whole of life. Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that
characterises modern thought, but Hamlet invented it. The world
has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The Nihilist,
that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without
enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely
literary product. He was invented by Tourgenieff, and completed by
Dostoieffski. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as
surely as the People's Palace rose out of the debris of a novel.
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but
moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it,
is largely an invention of Balzac. Our Luciens de Rubempre, our
Rastignacs, and De Marsays made their first appearance on the stage
of the Comedie Humaine. We are merely carrying out, with footnotes
and unnecessary additions, the whim or fancy or creative vision of
a great novelist. I once asked a lady, who knew Thackeray
intimately, whether he had had any model for Becky Sharp. She told
me that Becky was an invention, but that the idea of the character
had been partly suggested by a governess who lived in the
neighbourhood of Kensington Square, and was the companion of a very
selfish and rich old woman. I inquired what became of the
governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years after the
appearance of Vanity Fair, she ran away with the nephew of the lady
with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great splash
in society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's style, and entirely by
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's methods. Ultimately she came to grief,
disappeared to the Continent, and used to be occasionally seen at
Monte Carlo and other gambling places. The noble gentleman from
whom the same great sentimentalist drew Colonel Newcome died, a few
months after The Newcomer had reached a fourth edition, with the
word 'Adsum' on his lips. Shortly after Mr. Stevenson published