<h2><SPAN name="THE_ROMANCE_OF_THE_IMPOSSIBLE" id="THE_ROMANCE_OF_THE_IMPOSSIBLE"></SPAN>THE ROMANCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.</h2>
<h3>By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.<SPAN name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</SPAN></h3>
<p>Fiction which flies at all game, has latterly taken to the Impossible as
its quarry. The pursuit is interesting and edifying, if one goes
properly equipped, and with adequate skill. But if due care is not
exercised, the impossible turns upon the hunter and grinds him to
powder. It is a very dangerous and treacherous kind of wild-fowl. The
conditions of its existence—if existence can be predicated on that which
does not exist—are so peculiar and abstruse that only genius is really
capable of taming it and leading it captive. But the capture, when it is
made, is so delightful and fascinating that every tyro would like to
try. One is reminded of the princess of the fairy-tale, who was to be
won on certain preposterous terms, and if the terms were not met, the
discomfited suitor lost his head. Many misguided or over-weening youths
perished; at last the One succeeded. Failure in a romance of the
Impossible is apt to be a disastrous failure; on the other hand, success
carries great rewards.</p>
<p>Of course, the idea is not a new one. The writings of the alchemists are
stories of the Impossible. The fashion has never been entirely extinct.
Balzac wrote the "Peau de Chagrin," and probably this tale is as good a
one as was ever written of that kind. The possessor of the Skin may have
every thing he wishes for; but each wish causes the Skin to shrink, and
when it is all gone the wisher is annihilated with it. By the art of the
writer this impossible thing is made to appear quite feasible; by
touching the chords of coincidence and fatality, the reader's
common-sense is soothed to sleep. We feel that all this might be, and
yet no natural law be violated; and yet we know that such a thing never
was and never will be. But the vitality of the story, as of all good
stories of the sort, is due to the fact that it is the symbol of a
spiritual verity: the life of indulgence, the selfish life, destroys the
soul. This psychic truth is so deeply felt that its sensible embodiment
is rendered plausible. In the case of another famous
romance—"Frankenstein"—the technical art is entirely wanting: a worse
story from the literary point of view has seldom been written. But the
soul of it, so to speak, is so potent and obvious that, although no one
actually reads the book nowadays, everybody knows the gist of the idea.
"Frankenstein" has entered into the language, for it utters a perpetual
truth of human nature.</p>
<p>At the present moment the most conspicuous success in the line we are
considering is Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The author's
literary skill, in that awful little parable, is at its best, and makes
the most of every point. To my thinking, it is an artistic mistake to
describe Hyde's transformation as actually taking place in plain sight
of the audience; the sense of spiritual mystery is thereby lost, and a
mere brute miracle takes its place. But the tale is strong enough to
carry this imperfection, and the moral significance of it is so
catholic—it so comes home to every soul that considers it—that it has
already made an ineffaceable impression on the public mind. Every man is
his own Jekyll and Hyde, only without the magic powder. On the bookshelf
of the Impossible, Mr. Stevenson's book may take its place beside
Balzac's.</p>
<p>Mr. Oscar Wilde, the apostle of beauty, has in the July number of
<i>Lippincott's Magazine</i>, a novel, or romance (it partakes of the
qualities of both), which everybody will want to read. It is a story
strange in conception, strong in interest, and fitted with a tragic and
ghastly climax. Like many stories of its class, it is open to more than
one interpretation; and there are, doubtless, critics who will deny that
it has any meaning at all. It is, at all events, a salutary departure
from the ordinary English novel, with the hero and heroine of different
social stations, the predatory black sheep, the curate, the settlements
and Society. Mr. Wilde, as we all know, is a gentleman of an original
and audacious turn of mind, and the commonplace is scarcely possible to
him. Besides, his advocacy of novel ideas in life, art, dress and
demeanour had led us to expect surprising things from him; and in this
literary age it is agreed that a man may best show the best there is in
him by writing a book. Those who read Mr. Wilde's story in the hope of
finding in it some compact and final statement of his theories of life
and manners will be satisfied in some respects, and dissatisfied in
others; but not many will deny that the book is a remarkable one and
would attract attention even had it appeared without the author's name
on the title-page.</p>
<p>"The Picture of Dorian Gray," begins to show its quality in the opening
pages. Mr. Wilde's writing has what is called "colour," the quality that
forms the mainstay of many of Ouida's works,—and it appears in the
sensuous descriptions of nature and of the decorations and environments
of the artistic life. The general aspect of the characters and the tenor
of their conversation remind one a little of "Vivian Gray" and a little
of "Pelham," but the resemblance does not go far: Mr. Wilde's objects
and philosophy are different from those of either Disraeli or Bulwer.
