RIGINAL.

CHAPTER XLIV.

IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE THE TEXT OF
DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE OR LESS ATTENTION FROM
THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.

"Quite an original:" A phrase, we fancy, rather oftener used by the
young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled, than by the old, or the
well-read, or the man who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense
of originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably at its
lowest in him who has completed the circle of the sciences.

As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on
meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes
hear of an author who, at one creation, produces some two or three score
such characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly be original in
the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote, or Milton's Satan. That is to
say, they are not, in a thorough sense, original at all. They are novel,
or singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at once.

More likely, they are what are called odd characters; but for that, are
no more original, than what is called an odd genius, in his way, is.
But, if original, whence came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
up?

Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in
town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the
novelist goes for his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the
cattle-show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are
hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters--that
is, original ones. Their rarity may still the more appear from this,
that, while characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms so to
speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts.

In short, a due conception of what is to be held for this sort of
personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there,
as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or
the founder of a new religion.

In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted such in works
of invention, there is discernible something prevailingly local, or of
the age; which circumstance, of itself, would seem to invalidate the
claim, judged by the principles here suggested.

Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held to entitle
characters in fiction to being deemed original, is but something
personal--confi