and things as real as any that you can meet in an omnibus. And I suppose
it is conceivable that a novel might exist which was just purely a story
of that kind and nothing more. It might amuse you as one is amused by
looking out of a window into a street, or listening to a piece of
agreeable music, and that might be the limit of its effect. But almost
always the novel is something more than that, and produces more effect
than that. The novel has inseparable moral consequences. It leaves
impressions, not simply of things seen, but of acts judged and made
attractive or unattractive. They may prove very slight moral
consequences, and very shallow moral impressions in the long run, but
there they are, none the less, its inevitable accompaniments. It is
unavoidable that this should be so. Even if the novelist attempts or
affects to be impartial, he still cannot prevent his characters setting
examples; he still cannot avoid, as people say, putting ideas into his
readers' heads. The greater his skill, the more convincing his treatment
the more vivid his power of suggestion. And it is equally impossible for
him not to betray his sense that the proceedings of this person are
rather jolly and admirable, and of that, rather ugly and detestable. I
suppose Mr. Bennett, for example, would say that he should not do so;
but it is as manifest to any disinterested observer that he greatly
loves and admires his Card, as that Richardson admired his Sir Charles
Grandison, or that Mrs. Humphry Ward considers her Marcella a very fine
and estimable young woman. And I think it is just in this, that the
novel is not simply a fictitious record of conduct, but also a study and
judgment of conduct, and through that of the ideas that lead to conduct,
that the real and increasing value--or perhaps to avoid controversy I
had better say the real and increasing importance--of the novel and of
the novelist in modern life comes in.

It is no new discovery that the novel, like the drama, is a powerful