III.—Fiction as a College Study

Extract

A good deal has been said, in recent years, about the importance of prose fiction. The vogue which the modern novel undoubtedly enjoys, its immediate and unquestionable influence over multitudes of readers, has contributed much to the prevalent impression as to the value of fiction, yet a more significant factor has been the increasing self-consciousness of fiction writers. They seem to feel a distinct assurance that at last they are going to get seats nearer the head of the table. Compared with the solemnity with which they discuss in public the responsibilities laid upon practitioners of their art, Harry Fielding's prefaces about his stern duty as a historian of human nature seem frivolous indeed. If this conviction of the greatness of the art were producing, or tending to produce, greater artists, one could scarcely quarrel with it, but among the day's distinguished names the great artists are unfortunately as few as ever. Wide-spread as is the present interest in fiction, it is at least debatable whether the English novel is much more intrinsically important, when compared with other types of literature, or even when tested by the proportion of fiction to the entire literary output, than it has been at a half dozen other periods in the last two hundred years.