chestra, he may
derive another and a different interest by watching it from the wings.
To use a familiar form of words, Jane Austen is the novelist's
novelist, Stevenson the writer's writer, Poe the builder's builder;
and in order fully to appreciate the work of artists such as these, it
is necessary (in Poe's words) to "contemplate it with a kindred art."

=The Fusion of Both Elements.=--But the critic should not therefore be
allured into setting method higher than material and overestimating
form at the expense of content. The ideal to be striven for in fiction
is such an intimate interrelation between the thing said and the way
of saying it that neither may be contemplated apart from the other. We
are touching now upon a third and smaller group of fiction, which
combines the special merits of the two groups already noted. Such a
novel as "The Scarlet Letter," such a short-story as "The Brushwood
Boy," belong in this third and more extraordinary class. What
Hawthorne has to say is searching and profound, and he says it with an
equal mastery of structure and of style. "The Scarlet Letter" would be
great because of its material alone, even had its author been a
bungler; it would be great because of its art alone, even had he been
less humanly endowed with understanding. But it is greater as we know
it, in its absolute commingling of the two great merits of important
subject and commensurate art.

=The Author's Personality.=--But in studying "The Scarlet Letter" we
are conscious of yet another element of interest,--an interest derived
from the personality of the author. The same story told with equal art
by some one else would interest us very differently. And now we are
touching on still another group of worthy fiction. Many stories endure
more because of the personality of the men who wrote them than because
of any inherent merit of material or method. Charles Lamb's
"Dream-Children; A Revery," which, although it is numbered among the
"Essays of Elia," may be regarded as a short-story, is important
mainly because of the nature of the man who penned it,--a man who, in
an age infected with the fever of growing up, remained at heart a
little child, looking upon the memorable world with eyes of wonder.

=Recapitulation.=--These, then, are the three merits to be striven for
in equal measure by aspirants to the art of fiction: momentous
material, masterly method, and important personality. To discover
certain truths of hu