1884.J on the Art of Fiction. 73 



conspicuous for its absence in Defoe. The modern Sympathy 

 includes not only the power to pity the sufferings of others, but also 

 that of understanding their very souls ; it is the reverence for man, 

 the respect for his personality, the recognition of his individuality, and 

 the enormous value of the one man, the perception of one man's 

 relation to another, his duties and responsibilities. Through the 

 strength of this newly-born faculty, and aided by the guidance of a 

 great artist, we are enabled to discern the real indestructible man 

 beneath the rags and filth of a common castaway, and the possibilities 

 of the meanest gutter child that steals in the streets for its daily 

 bread. Surely that is a wonderful Art which endows the people — 

 all the people — with this power of vision and of feeling. Painting 

 has not done it, and could never do it ; Painting has done more for 

 nature than for humanity. Sculpture could not do it, because it 

 deals with situation and form, rather than action. Music cannot do 

 it, because Music (if I understand rightly) appeals especially to the 

 individual concerning himself and his own aspirations. Poetry 

 alone is the rival of Fiction, and in this respect it takes a lower place, 

 not because Poetry fails to teach and interpret, but because Fiction is, 

 and must always be, more popular. 



Again, this Art teaches, like the others, by suppression and 

 reticence. Out of the great procession of Humanity, the Comedie 

 Humaine, which the novelist sees passing ever before his eyes, single 

 figures detach themselves one after the other, to be questioned, 

 examined, and received or rejected. This process goes on perpe- 

 tually. Humanity is so vast a field, that to one who goes about 

 watching men and women, and does not sit at home and evolve 

 figures out of inner consciousness, there is not and can never be any 

 end or limit to the freshness and interest of these figures. It is the 

 work of the artist to select the figures, to suppress, to copy, to group, 

 and to work up the incidents which each one offers. The daily life 

 of the world is not dramatic— it is monotonous ; the novelist makes it 

 dramatic by his silences, his suppressions, and his exaggerations. No 

 one, for example, in fiction behaves quite in the same way as in real 

 life ; as on the stage, if an actor unfolds and reads a letter, the simple 

 action is done with an exaggeration of gesture which calls attention to 

 the thing and to its importance, so in romance, while nothing should 

 be allowed which does not carry on the story, so everything as it occurs 

 must be accentuated and yet deprived of needless accessory details. 

 The gestures of the characters at an important juncture, their looks, 

 their voices, may all be noted if they help to impress the situation. 

 Even the weather, the wind, and the rain, with some writers, have been 

 made to emphasize a mood or a passion of a heroine. To know 

 how to use these aids artistically is to the novelist exactly what to 

 the actor is the right presentation of a letter, the handing of a chair, 

 even the removal of a glove. 



A third characteristic of Fiction, which should alone be sufficient 

 to give it a place among the noblest forms of Art, is that, like 



