in the memory of after ages only when the
facts of their characters and their careers have been transmuted into
a sort of fiction by the minds of creative historians. Actually, in
1815, there was but one Napoleon; now there are as many Napoleons as
there are biographies and histories of him. He has been recreated in
one way by one author, in another by another; and you may take your
choice. You may accept the Julius Caesar of Mr. Bernard Shaw, or the
Julius Caesar of Thomas De Quincey. The first is frankly fiction;
and the second, not so frankly, is fiction also,--just as far from
actuality as Shakespeare's adaptation of Plutarch's portraiture.

One of the most vivid illustrations of how a great creative mind,
honestly seeking to discover, to understand, and to express the truth
concerning actual characters of the past, necessarily makes fiction
of those characters, is given by Thomas Carlyle in his "Heroes and
Hero-Worship." Here, in Carlyle's method of procedure, it is easy to
discern that threefold process of creation which is undergone by
the fiction-making mind. An examination of recorded facts concerning
Mohammed, Dante, Luther, or Burns leads him to a discovery and a
formulation of certain abstract truths concerning the Hero as Prophet,
as Poet, as Priest, or as Man of Letters; and thereafter, in composing
his historical studies, he sets forth only such actual facts as
conform with his philosophic understanding of the truth and will
therefore represent this understanding with the utmost emphasis. He
makes fiction of his heroes, in order most emphatically to tell the
truth about them.

In this way biography and history at their best are doomed to employ
the methods of the art of fiction; and we can therefore understand
without surprise why the average reader always says of the histories
of Francis Parkman that they read like novels, even though the most
German-minded scientists of history assure us that Parkman is always
faithful to his facts. Facts, to the mind of this model of historians,
were indicative of truths; and those truths he endeavored to express
with faultless art. Like the best of novelists, he was at once a
scientist, a philosopher, and an artist; and this is not the least of
reasons why his histories will endure. They are as true as fiction.

Not only do the great characters of fiction convince us of reality:
in the mere events themselves of worthy fiction we feel a fitness
that makes us know t