Hours in a Library, Volume I | Page 6

rather a better point by stating
that a certain purse of gold mentioned by the ghost was found, not in
the cabinet where she told Mrs. Bargrave that she had placed it, but in a
comb-box. Yet, again, Mr. Veal's statement is here rather suspicious,
for it is known that Mrs. Veal was very particular about her cabinet,
and would not have let her gold out of it. We are left in some doubts by
this conflict of evidence, although the obvious desire of 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 bonâ 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 bonâ 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