in all and
there can be no appeal to an external authority; and so there is an
inherent weakness in it if the mind that knows the story and the eye
that sees it remain unaccountable. At any moment they may be
questioned, and the only way to silence the question is somehow to
make the mind and the eye objective, to make them facts in the story.
When the point of view is definitely included in the book, when it can
be recognized and verified there, then every side of the book is
equally wrought and fashioned. Otherwise it may seem like a thing
meant to stand against a wall, with one side left in the rough; and
there is no wall for a novel to stand against.

That this is not a fanciful objection to a pictorial book like Vanity
Fair, where the point of view is _not_ accounted for, is proved, I
think, by the different means that a novelist will adopt to
authenticate his story--to dramatize the seeing eye, as I should
prefer to put it. These I shall try to deal with in what seems to be
their logical order; illuminating examples of any of them are not
wanting. I do not suggest that if I were criticizing Vanity Fair I
should think twice about this aspect of it; to do so would be very
futile criticism of such a book, such a store of life. But then I am
not considering it as Vanity Fair, I am considering it as a dominant
case of pictorial fiction; and here is the characteristic danger of
the method, and a danger which all who practise the method are not
likely to encounter and over-ride with the genius of Thackeray. And
even Thackeray--he chose to encounter it once again, it is true, in
Pendennis, but only once and no more, and after that he took his own
precautions, and evidently found that he could move the more freely
for doing so.

But to revert yet again for a moment to Bovary--which seemed on
scrutiny to be more of a picture than a drama--I think it is clear how
Flaubert avoided the necessity of installing himself avowedly as the
narrator, in the sight of the reader. I mentioned how he constantly
blends his acuter vision with that of Emma, so that the weakness of
her gift of experience is helped out; and the help is mutual, for on
the other hand her vision is always active as far as it goes, and
Flaubert's intervention is so unobtrusive that her point of view seems
to govern the story more than it does really. And therefore, though
the book is largely a picture, a review of many details and occasions,
the question of th