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This odd suicide of one branch of the realists may serve to remind
us of the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict of the
critics. All representative art, which can be said to live, is
both realistic and ideal; and the realism about which we quarrel is
a matter purely of externals. It is no especial cultus of nature
and veracity, but a mere whim of veering fashion, that has made us
turn our back upon the larger, more various, and more romantic art
of yore. A photographic exactitude in dialogue is now the
exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands it tells us no
more--I think it even tells us less--than Moliere, wielding his
artificial medium, has told to us and to all time of Alceste or
Orgon, Dorine or Chrysale. The historical novel is forgotten. Yet
truth to the conditions of man's nature and the conditions of man's
life, the truth of literary art, is free of the ages. It may be
told us in a carpet comedy, in a novel of adventure, or a fairy
tale. The scene may be pitched in London, on the sea-coast of
Bohemia, or away on the mountains of Beulah. And by an odd and
luminous accident, if there is any page of literature calculated to
awake the envy of M. Zola, it must be that Troilus and Cressida
which Shakespeare, in a spasm of unmanly anger with the world,
grafted on the heroic story of the siege of Troy.
This question of realism, let it then be clearly understood,
regards not in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the
technical method, of a work of art. Be as ideal or as abstract as
you please, you will be none the less veracious; but if you be
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