Mr. Maurice Hewlett contributed an extremely interesting article or, the "beginnings" of books in a recent number of the ''Cornhill Magazine." laking the novel as the present-day form of literature, Mr. Hewlett shows how the beginning was obtained As you look upon your novel—for what is left to literature now besides the novel?—as a chronicle or " symphony, so you will invite the reader on your first page—to listen to an overture, or to begin at the beginning. "There was a man... dwelb'by a churchyard"; nothing could be better than that in the way of opening. It was the old way:
"Hit betel in the days of Uther Pendragon when he was Kynge of all England, and so rogued, that there was a mighty duke in Cornewaill that held warre ageynst hym long tyme."* That is how the greatest of all romances begins—at the beginning; and yet it has in it the germ of the overture; for it gives you the things upon which romance depends, colour and the theme.
Jane Austen One OF Tap Besr.
Jane Austen is, in Mr. Hewlett's opinion, one of the best beginners. Mr. Hewlett continues with some comparisons Much had happened in the interval between Sir Thomas Malory and her. Among other things Defoo had invented the novel, and therefore; in a way, Miss Austen' herself. He saw, how: ever, no better way of doing it than to make a chronicle of it. which had been Sir Thomas's way too; but there was one vast difference between them. Both began at the beginning; but Sir Thomas used colour, to enhance his tale, and Defoe to lower it. Sir Thomas would enchant you, lift you into "realms of old'; Defoe would sober yon down. Both' used _persuasion—literature is forever linked with cookery—but Sir Thomas would have you see reality as a dream, Defoe a dream as a reality.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.