s his reports of Mrs. Hauksbee. His theory
may not conform with the actual facts of zoological science; but at
any rate it represents a truth which is perhaps more important for
those who have become again like little children.

=Fiction Which Is False.=--Just as we feel by instinct the reality of
fiction at its best, so also with a kindred instinct equally keen we
feel the falsity of fiction when the author lapses from the truth.
Unless his characters act and think at all points consistently with
the laws of their imagined existence, and unless these laws are in
harmony with the laws of actual life, no amount of sophistication on
the part of the author can make us finally believe his story; and
unless we believe his story, his purpose in writing it will have
failed. The novelist, who has so many means of telling truth, has also
many means of telling lies. He may be untruthful in his very theme, if
he is lacking in sanity of outlook upon the things that are. He may be
untruthful in his characterization, if he interferes with his people
after they are once created and attempts to coerce them to his
purposes instead of allowing them to work out their own destinies. He
may be untruthful in his plotting, if he devises situations
arbitrarily for the sake of mere immediate effect. He may be
untruthful in his dialogue, if he puts into the mouths of his people
sentences that their nature does not demand that they shall speak. He
may be untruthful in his comments on his characters, if the characters
belie the comments in their actions and their words.

=Casual Sins Against the Truth in Fiction.=--With the sort of fiction
that is a tissue of lies, the present study does not concern itself;
but even in the best fiction we come upon passages of falsity. There
is little likelihood, however, of our being led astray by these: we
revolt instinctively against them with a feeling that may best be
expressed in that famous sentence of Ibsen's Assessor Brack, "People
don't do such things." When Shakespeare tells us, toward the end of
"As You Like It," that the wicked Oliver suddenly changed his nature
and won the love of Celia, we know that he is lying. The scene is not
true to the great laws of human life. When George Eliot, at a loss for
a conclusion to "The Mill on the Floss," tells us that Tom and Maggie
Tulliver were drowned together in a flood, we disbelieve her; just as
we disbelieve Sir James Barrie when he invents that absurd acci