of conducting a
fictitious story, viz., either by narrative in the first person, when
the hero is made to tell his own tale, or by a series of letters; both
of which we conceive have been adopted with a view of heightening the
resemblance of the fiction to reality. At first sight, indeed, there
might appear no reason why a story told in the first person should have
more the air of a real history than in the third; especially as the
majority of real histories actually are in the third person;
nevertheless, experience seems to show that such is the case: provided
there be no want of skill in the writer, the resemblance to real life,
of a fiction thus conducted, will approach much the nearest (other
points being equal) to a deception, and the interest felt in it, to that
which we feel in real transactions. We need only instance Defoe's
Novels, which, in spite of much improbability, we believe have been
oftener mistaken for true narratives, than any fictions that ever were
composed. Colonel Newport is well known to have been cited as an
historical authority; and we have ourselves found great difficulty in
convincing many of our friends that Defoe was not himself the citizen,
who relates the plague of London. The reason probably is, that in the
ordinary form of narrative, the writer is not content to exhibit, like a
real historian, a bare detail of such circumstances as might actually
have come under his knowledge; but presents us with a description of
what is passing in the minds of the parties, and gives an account of
their feelings and motives, as well as their most private conversations
in various places at once. All this is very amusing, but perfectly
unnatural: the merest simpleton could hardly mistake a fiction of _this_
kind for a true history, unless he believed the writer to be endued with
omniscience and omnipresence, or to be aided by familiar spirits, doing
the office of Homer's Muses, whom he invokes to tell him all that could
not otherwise be known;

[Greek: _Umeis gar theoi eote pareote te, iote te panta._]

Let the events, therefore, which are detailed, and the characters
described, be ever so natural, the way in which they are presented to us
is of a kind of supernatural cast, perfectly unlike any real history
that ever was or can be written, and thus requiring a greater stretch of
imagination in the reader. On the other hand, the supposed narrator of
his own history never pretends to dive into the thou