they succeed in making it interesting. It is not, then, a general rule to narrate with truth and art a beautiful episode of the history of a man, or the entire history of this man, when it is interesting, such as that of a soldier, workman, or miner, and with this end in view, paint as a secondary thing the environment, or the places in which this life unfolds itself. The primary consideration of authors of the present day is to describe the life of soldiers, workmen, or miners, making that of some individual of the class a mere accessory and pretext for the picture. This abstract proceeding is not, in my opinion, conformable to the nature of art. And it is no good quoting the example of epic poets, who sometimes resume an entire civilisation in one poem, because, besides the smallness of the number meriting such a name, an epic poet has not followed such a course in a general way, but in a limited and individual one. Homer, or the rhapsodic Homeric poets, do not try to describe in the Iliad the Hellenic world before the irruption of the Dorians, but only the anger of Achilles, nor in the Odyssey is the Western civilisation depicted, but only the Labours of Ulysses.

However, assuming the legitimacy of these intentions, the present manner of realisation is still censurable. Instead of representing the life of such, or such a country, or class of society quietly, and as it really appears, the novelist, overwhelmed with the desire to make a great impression, exaggerates, falsifies, and accumulates all the data which reality offers them in a dispersed form.

You have only to cast an impartial glance at some of the recent and famous French productions, describing the life of the country and its mines, to be convinced that the writer has not observed or painted them with sincerity, but that he has accumulated in an obviously artificial manner, all the crimes, wickednesses, and horrors that he has read for years in the press, as having happened in different departments in France, into one point. On the other hand, in German, English, and Spanish novels, describing the life of country folk, honour, purity and happiness are the order of the day. This is still more false, as naturalists chiefly take their stand on a

certain fact, to wit, that the self-interest and egoism, which dominate the majority of men, is seen in the most brutal and repugnant form among the uncultured classes. Russian novelists generally follow in the steps of the French, and even surpass them in this respect. I have read a dramatic work entitled The Power of Darkness, which in its concentrated horror far exceeds the French. The famous Kreutzer Sonata, by the same author, purposes nothing less than to prove that the conjugal relation, sometimes so holy and sweet, involves nothing but sadness, passion, and immorality. With all due respect to those whose talent I do not deny, I go on believing that all is not gloom in life, and that to describe it as it really is, we must rid our heart of all rancour, free it from all disquietude and lust of the flesh, and contemplate it without prejudice. Not only as a convenience, for it absolves the poet from the strict law of inspiration, but as a novelty, the French method is followed by a great number of writers in Europe. Novelty is one of the most imperious necessities insisted on by the public, as well as the artists in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Few tendencies have seemed to me more absurd and inimical to art. Stupid as it may be to live in constant antagonism with one's epoch, it is still more so to enthusiastically conform to its every vagary, and not to wish to enjoy, or value the works which have preceded us. The present moment is a stage of the large and varied evolution of human reason, and although of great importance to us compared with the whole history of this evolution it is of small import. The artist, then, should not depreciate the epoch which gave him birth, but love it, so as to extract from it the divine spirit of poetry which exists in all times and in all places. But he who is incapable of loving the treasures of beauty bequeathed us by our ancestors, will never reach the sacred heights of Olympus. "The best songs," says Telemachus in the Odyssey, "are always the newest." With a little thought, one can understand that human passions, the first material on which the poet works, never change in their essential nature with the course of centuries; and even in the social life, if time and space cause changes, they are not so great as they appear at first sight. In

reading Longus, Theocritus and Apuleius, we are astonished to see that life in their times was very similar to ours. Let us take an Indian novel or drama, and it is the same thing. A glance at Celestina, the first important monument of our romantic literature, will show us that the vices so admirably shown in it are almost identical with those of the present time, and that its characters think, talk, and act like those we meet every day in the street. On the other hand, other more recent Spanish works, like Diana by Montemayor, El Espanol Gerardo by Cespedes, the novels by Lopez and Montalban, and most of our romantic comedies, make us think we are contemplating a different world, and that there is a gulf between our way of living, thinking and feeling, and that of those people. What does that mean? To me nothing, but that the former reflect their epoch faithfully, whilst the latter, not knowing how to extract anything interesting from it, preferred to represent it imaginatively.