Meanwhile his talent for aphorisms and epigrams may fairly be compared
with theirs: some of his clever sayings are more than clever,—they show
real insight and a comprehensive grasp. Their wit is generally cynical;
but they are put into the mouth of one of the characters, Lord Harry,
and Mr. Wilde himself refrains from definitely committing himself to
them; though one can not help suspecting that Mr. Wilde regards Lord
Harry as being an uncommonly able fellow. Be that as it may, Lord Harry
plays the part of Old Harry in the story, and lives to witness the
destruction of every other person in it. He may be taken as an
imaginative type of all that is most evil and most refined in modern
civilization,—a charming, gentle, witty, euphemistic Mephistopheles,
who deprecates the vulgarity of goodness, and muses aloud about "those
renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, and those natural
rebellions that wise men still call sin." Upon the whole, Lord Harry is
the most ably portrayed character in the book, though not the most
original in conception. Dorian Gray himself is as nearly a new idea in
fiction as one has now-a-days a right to expect. If he had been
adequately realized and worked out, Mr. Wilde's first novel would have
been remembered after more meritorious ones were forgotten. But, even as
"nemo repente fuit turpissimus," so no one, or hardly any one, creates a
thoroughly original figure at a first essay. Dorian never quite
solidifies. In fact, his portrait is rather the more real thing of the
two. But this needs explanation.</p>
<p>The story consists of a strong and marvellous central idea, illustrated
by three characters, all men. There are a few women in the background,
but they are only mentioned: they never appear to speak for themselves.
There is, too, a valet who brings in his master's breakfasts, and a
chemist who by some scientific miracle, disposes of a human body: but,
substantially, the book is taken up with the artist who paints the
portrait, with his friend Lord Harry aforesaid, and with Dorian Gray,
who might, so far as the story goes, stand alone. He and his portrait
are one, and their union points the moral of the tale.</p>
<p>The situation is as follows. Dorian Gray is a youth of extraordinary
physical beauty and grace, and pure and innocent of soul. An artist sees
him and falls �sthetically in love with him, and finds in him a new
inspiration in his art, both direct and general. In the lines of his
form and features, and in his colouring and movement, are revealed fresh
and profound laws: he paints him in all guises and combinations, and it
is seen and admitted on all sides that he has never before painted so
well. At length he concentrates all his knowledge and power in a final
portrait, which has the vividness and grace of life itself, and,
considering how much both of the sitter and of the painter is embodied
in it, might almost be said to live. The portrait is declared by Lord
Harry to be the greatest work of modern art; and he himself thinks so
well of it that he resolves never to exhibit it, even as he would shrink
from exposing to public gaze the privacies of his own nature.</p>
<p>On the day of the last sitting a singular incident occurs. Lord Harry,
meeting with Dorian Gray for the first time, is no less impressed than
was Hallward, the artist, with the youth's radiant beauty and freshness.
But whereas Hallward would keep Dorian unspotted from the world, and
would have him resist evil temptations and all the allurements of
corruption, Lord Harry, on the contrary, with a truly Satanic ingenuity,
discourses to the young man on the matchless delights and privileges of
youth. Youth is the golden period of life: youth comes never again: in
youth only are the senses endowed with divine potency; only then are
joys exquisite and pleasures unalloyed. Let it therefore be indulged
without stint. Let no harsh and cowardly restraints be placed upon its
glorious impulses. Men are virtuous through fear and selfishness. They
are too dull or too timid to take advantage of the godlike gifts that
are showered upon them in the morning of existence; and before they can
realise the folly of their self-denial, the morning has passed, and
weary day is upon them, and the shadows of night are near. But let
Dorian, who is matchless in the vigour and resources of his beauty, rise
above the base shrinking from life that calls itself goodness. Let him
accept and welcome every natural impulse of his nature. The tragedy of
old age is not that one is old, but that one is young: let him so live
that when old age comes he shall at least have the satisfaction of
knowing that no opportunity of pleasure and indulgence has escaped
untasted.</p>
<p>This seductive sermon profoundly affects the innocent Dorian, and he
looks at life and himself with new eyes. He realizes the value as well
as the transitoriness of that youth and beauty which hitherto he had
accepted as a matter of course and as a permanent possession. Gazing on
his portrait, he laments that it possesses the immortality of loveliness
and comeliness that is denied to him; and, in a sort of imaginative
despair, he utters a wild prayer that to the portrait, and not to
himself, may come the feebleness and hideousness of old age; that
whatever sins he may commit, to whatever indulgences he may surrender
himself, not upon him but upon the portrait may the penalties and
disfigurements fall. Such is Dorian's prayer; and, though at first he
suspects it not, his prayer is granted. From that hour, the evil of his
life is registered upon the face and form of his pictured presentment,
while he himself goes unscathed. Day by day, each fresh sin that he
commits stamps its mark of degradation upon the painted image. Cruelty
sensuality, treachery, all nameless crimes, corrupt and render hideous
the effigy on the canvas; he sees in it the gradual pollution and ruin
of his soul, while his own fleshly features preserve unstained all the
freshness and virginity of his sinless youth. The contrast at first
alarms and horrifies him; but at length he becomes accustomed to it, and
finds a sinister delight in watching the progress of the awful change.
He locks up the portrait in a secret chamber, and constantly retires
thither to ponder over the ghastly miracle. No one but he knows or
suspects the incredible truth; and he guards like a murder-secret this
visible revelation of the difference between what he is and what he
seems. This is a powerful situation; and the reader may be left to
discover for himself how Mr. Wilde works it out.</p>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></SPAN> <i>Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, September, 1890.</i></p>
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<p><i> ... Pater, who is, on the whole, the most perfect master of English
prose now creating amongst us.</i></p>
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