er preceded nor followed by anything with which they harmonise.
They give to the whole book something of the grotesque character of
those Chinese pleasure-grounds in which perpendicular rocks of granite
start up in the midst of a soft green plain. Invention is shocking where
truth is in such close juxtaposition with it.

Thucydides honestly tells us that some of these discourses are purely
fictitious. He may have reported the substance of others correctly, but
it is clear from the internal evidence that he has preserved no more
than the substance. His own peculiar habits of thought and expression
are everywhere discernible. Individual and national peculiarities are
seldom to be traced in the sentiments, and never in the diction. The
oratory of the Corinthians and Thebans is not less Attic, either in
matter or in manner, than that of the Athenians. The style of Cleon is
as pure, as austere, as terse, and as significant, as that of Pericles.

In spite of this great fault, it must be allowed that Thucydides has
surpassed all his rivals in the art of historical narration, in the
art of producing an effect on the imagination, by skilful selection
and disposition, without indulging in the license of invention. But
narration, though an important part of the business of a historian, is
not the whole. To append a moral to a work of fiction is either useless
or superfluous. A fiction may give a more impressive effect to what
is already known; but it can teach nothing new. If it presents to us
characters and trains of events to which our experience furnishes
us with nothing similar, instead of deriving instruction from it, we
pronounce it unnatural. We do not form our opinions from it; but we
try it by our preconceived opinions. Fiction, therefore, is essentially
imitative. Its merit consists in its resemblance to a model with which
we are already familiar, or to which at least we can instantly refer.
Hence it is that the anecdotes which interest us most strongly in
authentic narrative are offensive when introduced into novels; that what
is called the romantic part of history is in fact the least romantic. It
is delightful as history, because it contradicts our previous notions
of human nature, and of the connection of causes and effects. It is, on
that very account, shocking and incongruous in fiction. In fiction,
the principles are given, to find the facts: in history, the facts are
given, to find the principles; and the writer