MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL:

A STUDY OF PRINCIPLES AND PERSONALITIES

BY RICHARD BURTON




PREFACE

The principle of inclusion in this book is the traditional one
which assumes that criticism is only safe when it deals with
authors who are dead. In proportion as we approach the living
or, worse, speak of those still on earth, the proper perspective
is lost and the dangers of contemporary judgment incurred. The
light-minded might add, that the dead cannot strike back; to
pass judgment upon them is not only more critical but safer.

Sometimes, however, the distinction between the living and the
dead is an invidious one. Three authors hereinafter studied are
examples: Meredith, Hardy and Stevenson. Hardy alone is now in
the land of the living, Meredith having but just passed away.
Yet to omit the former, while including the other two, is
obviously arbitrary, since his work in fiction is as truly done
as if he, like them, rested from his literary labors and the
gravestone chronicled his day of death. For reasons best known
to himself, Mr. Hardy seems to have chosen verse for the final
expression of his personality. It is more than a decade since he
published a novel. So far as age goes, he is the senior of