ing mind. An examination of
recorded facts concerning Mohammed, Dante, Luther, or Burns leads him
to a discovery and a formulation of certain abstract truths concerning
the Hero as Prophet, as Poet, as Priest, or as Man of Letters; and
thereafter, in composing his historical studies, he sets forth only
such actual facts as conform with his philosophic understanding of the
truth and will therefore represent this understanding with the utmost
emphasis. He makes fiction of his heroes, in order most emphatically
to tell the truth about them.

=Biography, History, and Fiction.=--In this way biography and history
at their best are doomed to employ the methods of the art of fiction;
and we can therefore understand without surprise why the average
reader always says of the histories of Francis Parkman that they read
like novels, even though the most German-minded scientists of history
assure us that Parkman is always faithful to his facts. Facts, to the
mind of this model of historians, were indicative of truths; and
those truths he endeavored to express with faultless art. Like the
best of novelists, he was at once a scientist, a philosopher, and an
artist; and this is not the least of reasons why his histories will
endure. They are as true as fiction.

=Fiction Which Is True.=--Not only do the great characters of fiction
convince us of reality: in the mere events themselves of worthy
fiction we feel a fitness that makes us know them real. Sentimental
Tommy really did lose that literary competition because he wasted a
full hour searching vainly for the one right word; Hetty Sorrel really
killed her child; and Mr. Henry must have won that midnight duel with
the Master of Ballantrae, though the latter was the better swordsman.
These incidents conform to truths we recognize. And not only in the
fiction that clings close to actuality do we feel a sense of truth. We
feel it just as keenly in fairy tales like those of Hans Christian
Andersen, or in the worthiest wonder-legends of an earlier age. We are
told of The Steadfast Tin Soldier that, after he was melted in the
fire, the maid who took away the ashes next morning found him in the
shape of a small tin heart; and remembering the spangly little
ballet-dancer who fluttered to him like a sylph and was burned up in
the fire with him, we feel a fitness in this little fancy which opens
vistas upon human truth. Mr. Kipling's fable of "How the Elephant Got
His Trunk" is just as true a