th his characters and against them, or ought he to suppress
his own opinions and remain impassive, as the dramatist must? Does a
prodigality in the invention of incidents reveal a greater imagination
in the novelist than is required for the sincere depicting of simple
characters in every-day life? Why has the old trick of inserting brief
tales inside a long novel--such as we find in "Don Quixote" and "Tom
Jones" and the "Pickwick Papers"--been abandoned of late years? How
far is a novelist justified in taking his characters so closely from
actual life that they are recognizable by his readers? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of local color? How much dialect may a
novelist venture to employ? Is the historical novel really a loftier
type of fiction than the novel of contemporary life? Is it really
possible to write a veracious novel about any other than the
novelist's native land? Why is it that so many of the greater writers
of fiction have brought forth their first novel only after they had
attained to half the allotted three score years and ten? Is the
scientific spirit going to be helpful or harmful to the writer of
fiction? Which is the finer form for fiction, a swift and direct
telling of the story, with the concentration of a Greek tragedy, such
as we find in the "Scarlet Letter" and in "Smoke," or an ampler and
more leisurely movement more like that of the Elizabethan plays, such
as we may see in "Vanity Fair" and in "War and Peace"?

These questions, and many another, we may expect to hear discussed,
even if they cannot all of them be answered, in any consideration of
the materials and the methods of fiction. And the result of these
inquiries cannot fail to be beneficial, both to the writer of fiction
and to the reader of fiction. To the story-teller himself they will
serve as a stimulus and a guide, calling attention to the technic of
his craft and broadening his knowledge of the principles of his art.
To the idle reader even they ought to be helpful, because they will
force him to think about the novels he may read and because they will
lead him to be more exacting, to insist more on veracity in the
portrayal of life, and to demand more care in the method of
presentation. Every art profits by a wider understanding of its
principles, of its possibilities and of its limitations, as well as by
a more diffused knowledge of its technic.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.