rty of misrepresentation; and that the novelist in whose pages
vice predominates, or is given an alluring aspect, is no more artistic
than the writer of Sunday-school books. In judging the influence
exerted by the great body of writers of fiction whose names have been
mentioned in this chapter, I shall therefore proceed on the
understanding that that novelist who writes almost exclusively of good
people is not necessarily the one whose influence has been the best,
nor that he who has drawn many weak or evil-doing characters has
necessarily taught the worst lessons. The standard by which we must
judge an author, as well from an artistic as from a moral point of
view, must be founded on the recognition that both good and evil
prevail in the world, and that whoever undertakes to give a picture of
life must paint both the evil and the good in their true colors.

In commenting on the fiction of the eighteenth century, its prevailing
coarseness was reprehended. But this characteristic was objected to on
the score of taste, but not at all on that of truth or morality. The
novelist of that time would not have faithfully represented the society
about him had he not allowed himself that license which universally
prevailed. Nor could the coarseness of the eighteenth-century writer be
objected to on moral grounds. Morality is concerned with thoughts, not
with expression. Whether we speak plainly the ideas in our mind,
whether we communicate them by means of some, circumlocution, or
whether we keep them wholly to ourselves, is a matter of fashion, not
of morality.[213] Our great-grandmothers were not less chaste because
they spoke of things regarding which we remain silent in a mixed
society: they were simply less squeamish. Mrs. Behn in her day, and
Fielding in his, described a licentious scene openly and honestly
without a suspicion of evil.

But a great change has come over public taste, and I may even say over
public morality, during the present century. Licentious conduct is no
longer a venial offence; gross and immodest expressions are no longer
allowed in respectable society. The improvement has certainly been
great, although not as great as it seems. Out of our higher morality,
out of our new and boasted refinement, has sprung a vice more ugly than
coarseness, more degrading than sensuality, and that vice is hypocrisy,
which shelters all others behind its deceptive mask. Many a parent now
winks at the hidden vice of a son,