for such a difficult and abstruse text-book of ethics.
In the midst of this universal disclaimer, it never seems to occur to anybody to ask the simple question, Why should "Madame Bovary" be an impassioned cry of the austerest morality,—why should any novel undertake to be an impassioned cry of morality at all? It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything. Scientific truths, new forms of religion, the humorous eccentricities of socialism, the countless fads of radical reformers, the proper way to live our own lives,—these matters, which are now objects of such tender regard to the story-teller, form no part of his rightful stock-in-trade. His task is simply to give us pleasure, and his duty is to give it within the not very Puritanical limits prescribed by our modern notions of decency. If he chooses to overstep these limits, an offense against propriety, it is exasperating to have him defended on the score of an ethical purpose, an offense against art; for there is nothing so hopelessly inartistic as to represent the world as worse than it is, or to