This last remark involves a subject of supreme interest in the composition of a novel-that of verisimilitude. Modern novelists are much concerned, and with reason, in giving verisimilitude to their conceptions. I nevertheless opine that this course may be carried to excess, and that we have passed irrationally from one extreme to another, from the stupendous incr ble adventures with which old writers seasoned their creations, to the prosaic insipidity of the present day. Life is beautiful, and facts have an absolute value. These are the truths to which I bow down both in theory and in practice; but we must recollect that facts are only of æsthetic value when they are revealers, when they make our spirit vibrate with emotion for the beautiful. Phenomena have no value in themselves in art. But I shall be asked, "What is the difference between significative facts, or facts which are revelations, and those which are not so?" I confess I can give no answer to that question, it is a mystery to me. The majority of the incidents composing Balzac's novel entitled Eugenie Grandet are commonplace, very vulgar and prosaic, and yet this novel causes profound emotion, and may be regarded as one of the most wonderful productions of the genius of this century. Analogous incidents

in other novels leave us cold, if they do not bore us. Artists themselves cannot explain such a mystery; they feel it, they divine it, and therefore their works are beautiful-that is enough. It is stupid then to give them rules for particular cases; they will take the incidents they require, and in their hands they will always be significant. But one must protest against the absurd supposition that only commonplace and ordinary events ought to be in a novel. On the contrary, on rare occasions, characters and phenomena arise of such æsthetic value that their reproduction in art is not only convenient, but necessary. On this point it is curious what has happened to me, and what I presume happens to all novelists. I have often had scenes and events which I have taken from life called unlikely, whilst those I have invented have never been considered strange. It is because when I have been present at, or heard any strange thing, I have had no scruple in using it, being sure of its truth, but when I am obliged to invent facts I try to keep clear from all that may seem strange or untrue.

The public and critics are equally on the alert against inverisimilitude, and a poor author hardly steps off the beaten track before the word false is hurled at him from all sides. But these shots are generally only fired against material inverisimilitude. Moral inverisimilitude generally escapes them, and yet for the man of good feeling, who knows life, it is surely not less censurable. The novels of certain French writers, written to amuse the upper classes, do not often have grave faults of material inverisimilitude, but they constantly sin against moral verisimilitude. The naturalists themselves are much more severe against the former than the latter. Even Balzac, conversant with life as he was, and representing it with such art, sometimes runs counter to moral logic. I shall never forget the sad effect caused on me in a work so beautiful as Eugenie Grandet, by the passage in which the Abbé Cruchet, soon after his cousin's arrival in Paris, warmly suggests to Madame de Gramins that she should let herself be courted by him, with the idea of casting him aside. Such an atrocious treachery was more repugnant to me than the exploits of Artagnan in the Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas, père.

To live in an ideal world is the best thing for an artist to do. Imagination is the magic wand that transforms the world and embellishes it. But at the same time one ought to steep oneself occasionally in reality, touch the earth every now and then, for with each touch one will gather fresh strength, as did the giant Antaeus. Fact has an inestimable value, which is vainly sought for in the flights of the spirit. All abstractions disappear before it; it is the true revealer of the essence of things, not the conceptions which our mind extracts from them, and in the last resource one has to resort to it for the basis of all judgment, and for the enjoyment of any beauty. I give unqualified approbation, then, to this respect felt by good novelists for truth, and the care with which they try to avoid its falsification, even to the most insignificant details. But, at the same time, I think that an exaggerated importance is given to the accuracy of what we may call, in the language of painters, accessories. It must be borne in mind that moral truth, i.e. that of sentiment and character, is that which is fully found in the dominions of the poet, and his responsibility consists chiefly in the use he makes of it.

In olden times, novelists had licence to give vent to all kinds of scientific or historic absurdities. Now it is rightly exacted that they be in conformity with true discoveries. But we have come to the opposite extreme, and we are violently attacked, as if we had committed a crime, at the slightest error, not only in a physical, historical, or mathematical point, but in one of costume or archæology. We are required to be walking encyclopædias. Therefore many writers who know the mania for criticism, and try not to run counter to it, not only guard against these errors, but every time they touch upon points of politics, administration, art, customs, or fashions, they give really learned discourses on these subjects. The reader is bored, but what does that matter as long as the critic is delighted, and he pleases the common herd, which do not know what to like? Nevertheless, these gentlemen can think what they like, but accuracy is not what is most required of the artist, but rather the inducing a sense of the beautiful. Homer did not cease to be the greatest poet because he thought that the river