reproduce the chaos of its intricate relations: but Poe, de
Maupassant, and Mr. Kipling aim rather to "see steadily" a limited
phase of life, to focus their minds upon a single point of experience,
and then to depict this point briefly and strikingly. It follows that
the novelist requires an experience of life far more extensive than
that which is required by the writer of short-stories. The great
novelists have all been men of mature years and accumulated wisdom.
But if an author knows one little point of life profoundly, he may
fashion a great short-story, even though that one thing be the only
thing he knows. Of life as it is actually lived, of genuine humanity
of character, of moral responsibility in human intercourse, Edgar
Allan Poe knew nothing; and yet he was fully equipped to produce what
remain until this day the most perfect examples of the short-story in
our language. It is therefore not surprising that, although the great
novels of the world have been written for the most part by men over
forty years of age, the great short-stories have been written by men
in their twenties and their thirties. Mr. Kipling wrote two or three
short-stories which are almost great when he was only seventeen.
Steadiness of vision is a quality of mind quite distinct from the
ability to see things whole. "Plain Tales from the Hills" are in many
ways the better stories for being the work of a lad of twenty:
whatever Mr. Kipling saw at that very early age he envisaged steadily
and expressed with the glorious triumphant strength of youth. But if
at the same period he had attempted a novel, the world undoubtedly
would have found out how very young he was. He would have been
incapable of slicing a cross-section clean through the vastitude of
human life, of seeing it whole, and of representing the appalling
intricacy of its interrelations. On the other hand, most of the mature
men who have been wise enough to do the latter, have shown themselves
incapable of focussing their minds steadily upon a single point of
experience. Wholeness and steadiness of vision--few are the men who,
like Sophocles, have possessed them both. The same author, therefore,
has almost never been able to write great short-stories and great
novels. Scott wrote only one short-story,--"Wandering Willie's Tale"
in "Redgauntlet"; Dickens also wrote only one that is worthy of being
considered a masterpiece of art,--"A Child's Dream of a Star"; and
Thackeray, Cooper, Geo