_Tristram Shandy_ has, indeed, as good as
no action at all; and there is not much in _La Nouvelle Heloise_ and
_Wilhelm Meister_. Even _Don Quixote_ has relatively little; and what
there is, very unimportant, and introduced merely for the sake of fun.
And these four are the best of all existing novels.
Consider, further, the wonderful romances of Jean Paul, and how much
inner life is shown on the narrowest basis of actual event. Even in
Walter Scott's novels there is a great preponderance of inner over
outer life, and incident is never brought in except for the purpose of
giving play to thought and emotion; whereas, in bad novels, incident
is there on its own account. Skill consists in setting the inner life
in motion with the smallest possible array of circumstance; for it is
this inner life that really excites our interest.
The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to
make small ones interesting.
History, which I like to think of as the contrary of poetry [Greek:
istoroumenon--pepoiaemenon], is for time what geography is for space;
and it is no more to be called a science, in any strict sense of the
word, than is geography, because it does not deal with universal
truths, but only with particular details. History has always been the
favorite study of those who wish to learn something, without having to
face the effort demanded by any branch of real knowledge, which taxes
the intelligence.
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