THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 25 
these considerations, together with many more that might be adduced, 
clearly show that there is a great deal in our lives that cannot be 
embodied in a novel that confines itself to the external? There is 
no room in the novel, as defined by Taine, for the treatment of all 
that is deepest and most real in human life, therefore I say the de- 
finition is narrow and the novel he conceived falls far short of the 
possibilities of fiction. 
But in the second place, from the fact that I have insisted that 
the greatest novel must be true to human nature, I am met by the 
re-action that has set in against what is called realism in fiction. In 
these days to say you are an advocate of realism is taken as almost 
equivalent to saying you like filth, or, at least, insipidity. Now, in 
the first place, I protest against such a prostitution of the word 
realism. It is not real life that most of these books present to us. 
A writer on this subject says: ‘‘ Realism during the last thirty years 
has strangely deviated from its fundamental principles ; it has become 
rhetorical ; it has become idealism turned upside down—the ideal- 
ism of ugliness, viceand crime. * * This illusion is aided by the 
minute care taken by modern narrators to describe the surroundings, 
the places and the objects, in whichtheir fantastic personages live 
and move.” There is that in me which makes me believe that ugliness, 
vice, and crime, truthfully presented, cannot be attractive, for in that 
presentation we would find misgivings, loss of hope, and all the 
gentler feelings, atrophy of noble impulses and generous thoughts, 
gradual narrowing, hardening, and despair. Even granting for the 
moment that these novels against which the reaction has set in are 
true to nature, this could not be used as an argument against truth 
to nature as an essential of the greatest novel ; it could only be used 
as a crushing weight against the taste and common sense of the 
authors of such works. Beauty, goodness, faithfulness, and honor, 
are as much truths of life as ugliness, vice, and crime. 
Having thus to a certain extent cleared the way, it remains for 
me to bring forward some considerations that will tend to establish 
my definition, which is, that the greatest novel is that one» which, 
with whatever phase or circumstances it deals, is true to human 
nature, and gives us not only the external but also the inner life of 
thought and feelings, and the formative influences and the tendencies 
at work. I claim that this is greatest,— 
