44. CHAPTER XLIV.
IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE
THE TEXT OF DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE
OR LESS ATTENTION FROM THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.
una
“Quite an Original:” A phrase, we fancy, rather
oftener used by the young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled,
than by the old, or the well-read, or the man
who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense of
originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably
at its lowest in him who has completed the circle
of the sciences.
As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader
will, on meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that
day. True, we sometimes hear of an author who, at
one creation, produces some two or three score such
characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly
be original in the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote,
or Milton's Satan. That is to say, they are not, in a
thorough sense, original at all. They are novel, or
singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at
once.
More likely, they are what are called odd characters;
but for that, are no more original, than what is called
an odd genius, in his way, is. But, if original, whence
came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
up?
Where does any novelist pick up any character?
For the most part, in town, to be sure. Every great
town is a kind of man-show, where the novelist goes for
his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the cattle-show
for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds
are hardly more rare, than in the other are new
species of characters—that is, original ones. Their
rarity may still the more appear from this, that, while
characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms,
so to speak, original ones, truly so, imply original
instincts.
In short, a due conception of what is to be held for
this sort of personage in fiction would make him almost
as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is a new
law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the founder
of a new religion.
In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted
such in works of invention, there is discernible
something prevailingly local, or of the age; which circumstance,
of itself, would seem to invalidate the claim,
judged by the principles here suggested.
Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held
to entitle characters in fiction to being deemed original,
is but something personal—confined to itself. The character
sheds not its characteristic on its surroundings,
whereas, the original character, essentially such, is like
a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself
all round it—everything is lit by it, everything starts
up to it (mark how it is with Hamlet), so that, in certain
minds, there follows upon the adequate conception
of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that
which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of
things.
For much the same reason that there is but one
planet to one orbit, so can there be but one such original
character to one work of invention. Two would
conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are
more than one to a book, is good presumption there is
none at all. But for new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric,
and all sorts of entertaining and instructive characters,
a good fiction may be full of them. To produce
such characters, an author, beside other things, must
have seen much, and seen through much: to produce
but one original character, he must have had much
luck.
There would seem but one point in common between
this sort of phenomenon in fiction and all other sorts:
it cannot be born in the author's imagination—it being
as true in literature as in zoology, that all life is from
the egg.
In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety
of the phrase, Quite an Original, as applied by the barber's
friends, we have, at unawares, been led into a
dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps upon the
smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned
to, will be, by retiring under cover of it, in good trim
as may be, to the story.
