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the story-teller as opposed to the dramatist, it is obvious that in
the full sense of the word there is no such thing as drama in a novel.
The novelist may give the very words that were spoken by his
characters, the dialogue, but of course he must interpose on his own
account to let us know how the people appeared, and where they were,
and what they were doing. If he offers nothing but the bare dialogue,
he is writing a kind of play; just as a dramatist, amplifying his play
with "stage-directions" and putting it forth to be read in a book,
has really written a kind of novel. But the difference between the
story-teller and the playwright is not my affair; and a new contrast,
within the limits of the art of fiction, is apparent when we speak of
the novel by itself--a contrast of two methods, to one of which it is
reasonable to give the name of drama.

I do not say that a clear line can be drawn between them; criticism
does not hope to be mathematically exact. But everybody sees the
diversity between the talkative, confidential manner of Thackeray and
the severe, discreet, anonymous manner--of whom shall I say?--of
Maupassant, for a good example, in many of his stories. It is not only
the difference between the personal qualities of the two men, which
indeed are also as far apart as the house of Castlewood and the Maison
Tellier; it is not the difference between the kinds of story they
chose to tell. They approached a story from opposite sides, and
thought of it, consequently, in images that had nothing in common: not
always, I dare say, but on the whole and characteristically they did
so. Maupassant's idea of a story (and not peculiarly Maupassant's, of
course, but his name is convenient) would suggest an object that you
fashioned and abandoned to the reader, turning away and leaving him
alone with it; Thackeray's would be more like the idea of a long and
sociable interview with the reader, a companion with whom he must
establish definite terms. Enough, the contrast is very familiar. But
these are images; how is the difference shown in their written books,
in Esmond and La Maison Tellier? Both, it is true, represent a picture
that was in the author's mind; but the story passes into Thackeray's
book as a picture still, and passes into Maupassant's as something
else--I call it drama.

In Maupassant's drama we are close to the facts, against them and
amongst them. He relates his story as though he had caught it in the
a