THE NOVEL

When by efforts literary you might scale the summits airy

Which the eminent in fiction are ascending every day,

Why obscurely crawl and grovel?— I will write ( I said ) a Novel!

So I started and I planned it in the ordinary way.

I’ d a Heroine — a creature of resplendent form and feature,

With a spell in every motion and a charm in every look:

I’ d a Villain — worse than Nero,— I’ d a most superior Hero:

And the host of minor persons which is needed in a book:

Each was drawn from observation: yet was each a pure creation

Which revealed at once the genius of originating mind:

Not a man and not a woman but combined the Broadly Human

With a something quite peculiar of an interesting kind:

What a wealth of meaning inner in the things they said at dinner!

How their conversation sparkled ( like the ripples on the deep ),

Half disclosing, half concealing a Profundity of Feeling

Which would move the gay to laughter and incite the grave to weep!

There they stood in grace and vigour, each imaginary figure,

Each a masterpiece of drawing for the world to wonder at:

There was really nothing more I had to find but just the story,

Nothing more, but just the story — but I couldn’ t think of that.

Yet ( I cried ), in other writers, how the lovers and the fighters

Are conducted through the mazes of a complicated plan,—

How the incidents are planted just precisely where they’ re wanted —

How the man invites the moment, and the moment finds the man!

How a Barrie or a Kipling guides the maiden and the stripling

Till they’ re ultimately landed in the matrimonial state,—

And they die, or else they marry ( in a Kipling or a Barrie )

Just as if the thing was ordered by unalterable Fate,—

While with me, alas! to balance my innumerable talents,

There’ s a fatal imperfection and a melancholy blot:

All the forms of my creating stand continually waiting

For a charitable person to provide them with a Plot!

Still I put the endless query why I wander lone and dreary

( Barred from Eden like the Peri ) minus fame and minus fee,

Why the idols of the masses have an entrée to Parnassus,

While a want of mere invention is an obstacle to me!