perceive the same, according to the different
relations in which they stand to them, and each
reports his own peculiar experience from his
own point of view. The results in consequence
are extremely curious. Sir Walter Raleigh, in
his History of the World, gives an instance.
He states, that from a window of the Tower of
London he looked upon a riot that was going
on outside, and he was favourably situated to
notice all that happened. But he found his
account of the proceedings differed from that
of the parties engaged in them, and that they
differed in their statements from each other in
the most important particulars. Greater
differences still exist between the common
observer and the writer of genius. The former
accuses the latter of intentional exaggeration,
substitution, addition, and has never been able
in society to see the startling phenomena which
he condemns in the romance as melodramatic
and unnatural. The reason is, that such an
individual has never developed the sense
required for the seeing such things; and, because
he is partially blind, he accuses his informant of
wilful invention. Yet, every now and then,
even the common-place mind is thrown off its
balance by some patent revelation which none
can ignore, and then is compelled to acknowledge
in a phrase which has itself become common-
place, that "Fact is stranger than fiction."
Who thought, until yesterday, that we were
living in a state of things such as the inquiries
into the Sheffield trades' unions have brought
to light? Had any novelist alluded to the
system, or portrayed, any of the assassins who
took office under it, he certainly would have
been accused of wilful untruthfulness. Falsehood
and malice would have been charged upon
him, and he would have reaped nothing but
obloquy for his uncorroborated disclosures. We
all recollect the assaults made upon Mr. Charles
Reade for his exposure of the abuses of the
madhouse institutions, and many readers are
yet disposed to suspect exaggeration, when the
probability is that worse horrors have been
actually committed; but which, from their
unfitness for a work of art, have never yet found
their way into a novel of real life.

Whatever may be the amount of truth or
fiction in such productions, the sum of the
latter is sure to be increased in the inevitable
transmutations which they are doomed to
undergo. Modern romance, whether in verse or
prose, is decreed, like the ancient nursery-lore,
to become the subject of future dramas, both
serious and burlesque. The authors of these
will select from the incidents and characters,
and substitute or add others, while impregnating
the mass of the materials with a new
idea, and thus giving a new life and meaning
to the original tale. This, in time, will be
accepted instead of the primary narrative, and be
the ultimate popular form in which the argument
will be received by the public mind; just
in the same manner as Shakespeare's historical
plays stand, with many readers, for the history
of England or of Rome. Those pedagogues of
whom Mr. Campbell speaks will, of course,
denounce the process as altogether wrong, and
the indulgence of such a practice of story-telling,
whether oral or written, as exceedingly wicked.
The obvious reply is, that it is inevitable, and is
what it is by reason of a law which can be no
more resisted in the moral world than the laws
of nature can be resisted in the physics. Facts,
as they are called, from their very abundance,
have to be refunded into the unity of the
principle of which they are examples; and this,
once declared, has a tendency to impersonation,
and, after many days, will be found embodied in
a single hero, whether in history, romance, or
drama, in whom will be summed up the
peculiarities of many individuals. This compound
man will carry off the honours of their exploits.
Thus the story of William Tell had many
predecessors, in Danish and other literatures, in all
of which the frantic father had to shoot the
apple off from his son's head; but the fable
settled itself at length in the person of the
Swiss peasant, who suffered and triumphed in the
cause of the country whose liberty he achieved.
Tales of the kind have to travel through many
phases of legend and ballad-mongering, until
they arrive at a stage, and undergo that artistic
treatment which renders them classical. From
that moment they are fixed, and obtain such
universal attention that it is impossible for any
future embodiment to take their place. The
ideal is satisfied, so far as it can be, and the
general mind of humanity acquiesces in the
conviction that the most appropriate form has
been permanently given to a conception that
had long struggled, in the world of thought,
for adequate expression.

In this manner the entire world of history
and fiction receives ultimate compression, and
is parcelled off in brief products of genius which
in the smallest compass represent the soul, spirit,
and progress of ages. The individual is, in all
these, sacrificed to the expediencies of classical
art. The historical Richard or Macbeth, whatever
the most laborious researches may make
either to be, avails little; the dramatic
representation is the only real portrait acknowledged,
and the poetic dominates the prosaic with a
despotism that displaces the actual for the ideal,
to which the man of genius has given form and
clothing. The utility of the result is the sufficient
justification of the method, which after all
is natural, and not the invention of any
individual. The instinct of the peasant is in this
matter more true than the prejudice of the
scholar; while the latter is barren of fruit, the
former is full of entertainment, and offers a
perpetual banquet at which all nations and peoples
may feast in common.

Now ready, bound in cloth, price 5s 6d.,
VOLUME THE SEVENTEENTH