Again, in all the region of foreign fiction, I see no such figure as Balzac, and no such pathetic creation as "Cousin Pons." That to me is a divine story, far deeper and truer, of course, than anything in Dickens, but alas! so sad. While I tremble at Balzac's insight, I have the childish faith of Dickens; he at least made the world brighter than he found it, and after all, there are worse things than his gospel of plum-pudding. When I am well and strong and full of life, I can bear the great tragedians, like the Elizabethan group, like Balzac; but when I am ill and wearied out with the world, I turn again to our great humorist to gain happiness and help.
My Dear Sir: I am not a great reader of novels. My favorite reading is dramatic poetry and old ballads. Few novelists can have read fewer novels. During the last five years I have certainly not read a score of new ones. But I am constantly reading in the old ones. Portions of chapters that live vividly in my memory, scenes, passages of dialogue, scraps of description – these I read and re-read. I could give you a list of fifty favorite passages, but I would find it hard to say which is my favorite novel. The mood of the moment would have much to do with any judgment made on that head. When I am out of heart Scott suits me well, for his sky is always serene. When I am in high spirits I enjoy Thackeray, for it is only then that I find any humor in the odd and the ugly. Dickens suits me in many moods; there was not a touch of uncharity in that true soul. There are moments when the tenderness of Richardson is not maudlin, and when his morality is more wholesome than that of Goldsmith. Sometimes I find the humor of Sterne the most delicious thing out of Cervantes, and sometimes I am readier to cry than to laugh over "The Life and Deeds of Don Quixote." So that if I were to tell you that in my judgment this last book is on the whole the most moving piece of imaginative writing known to me, – strongest in epic spirit, fullest of inner meaning, the book that touches whatever is deepest and highest in me, – I should merely be saying that it is the last romance in which I have been reading with all the faculties of mind and heart.
I like, at all times and in all moods, the kind of fiction that gets closest to human life, and I value it in proportion as I think it is likely to do the world some good. Thus (to cite examples without method) I care very little for a book like "Vathek," and I loathe a book like "Madame Bovary," because the one is false to the real and the other is false to the ideal. I see little imagination and much inexperience in "Wuthering Heights," and great scenic genius and profound ignorance of human character in "Notre Dame." In Gogol's little story of the overcoat, and in Turgeneff's little story of the dumb porter I find tenderness, humor, and true humanity. I miss essential atmosphere in Godwin's masterpiece, and the best kind of artistic conviction almost throughout Charles Reade. It makes some deduction from my pleasure in Hawthorne that his best characters stand too obviously not for human beings only, but also for abstract ideas. I like George Eliot best in the first part of "Silas Marner," and least in the last part of "The Mill on the Floss." Perhaps I set the highest value on my friend Blackmore among English novelists now living. I find Tolstoï a great novelist in the sense in which his fellow-countryman, Verestchagin, is a great painter – a great delineator of various life, not a great creator. Björnson, the Norwegian novelist, in his "Arne" seems to me a more imaginative artist than Doré in his "Vale of Tears." I do not worship "Manon Lescaut," and I would rather read "Les Miserables" than "Germinal." In short, to sum it up in a word, I suppose I am an English idealist in the sense in which (if I may say so without presumption) George Sand was a French idealist. I think it is the best part of the business of art to lighten the load of life. To do this by writing mere "light literature," the companion of an idle hour, a panacea for toothache, a possible soporific, would seem to me so poor an aim that, if it were the only thing before me I think I would even yet look about for another profession. Fiction may lighten life by sterner means – by showing the baffled man the meanness of much success, and the unsuccessful man the truer triumphs of failure. To break down the superstitions that separate class from class, to show that the rule of the world is right, and that though evil chance plays a part in life, yet that life is worth living – these are among the functions of the novelist. In reaching such ends there are few or no materials that I would deny to him. He should be as free as the Elizabethan dramatists were, or even the writers of our early ballads. His work would be various in kind, and not all suited to all readers; but he would touch no filth for the distinction of being defiled. It would not trouble him a brass farthing whether his subject led him to a "good" or a "bad" ending, for he would have a better ambition than to earn the poor wages of a literary jester, and his endings would always be good in the best sense where his direction was good.
And so in some indirect way I have answered your question; and I would like to add that I foresee that the dominion of the novel must be extended. Fiction is now followed by appalling numbers with amazing fecundity and marvellous skill, which, though mainly imitative, is occasionally original; but its channels are few and very narrow. Already the world seems to be growing weary of feeble copies of feeble men and feeble manners. It wants more grit, more aim, more thought, and more imagination. But this is thin ice to tread, and I would not disparage by a word or a wink the few novelists now living who will assuredly rank with the best in literature. Dugald Stewart said that human invention, like the barrel organ, was limited to a specific number of tunes. The present hurdy-gurdy business has been going on a longish time. We are threatened with the Minerva press over again, and the class of readers who see no difference between Walter Scott and John Galt. But, free of the prudery of the tabernacle and the prurience of the boulevard, surely the novel has a great future before it. Its possibilities seem to me nearly illimitable. Though the best of the novel is nowhere a match for the best of the drama, yet I verily believe that if all English fiction, from Defoe downwards, including names conspicuous and inconspicuous, remembered and forgotten, were matched against all English poetry of whatever kind, from Pope to our own day, it would be found that the English novelist is far ahead of the English poet in every great quality – imagination, pathos, humor, largeness of conception, and general intellect. And I will not hesitate to go further and say that, the art of the novel is immeasurably greater than the art of the drama itself – more natural as a vehicle and less limited in its uses, more various in subject and less trammelled in its mechanism, capable of everything that the drama (short of the stage) can do, and of infinitely more resource.
After pleading illness and arrears of literary work and correspondence in excuse of the brevity of his note, Mr. Collins says:
Besides, the expression of my opinion in regard to writers of fiction and their works will lose nothing by being briefly stated. After more than thirty years' study of the art, I consider Walter Scott to be the greatest of all novelists, and "The Antiquary" is, as I think, the most perfect of all novels.
Dear Sir: I think that my favorite novel is Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities." I will not trouble you with all my reasons for this preference. I may say, however, and I do so with humility, and merely as an individual expression of opinion, that it seems to me that in this great book Dickens touched his highest level. Of course, the greatness of the subject has something to do with the effect produced upon the mind, but in my view there is a dignity and an earnestness in the work which lift it above the rest. Also I think it one of the most enthralling stories in the language.
Dear Sir: You ask me to name my favorite novel, and if it should happen to be a work by a foreign author to mention my favorite English work of fiction also. I find it impossible to answer you. When I was a boy "The Last of the Mohicans" was my favorite novel; a young man and in love, "David Copperfield" became my favorite. When I grew to be a man "The Scarlet Letter" took the place of David and the North American Indian; but ever since I can remember I have always been reading "Monte Cristo" with unflagging delight. One's favorite book is a question of mood. Now and then one might be inclined to regard "Adam Bede" as the most companionable of fiction; there are other times when "Pickwick" appeals most to one's fancy, or when one is even in the humor for "L'Homme qui Rit." "Don Quixote" fits all moods, and there are moments