DIY History | Transcribe | Scholarship at Iowa | The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897 | The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897, Page 4

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The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897

The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897, Page 4

The novelist ought to be the happiest of all authors, for he enjoys the most perfect freedom known to literature. Any ray of genius, any special faculty whatever which he may happen to possess, is at full liberty to develop itself in the direction which best suits it. The novelist almost alone among his [brethern?] of letters may walk his own wild way whether that leads him. No one thinks of ordaining for him that he must tread in one particular path and no other; that he must beat around and round forever in one prescribed each for him, there is no dignity of history; there are no dramatic writers; no laws of rhythm, no dactyls and spondees, no Spencerian or English heroic. There are no codes of critical laws to ordain that a romanticist must follow a certain pattern, must not deal with a certain topic, must only introduce this character, or that situation

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The novelist ought to be the happiest of all authors, for he enjoys the most perfect freedom known to literature. Any ray of genius, any special faculty whatever which he may happen to possess, is at full liberty to develop itself in the direction which best suits it. The novelist almost alone among his [brethern?] of letters may walk his own wild way whether that leads him. No one thinks of ordaining for him that he must tread in one particular path and no other; that he must beat around and round forever in one prescribed each for him, there is no dignity of history; there are no dramatic writers; no laws of rhythm, no dactyls and spondees, no Spencerian or English heroic. There are no codes of critical laws to ordain that a romanticist must follow a certain pattern, must not deal with a certain topic, must only introduce this character, or that situation