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ture so fascinating, and none which is perused with more avidity by the young. The old prejudice which condemned novel-reading as dangerous and improper has almost worn away, and people have the sense to see that lessons of purity and truth may be taught most attractively when dressed in the garb of fiction, whether that fiction assume the form of parable or novel. What Bacon says of Poetry applies equally to Prose Fiction: "Therefore, because the acts or wants of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical; because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed Providence; because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore poesy indueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations; so it appeareth that poesy serveth and conformeth to magnanimity, morality, and delectation.” *

And even if the story has no moral, it is enough if it supplies the means of innocent recreation; and it need not be like 'Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,' * ' Advancement of Learning,' Book ii.

which has been called a "dramatic sermon." Youth is the season of imagination, and the imagination requires its proper aliment as much as any other of our faculties. But what shall we say of the writer who feeds it with the poison of impurity, and, having the power to range at will over the whole realm of fancy, chooses for his subject the prurient details of vice and crime? The coarseness of the novels of the last century may, to a certain extent, have acted as an antidote to the harm which they would otherwise have done, for often in them

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;"

-although the age was so coarse that I doubt whether these lines were quite applicable then. But now a thin veil of decency is thrown over incidents which in themselves are as immoral as any of the adventures of 'Peregrine Pickle' or 'Tom Jones,' and the only antidote to their insidious mischief is their silliness and stupidity. Indeed, the veil of decency makes some of the modern novels more dangerous than the old; just as, to use the illustration which Bacon has drawn from the Hebrew law regarding leprosy, "If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient

may go abroad for clean; but if there be any whole flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean," which "noteth a position of moral philosophy, that men, abandoned to vice, do not so much corrupt manners as those that are half-good and half-evil." Again, I say, let novelists remember the responsibility they incur in the creation of their fictions. It would be well if they would lay to heart the words of an American writer, with which I will conclude this volume:

"If they" (i. e., the ideals we set before us) "are consistent with the conditions of our human nature and our human life, if they are conformed to the physical and moral laws of our nature, and the Government and will of God, they are healthful and ennobling. Such ideals can scarcely be too high or too ardently and steadfastly adhered to. But if they are false in their theory of life and happiness, if they are untrue to the conditions of our actual existence, if they involve the disappointment of our hopes, and discontent with real life, they are the bane of all enjoyments, and fatal to true happiness. The brief excitement which these unreal dreams occasion, however highly wrought this excitement may be, is a poor offset to the painful contrasts which they

necessarily involve.” * The author is here speaking of the day-dreams of our waking thoughts; but what he says applies equally to the fictions of the Novelist.

* Porter on 'The Human Intellect,' pp. 371, 372. New York,

1869.

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