The other, and more needed observation, regards the novel. There are novels of fine artistic value, like those of Phillpotts: novels of great intellectual use, like those of Wells: and novels of a general and more subtle educational value, like those of Meredith. There are novels which, like the melodrama, counteract education by their low standard of art and intelligence, and there are novels--the great majority--which entertain without prejudice. Since we have as much right to be entertained as to be instructed, novel-reading is a normal part of a normal life. Seeing, however, that a very large proportion of the community read nothing but novels, it has been felt that the novel might be used as a vehicle of instruction, and the didactic or historical novel has become an institution. Many believe that they are being educated when they read this literature.
Against this comforting assumption it is necessary to protest. Even the greatest historical novelists, Dumas and Scott, have taken remarkable liberties with the known facts, and added to the picture of the time a mass of imaginative detail. Many historical novels, like _Quo Vadis_ or Kingsley's _Hypatia_, misrepresent personalities or periods for controversial purposes; and the bulk of modern historical novels are worthless jumbles of fact and imagination. It is, as a rule, the same with the sociological novel. You must know the facts in advance--you must know where the facts end and the fiction begins--or else merely regard the book as a form of entertainment. Lately I read a serious historical work, by a distinguished writer, in which Hypatia (who was fifty or sixty years old when she was murdered) is described as a "girl-philosopher"; clearly because Kingsley, for controversial purposes, thought fit in his novel to make her a young and rather foolish maiden. Thousands of people take their convictions from "novels with a purpose," especially religious or sociological novels, without reflecting that the author may legitimately give them either fact or fiction. Such novels are often profoundly mischievous. A conscientious didactic novelist like Mr. Wells aims rather at raising issues and stimulating reflection, and in this Mr. Wells has done splendid service. Others have done equal disservice, and have used artificially constructed characters for the purpose of raising prejudice against certain ideas, or have misled by a calculated mixture of fact and fiction. It was in recommending to the public one of these novels--an exceptionally silly and crude piece of work--that the Bishop of London described Christianity as "woman's best friend."