that never had a son.

In one respect both the sublime and ludicrous are easier than the
realistic. They are not required to be true. A man with an imagination
and culture may feign either of them without knowing the ways of men. To
be realistic you must know accurately that which you describe. How often
do we find in novels that the author makes an attempt at realism and
falls into a bathos of absurdity, because he cannot use appropriate
language? "No human being ever spoke like that," we say to
ourselves,--while we should not question the naturalness of the
production, either in the grand or the ridiculous.

And yet in very truth the realistic must not be true,--but just so far
removed from truth as to suit the erroneous idea of truth which the
reader may be supposed to entertain. For were a novelist to narrate a
conversation between two persons of fair but not high education, and to
use the ill-arranged words and fragments of speech which are really
common in such conversations, he would seem to have sunk to the
ludicrous, and to be attributing to the interlocutors a mode of language
much beneath them. Though in fact true, it would seem to be far from
natural. But on the other hand, were he to put words grammatically
correct into the mouths of his personages, and to round off and to
complete the spoken sentences, the ordinary reader would instantly feel
such a style to be stilted and unreal. This reader would not analyse it,
but would in some dim but sufficiently critical manner be aware that his
author was not providing him with a naturally spoken dialogue. To
produce the desired effect the narrator must go between the two. He must
mount somewhat above the ordinary conversational powers of such persons
as are to be represented,--lest he disgust. But he must by no means soar
into correct phraseology,--lest he offend. The realistic,--by which we
mean that which shall seem to be real,--lies between the two, and in
reaching it the writer has not only to keep his proper distance on both
sides, but has to maintain varying distances in accordance with the
position, mode of life, and education of the speakers. Lady Castlewood
in _Esmond_ would not have been properly made to speak with absolute
precision; but she goes nearer to the mark than her more ignorant lord,
the viscount; less near, however, than her better-educated kinsman,
Henry Esmond. He, however, is not made to speak altogether by the card,
or he would be unnat