other school maintains with equal emphasis that form is not enough,
that it wants a real and exciting story, that where a man's materials
are rich and "big" the necessity for perfection is obviated; indeed,
"rough edges" are a virtue. As one English novelist tersely put it to
me: "I don't care for the carving of orange pips. All I ask of a writer
is that his stuff should be big." Undoubtedly, some people prefer a
cultivated garden, others nature in all her wildness. Nature, it is
true, may exercise no selection; unfortunately it is too often
forgotten that she is all art in the wealth and minuteness of her
detail.

It seems to me that both theories are equally fallacious. I do not see
how either can be wholly satisfying. There is no reason at all why a
story should not contain both form and matter, a form, I should say,
suited to the matter. Among the painters Vermeer is admittedly perfect;
has then Rembrandt no art? Among the writers Turgenev is perfect.
George Moore has compared his perfection to that of the Greeks; is it
then justifiable to call Dostoevsky journalese, as some have called
him? Indeed, it takes a great artist to write about great things,
though, it is true, a great artist is often pardoned for lapses in
style, where a minor artist can afford no such lapses. It was in such a
light, with the true honesty and humility of a fine artist, that
Flaubert, than whom none sought greater perfection, regarded himself
before the towering Shakespeare.

This preamble is no digression, but is quite pertinent to any
consideration of the contemporary short story, for I must admit that
however fallacious is either of the prevalent theories which I have
outlined, in practice both work out with an appalling accuracy. Of the
hundreds of stories which I have had to read the number possessing a