general deception of women which is practised by men. But perhaps if the novelist were more truthful, if he painted life as it is, if he gave us flesh-and-blood heroes, with all the weakness and the error to which flesh and blood is liable and the self-conquest of which it is capable, more men might be willing to read the modern novel and might find strength and comfort and guidance in it. History and biography are, of course, less conventionalized than fiction, for they deal with real men, whose sins and struggles and sufferings have left an ineffaceable record; but it is precisely here, where real men are concerned, and not imaginary puppets to whom all sorts of impossible qualities may freely be attributed,—it is precisely here that the lie does most harm, in the reaction which the young and the enthusiastic are sure to experience when they at length discover the inevitable truth.
There is another value in truthfulness where the biography of any artistic worker is concerned, that it aids us in the establishment of truer and juster canons of criticism. A work of art, in the last analysis, is the expression of just so much heart and brain as the artist was possessed of. If the man is genuine and sincere his work will be genuine and sincere; if he is a sham his work will be a sham. It is a good thing to have some means of positively identifying the true from the false. Take the case of Thackeray, Dickens, and Bulwer. In their own day each had his respective circle of worshippers, which insisted on the manifest superiority of its own idol. De gustibus non est disputandum is a truism which acquires a certain dignity when clothed in a dead language. Nevertheless even matters of taste can be justified or discredited by biographical facts. Every new light that has been thrown on Thackeray's character has increased his reputation. We have learned to know the man as he was. We have learned to read the man in his works. The criticism which described him as a soured, disappointed, and vulgar cynic has had its day. The a priori judgment of those who looked upon him as earnest, noble, loving, and lovable, as a Great-heart fighting against error with infinite charity for the wrong-doer, with humble consciousness of his own weakness, has been ratified by facts. On the other hand, Dickens and, in a far greater degree, Bulwer have been sinking in popular estimation. The criticism which, while recognizing the splendid genius of Dickens, deplored his tendency to clap-trap and melodrama, his offences against good taste, his egotism, and his womanish unreasonableness, has been confirmed by the revelation that all these weaknesses were integral parts of his personal character. Bulwer is the most striking example of the three. To many of us who are unable to throw ourselves back into a former generation, to look at the world through the eyes of our fathers or grandfathers, it is simply incredible that an author whose books are full of so much sham philosophy, sham poetry, sham emotion, sham humor, sham eloquence, should have been accepted seriously by any sane man. "Bulwer nauseates me," says Hawthorne, who was himself too genuine to tolerate sham: "he is the very pimple of the age's humbug. There is no hope of the public so long as he finds a reader, an admirer, or a publisher." A few years ago Bulwer's biography was written by his son: the darker shades of his character were omitted, and he was presented to the world with the conventional simper which adorns heroes of the average biography. But the executor and friend of the novelist's wife was determined that the true story of that lady's life should be given to the public. She published the actual correspondence that had passed between Sir Edward and Lady Bulwer. Sir Edward,
