. . . . Literature uses a means employed in painting, which, to
obtain a fine figure, adapts the hands of one model, the foot of
another, the chest of a third, the shoulders of a fourth."
The foregoing quotation raises the question of the significance of the
term truth as applied to fiction. Evidently, it cannot have the same
meaning as when applied to history or biography. In the latter, the
writer invents neither circumstances nor actions, nor the persons
engaged in them, but seeks to know the whole of the first two exactly
as they occurred, and to interpret, as nearly to life as may be, the
third. However, if he be a philosopher, he will perhaps try to show
the intimate relations existing between these same persons and the
events in which they were concerned; and, in doing so, he will step
out of his proper role and assume one which is less easy for him than
for the novelist to play, since the writer of fiction composes both
his _dramatis personae_ and their story; and the concordance between
them is more a matter of art than of science.
Still it is possible that neither a novelist's characters nor their
environment shall be in entire agreement with all observable facts.
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