in the novel? I am very far from saying that.
Tragedy and the pathos of failure have their places in literature as well
as in life. I only say that, artistically, a good ending is as proper as
a bad ending. Yet the main object of the novel is to entertain, and the
best entertainment is that which lifts the imagination and quickens the
spirit; to lighten the burdens of life by taking us for a time out of our
humdrum and perhaps sordid conditions, so that we can see familiar life
somewhat idealized, and probably see it all the more truly from an
artistic point of view. For the majority of the race, in its hard lines,
fiction is an inestimable boon. Incidentally the novel may teach,
encourage, refine, elevate. Even for these purposes, that novel is the
best which shows us the best possibilities of our lives--the novel which
gives hope and cheer instead of discouragement and gloom. Familiarity
with vice and sordidness in fiction is a low entertainment, and of
doubtful moral value, and their introduction is unbearable if it is not
done with the idealizing touch of the artist.

Do not misunderstand me to mean that common and low life are not fit
subjects of fiction, or that vice is not to be lashed by the satirist, or
that the evils of a social state are never to be exposed in the novel.
For this, also, is an office of the novel, as it is of the drama, to hold
the mirror up to nature, and to human nature as it exhibits itself. But
when the mirror shows nothing but vice and social disorder, leaving out
the saving qualities that keep society on the whole, and family life as a
rule, as sweet and good as they are, the mirror is not held up to nature,
but more likely reflects a morbid mind. Still it must be added that the
study of unfortunate social conditions is a legitimate one for the author
to make; and that we may be in no state to judge justly of his exposure
while the punishment is being inflicted, or while the irritation is
fresh. For, no doubt, the reader winces often because the novel reveals
to himself certain possible baseness, selfishness, and meanness. Of this,
however, I (speaking for myself) may be sure: that the artist who so
represents vulgar life that I am more in love with my kind, the satirist
who so depicts vice and villainy that I am strengthened in my moral
fibre, has vindicated his choice of material. On the contrary, those
novelists are not justified whose forte it seems to be to so set forth
goodness as t