বঙ্কিমচন্দ্রের উপন্যাস [সংস্করণ-২] | Bankimchandrer Uponyas [Ed. 2]

ভূমিকা ও তৃতীয় স্তরের উপন্যাসগুলি we করিয়াছে তাহার সম্বন্ধে আমাদের বক্তব্য পরিক্ষুট করিতে চাই £- “Romance is a language in which many persons learn to speak with a certain appearance of fluency ; but there are few who can ever bend it to any prac- tical need, few who can ever be said to express them- selves in it. Victor Hugo occupies a high place among those few. He has always a perfect command over his stories ; and we see that they are constructed with a high regard to some ulterior purpose and that every situation is informed with moral significance and grandeur. Of no other can the same thing be said in the same degree. His romances are not to be confused with ‘the novel with a purpose” as familiar to the English reader: this is generally the model of incompetence ; and we see the moral clumsily forced into every hole and corner of the story or thrown externally over it like a carpet over a railing. Now, the moral significance with Hugo is of the essence of the romance; it is the organising principle”. > “But still Hugo is too much of an artist to let himself be hampered by his dogmas; and the truth is that the artistic result seems * * *to have very little connection with the other or directly ethical result”. * > KR. L. Stevenson: Familiar Studies (Victor Hugo’s Romances), p. 48. 2 Ibid, p. 34.