第1章

It is consoling as often as dismaying to find in what seems acataclysmal tide of a certain direction a strong drift to theopposite quarter.It is so divinable, if not so perceptible,that its presence may usually be recognized as a beginning of theturn in every tide which is sure, sooner or later, to come.Inreform, it is the menace of reaction; in reaction, it is thepromise of reform; we may take heart as we must lose heart fromit.Afew years ago, when a movement which carried fiction tothehighest place in literature was apparently of such onwardand upward sweep that there could be no return or descent, therewasa counter-current in it which stayed it at last, and pulledit backto that lamentable level where fiction is now sunk, andthe word "novel" is again the synonym of all that is morallyfalse andmentally despicable.Yet that this, too, is partlyapparent, Ithink can be shown from some phases of actualfiction whichhappen to be its very latest phases, and which areof a significanceas hopeful as it is interesting.Quite assurely as romanticismlurked at the heart of realism, somethingthat we may call"psychologism" has been present in theromanticism of the lastfour or five years, and has now begun toevolve itself in examples which it is the pleasure as well as theduty of criticism to deal with.