fulness cannot
be juggled with. Akin to this is the trick which has put under proper
suspicion some very clever writers of our day, and cost them all public
confidence in whatever they do,--the trick of posing for what they are
not. We do not mean only that the reader does not believe their stories
of personal adventure, and regards them personally as "frauds," but that
this quality of deception vitiates all their work, as seen from a
literary point of view. We mean that the writer who hoaxes the public, by
inventions which he publishes as facts, or in regard to his own
personality, not only will lose the confidence of the public but he will
lose the power of doing genuine work, even in the field of fiction. Good
work is always characterized by integrity.

These illustrations help us to understand what is meant by literary
integrity. For the deception in the case of the correspondent who invents
"news" is of the same quality as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in a
prose fiction; there is a moral and probably a mental defect in both. The
story of Robinson Crusoe is a very good illustration of veracity in
fiction. It is effective because it has the simple air of truth; it is an
illusion that satisfies; it is possible; it is good art: but it has no
moral deception in it. In fact, looked at as literature, we can see that
it is sincere and wholesome.

What is this quality of truthfulness which we all recognize when it
exists in fiction? There is much fiction, and some of it, for various
reasons, that we like and find interesting which is nevertheless
insincere if not artificial. We see that the writer has not been honest
with himself or with us in his views of human life. There may be just as
much lying in novels as anywhere else. The novelist who offers us what he
declares to be a figment of his own brain may be just as untrue as the
reporter who sets forth a figment of his own brain which he declares to
be a real occurrence. That is, just as much faithfulness to life is
required of the novelist as of the reporter, and in a much higher degree.
The novelist must not only tell the truth about life as he sees it,
material and spiritual, but he must be faithful to his own conceptions.
If fortunately he has genius enough to create a character that has
reality to himself and to others, he must be faithful to that character.
He must have conscience about it, and not misrepresent it, any more than
he would misrepresent the sayi