a
horse, an eagle, nor an elephant, yet resembles each. This animal may
have eight legs (or forty) with hoofs, claws and toes alternating; a
beak, a trunk, a mane; and the whole can be feathered and given the power
of rapid flight and also the ability to run like the East Wind. It can
neigh, roar or scream by turn, or can do all in concert, with a vibratory
force multiplied by one thousand.

The novelist must have lived, and the novelist must have imagination. But
this is not enough. He must have power to analyze and separate, and then
he should have the good taste to select and group, forming his parts into
a harmonious whole.

Yet he must build large. Life-size will not do: the statue must be
heroic, and the artist's genius must breathe into its nostrils the breath
of life.

The men who live in history are those whose lives have been skilfully
written. "Plutarch is the most charming writer of fiction the world has
ever known," said Emerson.

Dickens' characters are personifications of traits, not men and women.
Yet they are a deal funnier--they are as funny as a box of monkeys, as
entertaining as a Punch-and-Judy show, as interesting as a "fifteen
puzzle," and sometimes as pretty as chromos. Quilp munching the eggs,
shells and all, to scare his wife, makes one shiver as though a
Jack-in-the-box had been popped out at him. Mr. Mould, the undertaker,
and Jaggers, the lawyer, are as amusing as Humpty-Dumpty and Pantaloon. I
am sure that no live lawyer ever gave me half the enjoyment that Jaggers
has, and Doctor Slammers' talk is better medicine than the pills of any
living M.D. Because the burnt-cork minstrel pleases me more than a real
"nigger" is no reason why I should find fault!

Dickens takes the horse, the eagle and the elephant and makes an animal
of his own. He rubs up the feathers, places the tail at a fierce angle,
makes the glass eyes glare, and you are ready to swear that the thing is
alive.

By rummaging over the commercial world you can collect the harshness,
greed, avarice, selfishness and vanity from a thousand men. With these
sins you can, if you are very skilful, construct a Ralph Nickleby, a
Scrooge, a Jonas Chuzzlewit, an Alderman Cute, a Mr. Murdstone, a
Bounderby or a Gradgrind at will.

A little more pride, a trifle less hypocrisy, a molecule extra of
untruth, and flavor with this fault or that, and your man is ready to
place up against the fence to dry.

Then you can make a collection