housand
words, though it begin in a king's palace with tragedy and end in
laughter in a Harlem flat. Poe's type of short story is another matter;
it does possess unity of content in that setting, personality, and
events are subtly alike.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NOVEL

Novel and Romance--Romanticism and Realism--Techniques of
Novel and Romance--Incoherence of Novel Relative to Short
Story--Novel as Medium of Self-Expression--Interpolation of
Personal Comment--Significant Simplicity--Permissible
Inclusiveness of Novel--Full Development of Personality--
Variety of Action--Length--Initial Idea--Story--Life--
Society--Singleness of Story--Social Emphasis.

I have a small dictionary on my desk which defines the novel as a
"fictitious prose narrative or tale presenting a picture of real life,"
and the romance as "any fictitious and wonderful tale: a fictitious
narrative in prose or verse which passes beyond the limits of real
life." The definitions state a distinction easier to feel vaguely than
to justify. One may say with truth that Jane Austen's "Sense and
Sensibility" or Trollope's "The Warden" presents a picture of real life,
but can one also say with truth that Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" or
Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" passes essentially beyond the
limits of real life simply because each book states a physically
impossible thing--the brand of his sin over Arthur Dimmesdale's heart
and the metamorphosis of Dr. Jekyll? Either matter is a mere symbol,
devised to give concreteness to a spiritual fact. Is it not true than
human life, the material for fiction, has its spiritual actualities as
well as its physical facts? and does not the romance--as it is commonly
understood--differ from the novel merely in that it narrates a real
adventure of the soul rather than a real adventure of the body?

The fact is patent, I think, that the writer of fiction will gain small
benefit from conceiving the romance as something separate and apart from
the novel; likewise, that a book on technique without confusion may
treat the writing of long fiction generally as the writing of novels. It
is true, of course, that the essential bent of any particular writer may
lead him to deal with the facts of the soul rather than the facts of the
body, or that any particular story may be a spiritual rather than a
physical adventure; nevertheless the story of the spirit must still
develop facts and show t