om them; while, on the other hand, the work
of the inductive novelist is limited by the limits of his premises.
But the greater freedom of romance is attended by a more difficult
responsibility. If it be easier for the romantic to tell the truth,
because he has more ways of telling it, it is surely harder for him
to tell nothing but the truth. More often than the realist he is
tempted to assert uncertainties--tempted to say with vividness and
charm things of which he cannot quite be sure.

=Neither Method Better Than the Other.=--But whatever may be the
comparative advantages and disadvantages of each method of exhibiting
the truth, it is absolutely certain that either method of presentment
is natural and logical; and hence all criticism that aims to exalt
romance above realism, or realism above romance, must be forever
futile. Guy de Maupassant, in his valuable preface to "Pierre et
Jean," has spoken very wisely on this point. The ideal critic, he
says, should demand of the artist merely to "create something
beautiful, in the form most convenient to him, according to his
temperament." And he states further:--"The critic should appraise the
result only according to the nature of the effort.... He should admit
with an equal interest the contrasted theories of art, and judge the
works resultant from them only from the standpoint of their artistic
worth, accepting _a priori_ the general ideas from which they owe
their origin. To contest the right of an author to make a romantic or
a realistic work is to wish to force him to modify his temperament,
refuse to recognize his originality, and not permit him to employ the
eye and the intellect which nature has given him. Let us allow him the
liberty to understand, to observe, and to conceive in whatever way he
wishes, provided that he be an artist."

Surely this is the only sane view of the situation. Therefore, when
Mr. W. D. Howells, in his dexterous little book on "Criticism and
Fiction," pleads engagingly for realism as the only valid method for
the modern novelist, and when Stevenson, in many an alluring essay,
blows blasts upon the trumpet of romance, and challenges the realists
to show excuse for their existence, each is fighting an unnecessary
battle, since each is at the same time right and wrong. Each is right
in asserting the value of his own method, and wrong in denying the
value of the other's. The minds of men have always moved in two
directions, and always will;