ndid historical novelists. We do not turn
to Guizot and Thiers for any knowledge of French history except its
stated public facts, its documents with royal seals and its verified
dates and details--it is to Dumas, Merimee, Balzac that all but the
professional students of history go. We do not seek in the rapid
sketches of Gibbon for the story of Nero, but in the pages of "Quo
Vadis." Where do we find the breathing history of Spain except in the
countless novels that its picturesque subjects have suggested? I would
scorn to underestimate the profound and substantial value that the
great muse of History has conferred upon the world. In all literature
she deservedly ranks first in dignity, power and usefulness; but who
will say that at her court the Prime Minister is not the Novel, which
by its lightness, grace and address has popularized history all over
the world?

While the Novel has none of the guise of poetry, yet it has its every
essence, neglecting only form and rhyme. In the Novel you may find the
measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry, and
a capacity for inspiring enthusiasm and emulation quite as great as
poetry unjoined to the divine enchantress, Music.

Plainly not Drama, yet what is more dramatic than the Novel? In the
miracle of its pages you find theater, scenery, actors, audience and
author. You may sit at your ease in your library chair and command the
services of the most innumerable company of comedians, tragedians,
lovers, ladies, buffoons, soubrettes and pantomimists that the world
ever knew. How many novels have been turned into dramas, how few
dramas have been successfully expanded into novels!

Thus the Novel, while it is not History nor Poetry nor the Drama, is a
combination of all. And it possesses more than this. Its lightness
enables it to tell the history of the commonest peasant--a subject
that History disdained until the Novel bent to the task. Its
flexibility makes it possible to write the history of types and
classes; its capacity enables it to convey science, to teach morals,
to illuminate the abstract difficulties of every philosophy, to utter
the despairing human protests stifled elsewhere, and to embrace every
purpose for which words were created and human aspirations were
kindled. That it has lent itself to base uses is true. How could it
escape the contamination that has smirched every other art? And, as in
every other art, that which is base and false in