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 18

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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 18

tales about social problems and, although Dickens' and Thackeray's novels are preeminent for character drawing, i Dickens we fond the purposive element promoting humanity and good fellowship, and attacking abuses in prisons, schools, law courts, and home life. Thackeray, "whose eternal moral purpose element" M. Taine unjustly censures, loyally attacks the social shams. The morality of Thackeray's work is a work of art and this idea is so justly and distinctly enunciated by Hazlett, who says: "The most moral writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to inculcate any moral. The professed moralist unavoidably degenerates into the partizan of a system; and the philosopher is too apt to warp the evidence to his own purpose. But the painter of manners gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to draw the inference: if we are able to do this,
15.

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tales about social problems and, although Dickens' and Thackeray's novels are preeminent for character drawing, i Dickens we fond the purposive element promoting humanity and good fellowship, and attacking abuses in prisons, schools, law courts, and home life. Thackeray, "whose eternal moral purpose element" M. Taine unjustly censures, loyally attacks the social shams. The morality of Thackeray's work is a work of art and this idea is so justly and distinctly enunciated by Hazlett, who says: "The most moral writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to inculcate any moral. The professed moralist unavoidably degenerates into the partizan of a system; and the philosopher is too apt to warp the evidence to his own purpose. But the painter of manners gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to draw the inference: if we are able to do this, 15.