Immortal Fictions [pp. 455-461]

IMMORTAL FICTIONS.
being of a negative kind, they-in common with the mass of
British novelists —rest for their success upon their power of
exciting the passive imagination, and of amusing the surrendered mind. Ivanhoe, Tom J ones and the Vicar of Wakefield
are of too recent date for us to pronounce dogmatically upon
their immortality. It must be confessed that the class of
which the two last mentioned are representatives are scarcely
k,.own to the mass of readers. and are esteemed' only by literary connoisseurs. These were publications of the highest
repute fifty years ago; and it is possible, in the mutations of
style and social life, that, like them, the charming creations of
"the Wizard of the North" may become old-fashioned and
prosy.
The great pictures of Englishl life, exhibited on the canvas
of Dickens, Bulwer and Thackeray, however vivid and captivating, will probably fall into that dark and sombre tint, laid
on by time, that most terrible of painters,-a tint so much
lauded by the initiated few, and so utterly unappreciated by
the outside millions. Our posterity of the 25th century may
have a scene from Vanity Fair offered up to them by some
learned Academician, as a literary curiosity, in the same manner as a bit of Perseus or Aristophanes is now and then
popularly interpreted to us. Lord Verisopht may be plagiarized into some modern fop, with impunity, by the novelist of
the day, and Gentlemen WAVaife and Pelham may serve but "to
point a moral or adorn a tale."
But the fairy tales of our youth, even the most juvenile, of
the Cinderella order, and, advancing in interest, Robin Hood,
Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian Nights, will no doubt live
as long as the English language is spoken. Innoxious emanations offancy, and addressing the young, thought and feeling
yet rambling thirough the quasi barbarous period of adventure
and superstition, they exercise the same fresh power upon successive generations.
But is there a work of imnaginatioz-necessaiily representing
the moral as well as the p)hlysical life-that we can confidently
pronounce immortal? Outside of the few world-renowned
fictions, excepted already, it would be premature to set up
such a claim, even fob the most acceptable and celebrated publications. We have no reference to the drama, nor to fiction
adorned by poetry. But we simply ask, who of the legion of
novelists —properly so called-who have deluged the reading
public with their lutcubrations for the major part of this century; who of the more select band of ruffled worthies that
delighted the good people firom the days of Queen Anne, who
of these prose novelists is sure of immortality? Prose fiction