Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/217

 Rh would have been desirable to introduce some gayer and more happy incidents," he admits in his preface, "but it has not been possible." Why has it not been possible, we wonder? It is the privilege of a novelist to select or discard material according to his good judgment. He is not writing a history; he is telling a story. He is not chronicling events; he is weaving a romance. He is an artist, not a recorder; and in the choice as well as in the use of material lies the test of unblemished art.

What, then, is the vital charm which makes the novel of incident true literature—the charm possessed by Dumas, and Fielding, and Sir Walter Scott? Mr. Birrell, who is always in love with plain definitions, says that if a book be full of "inns, atmosphere, and motion," then it is a good book, and he asks no more. Mr. Lang, who shares this hearty sympathy for action, acknowledges that the best results are often obtained by the simplest machinery. "Dumas," he declares, "requires no more than a room in an inn, where people meet in riding-cloaks, to move the heart with the last degree