Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/175

Rh intercourse with one another. It is science. Proverbs are the small blossoms on the large tree of human experience. There exist odes to the skylark in every language spoken where this bird is known. No two of them are alike. But all descriptions of the skylark by ornithologists agree in the main. Carlyle often expressed disgust for "silly poetry." Yet he generally dealt with the facts or the reputed facts of history from such a strikingly individual point of view that a great deal of what he wrote belongs to the realm of the imagination as much as to the domain of history. He could not get away from himself,—probably did not want to. "Romola" or "Jane Eyre" deals with types and not with individuals. Their authors probably had some one in view for almost every character they introduced. But they are disguised. On the other hand, some of Carlyle's heroes are historical characters and bear well-known names. Nevertheless, they are almost as much unlike the familiar men and women of the ordinary text-book as if they belonged to the realm of fiction. The type never exists in unadulterated form. Very few every-day people are interesting. Consequently, when novelists bring them before their readers they exaggerate both their virtues and their vices in order to make them attractive. Dickens has a great deal to say about schoolmasters and schools. It is nevertheless much to be doubted whether the men and women he describes and the conditions as he represents them existed anywhere in England. By taking here and there from this person and that a trait or a personal peculiarity that best suited his purpose he makes composite portraits and portrays characters with such verisimilitude that we forget that they are largely the creations of his imagination. Albeit, the imagination is a wonderful and mysterious faculty. The orator is to some extent an artificial product; the poet is born. Unlike the intellect and the will, the imagination can not be trained. Dickens was almost without education; yet he portrays in his works fifteen hundred and fifty characters with more or less fulness of detail, while the number of names of places, societies, literary works, familiar persons and signs exceed two hundred. Balzac's works contains two thousand biographies, individual, distinct and, for the most part, complete. He usually takes each person at his birth and does not lose sight of him until his death. He also knows what the spirit of the country was in their time, the condition of the provinces and the trade to which the man belonged. He even knows what his income is, what taxes he paid, and the state of his culture. Yet Balzac's productive years hardly exceeded a score and Dickens died before reaching old age. In rare cases, but probably in more than is generally known, the poet and the scientist are combined in the same person. The Rev. C. L. Dodgson was a mathematician of considerable ability and expected his fame to rest on what he had done in this department of knowledge. Now hardly anybody cares for his