nalysed in that
curious and convenient miniature example of it, the "Mrs. Veal"
_supercherie_: but you may open the novels proper almost anywhere and
discover it in full operation. Like most great processes of art, this is
an adoption and perfecting of habits usual with the most inartistic
people--a turning to good account of the interminably circumstantial
superfluities of the common gossip and newsmonger. Very often Defoe
actually does not go beyond this--just as in _The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters_ he had simply reproduced the actual thoughts and wishes of
those who disliked dissent. But sometimes he got the better of this
also, as in the elaborate building up of Robinson's surroundings and not
a little in the other books. And there the effect is not only
verisimilar but wonderful in its verisimilitude. At any rate, in him,
and for English prose and secular fiction, we have first that mysterious
charm of the _real that is not real_--of the "human creation"--which
constitutes the appeal of the novel. In some of the books there is
hardly any appeal of any other sort. Moll Flanders, though not unkindly,
and "improper" rather from the force of circumstances than from any
specially vicious inclination, is certainly not a person for whom one
has much liking. Colonel Jack, after his youthful experiences in
pocket-picking, is rather a nonentity, something of a coward, a fellow
of no particular wits, parts, or definite qualities of any kind. Singleton
is a rascal who "plays Charlemagne," as the French gambling term has it,
and endows his repentance with the profits of his sin. As for Roxana there
are few more repulsive heroines in fiction--while the Cavalier and the
chief figure in the _Voyage Round the World_ are simply threads on
which their respective adventures are strung. Even Robinson himself enlists
no particular sympathy except of the "put-yourself-in-his-place" kind. Yet
these sorry or negative personages, of whom, in the actual creation of God,
we should be content to know nothing except from paragraphs in the
newspaper (and generally in the police-reports thereof), content us
perfectly well with their company through hundreds and thousands of
solid pages, and leave us perfectly ready to enjoy it again after
a reasonable interval.

This, as has been said, is the mystery of fiction--a mystery partly set
a-working in the mediaeval romance, then mostly lost, and now
recovered--in his own way and according to his o