Hours in a Library, Volume I | Page 6

Mr. Veal to throw discredit on the story of his sister's appearance rather inclines us to believe in Mrs. Bargrave's story, who could have had no conceivable motive for inventing such a fiction. The argument is finally clenched by a decisive coincidence. The ghost wears a silk dress. In the course of a long conversation she incidentally mentioned to Mrs. Bargrave that this was a scoured silk, newly made up. When Mrs. Bargrave reported this remarkable circumstance to a certain Mrs. Wilson, 'You have certainly seen her,' exclaimed that lady, 'for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown had been scoured.' To this crushing piece of evidence it seems that neither Mr. Veal nor the notorious liar could invent any sufficient reply.
One can almost fancy De Foe chuckling as he concocted the refinements of this most marvellous narrative. The whole artifice is, indeed, of a simple kind. Lord Sunderland, according to Macaulay, once ingeniously defended himself against a charge of treachery, by asking whether it was possible that any man should be so base as to do that which he was, in fact, in the constant habit of doing. De Foe asks us in substance, Is it conceivable that any man should tell stories so elaborate, so complex, with so many unnecessary details, with so many inclinations of evidence this way and that, unless the stories were true? We instinctively answer, that it is, in fact, inconceivable; and, even apart from any such refinements as those noticed, the circumstantiality of the stories is quite sufficient to catch an unworthy critic. It is, indeed, perfectly easy to tell a story which shall be mistaken for a bona fide narrative, if only we are indifferent to such considerations as making it interesting or artistically satisfactory.
The praise which has been lavished upon De Foe for the verisimilitude of his novels seems to be rather extravagant. The trick would be easy enough, if it were worth performing. The story-teller cannot be cross-examined; and if he is content to keep to the ordinary level of commonplace facts, there is not the least difficulty in producing conviction. We recognise the fictitious character of an ordinary novel, because it makes a certain attempt at artistic unity, or because the facts are such as could obviously not be known to, or would not be told by, a real narrator, or possibly because they are inconsistent with other established facts. If a man chooses to avoid such obvious confessions of unreality, he can easily be as life-like as De Foe. I do not suppose that foreign correspondence of a newspaper is often composed in the Strand; but it is only because I believe that the honesty of writers in the press is far too great to allow them to commit a crime which must be speedily detected by independent evidence. Lying is, after all, the easiest of all things, if the liar be not too ambitious. A little clever circumstantiality will lull any incipient suspicion; and it must be added that De Foe, in adopting the tone of a bona fide narrator, not unfrequently overreaches himself. He forgets his dramatic position in his anxiety to be minute. Colonel Jack, at the end of a long career, tells us how one of his boyish companions stole certain articles at a fair, and gives us the list, of which this is a part: '5thly, a silver box, with 7s. in small silver; 6, a pocket-handkerchief; 7, another; 8, a jointed baby, and a little looking-glass.' The affectation of extreme precision, especially in the charming item 'another,' destroys the perspective of the story. We are listening to a contemporary, not to an old man giving us his fading recollections of a disreputable childhood.
The peculiar merit, then, of De Foe must be sought in something more than the circumstantial nature of his lying, or even the ingenious artifices by which he contrives to corroborate his own narrative. These, indeed, show the pleasure which he took in simulating truth; and he may very probably have attached undue importance to this talent in the infancy of novel-writing, as in the infancy of painting it was held for the greatest of triumphs when birds came and pecked at the grapes in a picture. It is curious, indeed, that De Foe and Richardson, the founders of our modern school of fiction, appear to have stumbled upon their discovery by a kind of accident. As De Foe's novels are simply history minus the facts, so Richardson's are a series of letters minus the correspondents. The art of novel-writing, like the art of cooking pigs in Lamb's most philosophical as well as humorous apologue, first appeared in its most cumbrous shape. As Hoti had to burn his cottage for every dish of pork, Richardson and De