n which does not borrow the glamour of verse or of the stage is
the question, "What does all this mean?" "What is the authority?" "How
does the author know it all?" And a hundred critics have pointed out
that there are practically only three ways of meeting this. The boldest
and the best by far is to follow the poet and the dramatist themselves;
to treat it like one of the magic lions of romance, ignore it, and pass
on, secure of safety, to tell your story "from the blue," as if it were
an actual history or revelation, or something passing before the eyes of
the reader. But at that time few novelists had the courage to do this,
daunted as they were by the absence of the sword and shield of verse,
of the vantage-room of the stage. Then there is the alternative of
recounting it by the mouth of one of the actors in, or spectators of,
the events--a plan obvious, early, presenting some advantages, still
very commonly followed, but always full of little traps and pits of
improbability, and peculiarly trying in respect to the character (if he
is made to have any) of the narrator himself. Thirdly, there is the
again easy resource of the "document" in its various forms. Of these,
letters and diaries possess some prerogative advantages; and were likely
to suggest themselves very particularly at this time when the actual
letter and diary (long rather strangely rare in English) had for some
generations appeared, and were beginning to be common. In the first
place the information thus obtained looks natural and plausible: and
there is a subsidiary advantage--on which Richardson does not draw very
much in _Pamela_, but which he employs to the full later--that by
varying your correspondents you can get different views of the same
event, and first-hand manifestations of extremely different characters.

Its disadvantages, on the other hand, are equally obvious: but there are
two or three of them of especial importance. In the first place, it is
essentially an artificial rather than an artful plan--its want of
verisimilitude, as soon as you begin to think of it, is as great as that
of either of the others if not greater. In the second, without immense
pains, it must be "gappy and scrappy," while the more these pains are
taken the more artificial it will become. In the third, the book is
extremely likely, in the taking of these pains and even without them, to
become intolerably lengthy and verbose. In the first part at least of
the first p