booksellers' rules. Having such power over their puppets they abuse
it. They can kill these puppets, change their natures suddenly,
reward or punish them so easily, that it is no wonder they are led
to play fantastic tricks with them. Now, if a sedulous reader of
the works of such writers should form his notions of real life from
them, he would occasionally meet with rude shocks when he
encountered the realities of that life.


For my own part, notwithstanding all the charms of life in swiftly-
written novels, I prefer real life. It is true that, in the former,
everything breaks off round, every little event tends to some great
thing, everybody one meets is to exercise some great influence for
good or ill upon one's fate. I take it for granted one fancies
oneself the hero. Then all one's fancy is paid in ready money, or
at least one can draw upon it at the end of the third volume. One
leaps to remote wealth and honour by hairbreadth chances; and one's
uncle in India always dies opportunely. To be sure the thought
occurs, that if this novel life could be turned into real life, one
might be the uncle in India and not the hero of the tale. But that
is a trifling matter, for at any rate one should carry on with
spirit somebody else's story. On the whole, however, as I said
before, I prefer real life, where nothing is tied up neatly, but all
in odds and ends; where the doctrine of compensation enters largely,
where we are often most blamed when we least deserve it, where there
is no third volume to make things straight, and where many an
Augustus marries many a Belinda, and, instead of being happy ever
afterwards, finds that there is a growth of trials and troubles for
each successive period of man's life.