justified an inward chuckle even while it necessitated an outward rebuke. But to Ruskin it seemed to break the seal of a prophetic scroll upon which was written the doom of a people whose youth were thus lost to all sense of gentleness and reverence. "Dear but peppery Mr. Ruskin," began some unknown correspondent one morning, when the letters were brought in at Brantwood. It was impertinent, as unknown correspondents are wont to be, but it summed up succinctly the judgement of his day—especially its feminine judgement - upon a teacher who could be equally zealous in great and little matters, but who was always true-hearted, pitiful, and devout. He has proved to be one of the most effective preachers of his generation; singularly indebted to religion for the character of his parents, for his training at home, and for his command of a highly ornate but still honestly eloquent style, formed as it was, partly with set purpose upon that of the judicious Hooker, and yet more largely and naturally upon the Bible and the language of devotion which has sprung from it. It is under the forms of religion that we most naturally describe his experience of acceptance, rejection and re-acceptance as a prophet. And it is to terms of essential Christianity that we must have recourse in order to express the abiding elements in his message.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MASTERS OF FICTION. I

THE title of this chapter suggests one of the most difficult questions which I shall have to face. It is comparatively easy to appraise the significance of religion to the man who boldly writes about it, even when, as often happens, we are forced to go behind his words. The poet, for instance, whose art compels him, unless he be a very minor poet indeed, to scale the heights of aspiration and to sound the depths of experience, usually states the case with relative plainness even when its problems are not easy of solution. The modern novelist of the 'psychological' school, whose too often meagre and exiguous, even though painfully elaborated, art occupies itself with some acute crisis in life's fever, is given to such definite pronouncement upon religion as to obviate the danger of serious mistake concerning his view of it or its influence upon him. But the great names in nineteenth-century fiction, until we reach that of George Eliot, decline to be thus explicit. What religion meant to them, what they meant by it, and what place they assigned to it in the life which their novels portrayed, are questions whose answers must be distilled rather

than extracted bodily from their work. This necessity lays the writer upon such a theme as mine open both to temptation and to misunderstanding. The temptation is to express by violence from their writings opinions which he has himself introduced by subtilty; while even if he be wholly honest in his plan of treatment, those whose prejudices are enlisted for or against a given author may, upon that very ground, accuse him of indifference or partiality.

Hence it becomes necessary at this juncture to remind the reader of the religious significance implied in the very form of the novel. The novel is a picture of life. Unlike history, which—at least until recently concerned itself primarily with annals and the ascertainment of events recognized to be passed and gone, the novel pictures life in progress, with its expectations, passions, and ideals. History deals with communities, or with leaders of men in their representative capacities. The novel puts us in touch with individuals, and, if it be a great novel, reveals 'characters'-which is but another way of saying that it introduces us to the soul as an ultimate subject of experience. In the Introduction I undertook to show that all experiences of the soul are germane to religion. They are not less significant to the writer of genuinely human tales. The novelist deals with the souls of men under the aspect of their earthly pilgrimage of three-score years and ten. Religion regards

them sub specie æternitatis. It follows that the range of fiction is legitimately wider than that of any critical school or sect. Nothing could well be more parochial than the claims of the so-called 'realists' to a monopoly of the art. The genuinely catholic critic will rejoice in Jane Austen's "two inches square of ivory"; but at the same time he will remember that not all painting can be done in miniature, and that a microscope is by no means an adequate instrument for observation of the sun. In the development of life the adventures of the imagination play as real a part as love and hunger; the thing striven for and missed may conceivably enter more largely into experience than the thing attained.

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me.

The romantic element, which feeds gratefully upon the adventures of others and aspires to adventures of its own, is fundamental; and the 'realist' who ignores or cavils at it does so at grievous peril to his own artistic integrity.

It follows further that, just as every field of real life has treasure in it for the student of religion, and sometimes the treasure under barren surfaces proves richest, so all honest fiction-by which I mean every sincere attempt to portray life, whether commonplace or extraordinary, as distinguished from that writing which aims at mere sensational effect-bears its message to him; and

again, the message that seems to concern itself least explicitly with religion is frequently of more religious significance than the word of the man who is always crying, "Lord! Lord!"

One thing more needs to be clearly understood in this connection. By a general consensus of uncritical opinion it seems to have been taken for granted that, while tragedy may be allowed some legitimate claim to a place in the temple of faith, comedy, if not assigned to the outer darkness, can only stand humbly in a distant court of the Gentiles. Pathos is supposed to be naturally pious; humour is thought to be of the world and must be converted. At the risk of seeming dogmatic, I steadfastly maintain that no heresy ever better deserved bell, book, and candle. For consider how deep into the heart of unbelief it inveigles the unwary. Grant its premisses and atheism is assured.

Humour I take to be a quick sense of life's lesser incongruities. They appear in every phase of experience, in the soul's aspiration and the fancy's dream, as well as in the day's work. The practical joker, who is rarely a person of genuine humour, being just able to discern the fact that humour and incongruity are related, goes about to drag in his 'accidents' with cart-ropes, or lays traps to catch mirth unawares. He fails because his artificial mishaps are gross and cruel. Smiles are too wary to be caught with guile, though now and then a lumbering and small-witted laugh may be trapped. Purpose