But this is not the place for a study of methods. So far as I have been able, I have answered the question I asked, and which stands at the head of this essay. But I have answered it in my own way. What am I, a novel-writer, trying to do? I am trying, with such limited means as I have at my disposal, to make little pocket-theatres out of words. I am trying to be architect, scene-painter, upholsterer, dramatist and stage-manager, all at once. Is it any wonder if we novelists do not succeed as well as we could wish, when we try to be masters of so many trades?
Nor is this all. The great development of the modern superficial education in society has brought with it a thirst for knowledge which adds considerably to the difficulties of the novelist's art. There are few sciences, few of the arts, few of the branches of learning, in which the reading public does not take some sort of interest. That interest is not a profound one, but with its growth encyclopædias, primers, and "cram-books" have multiplied exceedingly on the face of the earth. Upon the slightest suspicion the reader accuses the author of inaccuracy, goes to his own, or his friend's, or the Public Library's bookshelves, takes down the "Encyclopædia Britannica," the "Century Dictionary," or "Larousse," and with cruel directness sets the author right. We are expected to be omniscient, to understand the construction of the telephone, the latest theories concerning the cholera microbe, the mysteries of hypnotism, the Russian language, and the nautical dictionary. We are supposed to be intimately acquainted with the writings of Macrobius, the music of Wagner, and the Impressionist school of painting. In these days when there has been much discussion concerning the authorship of Shakespeare's plays,--concerning which "Punch" wisely said they were probably written by another man of the same name,--the principal argument against Bacon's authorship of them seems to me to be this: No one man of whom we have ever known anything can be conceived capable of having produced such an enormous body of thoughtful work as is contained in what is attributed to Shakespeare and in what is known to have been written by Bacon. And yet, for the sake of a little profit and the inducement of a modicum of glory, we authors are sometimes expected to rival both. The absurdity of this is apparent to the most ordinary mind and painfully so to the ordinary critic, who, though he may never have written a book, may very possibly know more than we do about some subjects upon which we are obliged to write. Dr. Johnson, it will be remembered, said that a man need not be a coach-builder in order to say that a carriage is well made. I am aware that many persons will think my statement exaggerated, or, if they do not, will say that they prefer an honest love story to a tale involving the intricacies of the modern invention. And I believe there has been a reaction in this respect. With regard to the play, it is the opinion of some of the best actors and most successful managers now alive, that the public, if it really knew what it wanted, instead of being forced to feed upon what it gets, would demand real, old-fashioned love pieces rather than comedies, dramas and melodramas, in which the leading actor is the mechanician and the hero of the piece is little more than a "walking gentleman." On my theory that the novel is, or should be, a play, the same must be approximately true about fiction. An acquaintance with the developments of modern science cannot do more than lend a modern colour to the story, and so far as that goes the more closely acquainted we are with such things, the better for us. But no one has a right to demand that we should know everything, in order to find fault with us if we lose our heads over the reversing gear of a locomotive or the most approved fashion of rigging a top-gallant studding-sail boom.