70 Mr. Walter Besant [April 25, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, April 25, 1884. 



Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. M.A. Manager and Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



Walter Besant, Esq. 



The Art of Fiction* 



I DESIRE, this evening, to consider Fiction as one of the Fine Arts. 

 In order to do this, and before doing it, I have first to advance 

 certain propositions. They are not new, they are not likely to be 

 disputed, and yet they have never been so generally received as to 

 form part, so to speak, of the national mind. These propositions 

 are three, though the last two directly spring from the first. They 

 are: — 



1. That Fiction is an Art in every way worthy to be called the 

 sister and the equal of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Music and 

 Poetry ; that is to say, her field is as boundless, her possibilities as 

 vast, her excellences as worthy of admiration, as may be claimed for 

 any of her sister Arts. 



2. That it is an Art which, like them, is governed and directed 

 by general laws ; and that these laws may be laid down and taught 

 with as much precision and exactness as the laws of harmony, per- 

 spective, and proportion. 



3. That, like the other Fine Arts, Fiction is so far removed from 

 the mere mechanical arts, that no laws or rules whatever can teach it 

 to those who have not already been endowed with the natural and 

 necessary gifts. 



These are the three propositions which I have to discuss. It 

 follows as a corollary and evident deduction, that, these propositions 

 once admitted, those who follow and profess the Art of Fiction must 

 be recognised as artists, in the strictest sense of the word, just as 

 much as those who have delighted and elevated mankind by music 

 and painting ; and that the great Masters of Fiction must be placed 

 on the same level as the great Masters in the other Arts. In other 

 words, I mean that where the highest point, or what seems the 

 highest point, possible in this Art is touched, the man who has 

 reached it is one of the world's greatest men 



The general — the Philistine — view of the* Profession, is, first of 

 all, that it is not one which a scholar and a man of serious views 



* The full discourse is published by Messrs. Cliatto and Windus. 



