icant
of the eternal instinct which leads men more naturally to look upward
at the stars than downward at the mud. The "naturalistic" writers
are deceived in thinking that they represent life as it really is.
If their thesis were true, the human race would have dwindled to
extinction long ago. Surely a photograph of a slattern in the gutter
is no more natural than a picture of Rosalind in the Forest of Arden;
and no accuracy of imitated actuality can make it more significant of
truth.

The romantic, on the other hand, because he works with greater freedom
than the realist, may overleap himself and express in a loose fashion
general conceptions which are hasty and devoid of truth. To this
defect is owing the vast deal of rubbish which has been foisted on us
recently by feeble imitators of Scott and Dumas pere,--imitators who
have assumed the trappings and the suits of the accredited masters of
romance, but have not inherited their clarity of vision into the
inner truth of things that are. To such degenerate romance, Professor
Brander Matthews has applied the term "romanticism"; and though his
use of the term itself may be considered a little too special for
general currency, no exception can be taken to the distinction which
he enforces in the following paragraph. "The Romantic calls up the
idea of something primary, spontaneous, and perhaps medieval, while
the Romanticist suggests something secondary, conscious, and of recent
fabrication. Romance, like many another thing of beauty, is very
rare; but Romanticism is common enough nowadays. The truly Romantic is
difficult to achieve; but the artificial Romanticist is so easy as
to be scarce worth the attempting. The Romantic is ever young, ever
fresh, ever delightful; but the Romanticist is stale and second-hand
and unendurable. Romance is never in danger of growing old, for it
deals with the spirit of man without regard to times and seasons; but
Romanticism gets out of date with every twist of the kaleidoscope of
literary fashion. The Romantic is eternally and essentially true,
but the Romanticist is inevitably false. Romance is sterling, but
Romanticism is shoddy."

But the Scylla and the Charybdis of fiction-writing may both be
avoided. The realists gain nothing by hooting at the abuses of
romance; and the romantics gain as little by yawning over realism at
its worst. "The conditions"--to use a phrase of Emerson's--"are hard
but equal": and at their best, the realist