188 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 



are the same now as when Beethoven mar- 

 shalled them into grand oratorios. The novel- 

 ist of to-day has what all novelists have had 

 and no more. It is said that every writer of 

 real parts has it in him to write one great novel. 

 Du Maurier wrote "Trilby," and exhausted 

 himself! He is not the only writer that one 

 book has drained dry. Many an author had 

 better have written his one book, like Gold- 

 smith, and be known by that than have several 

 and none worth living. So many books fall 

 dead from the press, so few demand a second 

 edition, literature had been indebted had they 

 never been written. So many books have been 

 written because they could be, not because they 

 must be ! You can easily count the books that 

 have the everlasting life-mark on them. 



The fiction of any country is closely allied 

 to its poetry since the highest order of both 

 is a larger revelation of heart and soul. Both 

 are interpreters of things felt but unknown and 

 needing a revelation. So it is the novel is a 

 record of emotion, the study of a human life 

 touched with emotion, of two lives with similar 

 emotions, domestic life with emotion interfus- 

 ing it, of a great historical character aroused 

 and invigorated by a great emotional activity. 



It is universally recognized that the love of 



