His characteristies are the street he lives in, the wealth he inherits, the company he keeps, the rank he is born to. The play of his feelings, the lights and shadows of his mind, are of no more account than the peristaltic motion of his bowels, or the systole and diastole of his heart. His character is like his livery, a family affair. The only means of distinction permitted, is that of pursuit;—a senator is domestically dull; an exquisite is disproportionately attentive to dress; a roué sits up all night at hazard, or spends all day in seduction. On the other hand, in a French novel, it is difficult to say whether a man drives a pair, or lives in a garret: if distinctions are made, they are those of sentiment, language, or manners. The grand business of French fiction is the feeling excited by certain situations and relations of life; all men dine—in French fiction dinner is understood—in the English it is a main business, during which the capabilities of the host are fully developed, We have in French novels experiments upon the moral or sentimental codes in peculiar cases, or else we have exhibitions of character as displayed by individuals in ordinary life. In English ones we have clever sketches of fashionable follies, or able pictures of particular eccentricities. They who look to what in England is called the world, find their account in considering its modifications in our novels; they who study human nature, who love to learn its play in certain given circumstances, to ascertain with exactness, and describe with delicacy, will resort to the chef-d'œuvres of French fiction. Character is a favourite study with the novelist of both countries; a difference however exists in this case as wide as in the other. Our writers occupy themselves with national character, or with character of a broad and general description, such as may be taken as the representative of large classes influenced by causes common to the whole class, but only to that class. In the French novels character is thoroughly individual; the effects described are such as arise from ordinary experience acting upon common natures, showing in full relief, however, all those shades of variety that necessarily distinguish every human being from his fellow creatures. In another class of novels, for which English literature is distinguished, the French have nothing to show, except some paltry imitations—we mean the novels of adventure. Here the roaming genius of Britain reigns triumphant; every wild shore or semi-barbarian realm has had its novelist, as well as its traveller and its merchant, and from the appearance of Anastasiusdown to that of Mr. Trelawney's Younger Son, there is an uninterrupted series of works, of unequalled variety, interest and instruction, which are not to be equalled by the fictious treasures of any other country in the world.
