shall be. He imagines the past; he forms the future.

Yet how surpassingly interesting is real life when we get an insight
into it. Occasionally a great genius lifts up the veil of history,
and we see men who once really were alive, who did not always live
only in history; or, amidst the dreary page of battles, levies,
sieges, and the sleep-inducing weavings and unweavings of political
combination, we come, ourselves, across some spoken or written words
of the great actors of the time, and are then fascinated by the life
and reality of these things. Could you have the life of any man
really portrayed to you, sun-drawn as it were, its hopes, its fears,
its revolutions of opinion in each day, its most anxious wishes
attained, and then, perhaps, crystallising into its blackest
regrets--such a work would go far to contain all histories, and be
the greatest lesson of love, humility, and tolerance, that men had
ever read.

Now fiction does attempt something like the above. In history we
are cramped by impertinent facts that must, however, be set down; by
theories that must be answered; evidence that must be weighed; views
that must be taken. Our facts constantly break off just where we
should wish to examine them most closely. The writer of fiction
follows his characters into the recesses of their hearts. There are
no closed doors for him. His puppets have no secrets from their
master. He plagues you with no doubts, no half-views, no criticism.
Thus they thought, he tells you; thus they looked, thus they acted.
Then, with every opportunity for scenic arrangement (for though his
characters are confidential with him, he is only as confidential
with his reader as the interest of the story will allow), it is not
to be wondered at that the majority of readers should look upon