Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/224

214 and so did not himself know the real facts; or else he reported it out of its true relations, and so deprived the reader of the means of knowing the real facts. An apparent third possibility might also be mentioned; that the episode in question was what might be called a "freak" happening, an abnormal occurrence like the birth of an eight-legged calf, which, while historically actual, is really out of the order of nature, and not in itself fit to be a link in the chain of happenings which a true picture of life represents. Of course, such an abnormality has a cause; but the obscurity of the cause makes this possibility a special case under our first explanation—it is not easily displayed in connection with its true causes.

It is evident, then, that the recording of mere detached fact, untouched by the author's personality, is not only impossible, but may, when attempted, lead to the violation of actual truth. The door is thus opened to the exercise of the artistic judgment, both in the selection of material and in its manipulation and presentation. The background of this judgment, as it were, is the general view of human nature and of the world at large which the individual author entertains. This view has been arrived at by the observation and meditation which he has practised throughout his life; the conclusions which it involves affect the interpretation of everything that comes under his notice; and its first effect on his art is in determining the choice of subjects to be treated. Individual people and events will arrest his attention and suggest artistic treatment according as they are happy illustrations of what he has perceived to be general truths; and in his treatment he will not scruple to modify them to make them more apt. He will choose what Bagehot calls "literatesque" subjects, subjects fit to be put in a book, as he calls picturesque subjects those fit to be put in a picture; and he defines both as those summing up in a single instance the characteristics that mark the class as a whole to which they belong.

Let us now compare this conclusion as to the legitimate purpose of the novel with such a moral aim as that of Richardson. As a matter