Mr. Hope has written them: for these move on
levels altogether different. The constant reader of _The Speaker's_
"Causeries" will be familiar with the two propositions--not in the
least contradictory--that a novel should be true to life, and that it
is quite impossible for a novel to be true to life. He will also know
how they are reconciled. A story, of whatever kind, must follow life
at a certain remove. It is a good and consistent story if it keep at
that remove from first till last. Let us have the old tag once more:

"Servetur ad inum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet."

A good story and real life are such that, being produced in either
direction and to any extent, they never meet. The distance between the
parallels does not count: or rather, it is just a matter for the
author to choose. It is here that Mr. Howells makes his mistake, who
speaks contemptuously of Romance as _Puss in Boots_. _Puss in Boots_
is a masterpiece in its way, and in its way just as true to
life--_i.e._, to its distance from life--as that very different
masterpiece _Silas Lapham_. When Mr. Howells objects to the figure of
Vautrin in _Le Pere Goriot_, he criticizes well: Vautrin in that tale
is out of drawing and therefore monstrous. But to bring a similar
objection against Porthos in _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_ would be very
bad criticism; for it would ignore all the postulates of the story. In
real life Vautrin and Porthos would be equally monstrous: in the
stories Vautrin is monstrous and Porthos is not.

But though the distance from real life at which an author conducts his
tale is just a matter for his own choice, it usually happens to him
after a while, either from taste or habit, to choose a particular
distance and stick to it, or near it, henceforth in all his writings.
Thus Scott has his own distance, and Jane Austen hers. Balzac, Hugo,
Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, Tolstoi, Mr. Howells himself--all these
have their favorite distances, and all are different and cannot be
confused. But a young writer usually starts in some uncertainty on
this point. He has to find his range, and will quite likely lead off
with a miss or a ricochet, as Mr. Hardy led off with _Desperate
Remedies_ before finding the target with _Under the Greenwood Tree_.
Now Mr. Hope--the application of these profound remarks is coming at
last--being a young writer, hovers in choice between two ranges. He
has found the target with