for us. There is plenty to say of a book, even
in this condition; for the hours of our actual exposure to it were
full and eventful, and after living for a time with people like
Clarissa Harlowe or Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary we have had a lasting
experience, though the novels in which they figured may fall away into
dimness and uncertainty. These women, with some of the scenes and
episodes of their history, remain with us as vividly as though we had
known them in life; and we still keep a general impression of their
setting and their fortunes, a background more or less undefined, but
associated with the thought of them. It all makes a very real and
solid possession of a kind, and we readily accept it as the book
itself. One does not need to remember the smaller detail of the story
to perceive the truth and force of the characters; and if a great deal
is forgotten, the most striking aspects of the case will linger in the
mind as we look back. Dramatic episodes, fine pieces of description,
above all the presence of many interesting and remarkable
people--while there is so much that instantly springs to light when
the book is mentioned, it seems perverse to say that the book is not
before us as we write of it. The real heart and substance of the book,
it might even be urged, stands out the more clearly for the obscurity
into which the less essential parts of it subside.

And true it is that for criticism of the author's genius, of the power
and quality of his imagination, the impressions we are able to save
from oblivion are material in plenty. Of Richardson and Tolstoy and
Flaubert we can say at once that their command of life, their grasp of
character, their knowledge of human affections and manners, had a
certain range and strength and depth; we can penetrate their minds and
detect the ideas that ruled there. To have lived with their creations
is to have lived with them as well; with so many hours of familiar
intercourse behind us we have learnt to know them, and it matters
little that at any particular moment our vision of their work is bound
to be imperfect. The forgotten detail has all contributed to our sense
of the genius which built up and elaborated the structure, and that
sense abides. Clarissa and Anna and Emma are positive facts, and so
are their authors; the criticism of fiction is securely founded upon
its object, if by fiction we mean something more, something other,
than the novel itself--if we mean its