cutting down, not in amplifying; in selecting and
reducing, not in allowing other ideas to group themselves round the
first, other characters to assemble about those who are essential. That
seems to be really the whole philosophy of this matter, concerning which
so many words are expended. The growth of the germinal idea depends on
the nature of an author's talent--he may excel in expansion, or in
reduction; he may be economical, and out of an anecdote may spin the
whole cocoon of a romance; or he may be extravagant, and give a capable
idea away in the briefest form possible.

These ideas may come to a man in many ways, as we said, from a dream,
from a fragmentary experience (as most experiences in life are
fragmentary), from a hint in a newspaper, from a tale told in
conversation. Not long ago, for example, I heard an anecdote out of
which M. Guy de Maupassant could have made the most ghastly, the most
squalid, and the most supernaturally moving of all his _contes_. Indeed,
that is not saying much, as he did not excel in the supernatural. Were
it written in French, it might lie in my lady's chamber, and, as times
go, nobody would be shocked. But, by our curious British conventions,
this tale cannot be told in an English book or magazine. It was not, in
its tendency, immoral; those terrible tales never are. The events were
rather calculated to frighten the hearer into the paths of virtue. When
Mr. Richard Cameron, the founder of the Cameronians, and the godfather of
the Cameronian Regiment, was sent to his parish, he was bidden by Mr.
Peden to "put hell-fire to the tails" of his congregation. This vigorous
expression was well fitted to describe the _conte_ which I have in my
mind (I rather wish I had it not), and which is not to be narrated here,
nor in English.

For a combination of pity and terror, it seemed to me unmatched in the
works of the modern fancy, or in the horrors of modern experience;
whether in experience or in imagination it had its original source. But
even the English authors, who plume themselves on their audacity, or
their realism, or their contempt for "the young person," would not
venture this little romance, much less, then, is a timidly uncorrect pen-
man likely to tempt Mr. Mudie with the _conte_. It is one of two tales,
both told as true, which one would like to be able to narrate in the
language of Moliere. The other is also very good, and has a wonderful
scene with a corpse and