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doing us all good. He talks much too much about the "adult" and the
"mature" mind when he only means his own, and is especially insistent
on this identification when he is attacking some writer like Thackeray
who is conventionally respected; he refers with uncalled-for scorn to
"the reader whose demand [does not go] beyond 'the creation of char–
acter' and so on" and who therefore likes Trollope; he allows himself to
be romantically ironic about readers who make so bold as to be offended
by these habits.
But if his manner is not exactly ingratiating, its final effect is to
convince you of his earnestness and honesty. His opening sentence–
"The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry J ames
and Joseph Conrad"-is perfectly calculated to evoke protest. Actually
it means only that the major form of the novel is-using the term in
its widest sense-the novel of manners and that Mr. Leavis proposes
to define the precise nature and value of this form by careful analyses
of those novels of Eliot, James, and Conrad which most clearly display
them. Assertions such as " ... to appreciate [Jane Austen's] distinction
is to feel that life isn't long enough to permit one's giving much time
to Fielding" have an unpleasant air about them of the intellectual
YMCAer, full of a suspicious enthusiasm for muscular intellectualism
and high thinking. But this is only Mr. Leavis' unhappy way of saying
how fine he rightly thinks Jane Austen; he admires Fielding quite as
much as any reasonable man ought to. He does not mean to sneer at
Trollope; he is only-and quite rightly again-disturbed by the people
who think Trollope the equal of Jane Austen.
What emerges from his book for the sympathetic reader is a man of
good sense and fine judgment who has applied himself with great earn–
estness to the task of discriminating the supremely good in the novel from
what is merely good and has, in the process of explaining his discrimina–
tions, outlined a serious critical conception of the novel. All this is ef–
fected in the most impressive possible way, by eminently sensible yet
sensitive and intelligent discussions of the particular novelists Mr. Leavis
is concerned with. What is perhaps most impressive of all about these
discussions is the fine clarity and conviction with which he distinguishes
the precise critical grounds of his judgment. So close and sympathetic is
his reading, so unremitting his care to judge and evaluate, so ranging his
power of controlled comparison ("I don't know that I wouldn't sooner
read through again
CLarissa
than
A La recherche du temps perdu.")
that it is hard to believe his book has an equal anywhere in the criticism
of the novel. No one to my knowledge has ever so clearly separated what
is valuable in George Eliot's work from what is not or has specified quite