uses this sadly overworked term with a certain sinking of the
heart, yet it seems unavoidable. The very fact that the words
"realism" and "romance" have become so hackneyed in critical
parlance, makes it sure that they indicate a genuine
distinction. As the Novel has developed, ramified and taken on a
hundred guises of manifestation, and as criticism has striven to
keep pace with such a growth, it is not strange that a confusion
of nomenclature should have arisen. But underneath whatever
misunderstandings, the original distinction is clear enough and
useful to make: the modern Novel in its beginning did introduce
a more truthful representation of human life than had obtained
in the romantic fiction deriving from the medieval stories. The
term "realism" as first applied was suitably descriptive; it is
only with the subsequent evolution that so simple a word has
taken on subtler shades and esoteric implications.

It may be roundly asserted that from the first the English Novel
has stood for truth; that it has grown on the whole more
truthful with each generation, as our conception of truth in
literature has been widened and become a nobler one. The
obligation of literature to report life has been felt with
increasing sensitiveness. In the particulars of appearance,
speech, setting and action the characters of English fiction to-day
produce a semblance of life which adds tenfold to its power.
To compare the dialogue of modern masters like Hardy, Stevenson,
Kipling and Howells with the best of the earlier writers serves
to bring the assertion home; the difference is immense; it is
the difference between the idiom of life and the false-literary
tone of imitations of life which, with all their merits, are
still self-conscious and inapt And as the earlier idiom was