historical novels, like Quo Vadis or Kingsley’s Hypatia, misrepresent personalities or periods for controversial purposes; and the bulk of modern historical novels are worthless jumbles of fact and imagination. It is, as a rule, the same with the sociological novel. You must know the facts in advance—you must know where the facts end and the fiction begins—or else merely regard the book as a form of entertainment. Lately I read a serious historical work, by a distinguished writer, in which Hypatia (who was fifty or sixty years old when she was murdered) is described as a “girlphilosopher”; clearly because Kingsley, for controversial purposes, thought fit in his novel to make her a young and rather foolish maiden. Thousands of people take their convictions from “novels with a purpose,” especially religious or sociological novels, without reflecting that the author may legitimately give them either fact or fiction. Such novels are often profoundly mischievous. A conscientious didactic novelist like Mr. Wells aims rather at raising issues and stimulating reflection, and in this Mr. Wells has done splendid service. Others have done equal dis-service, and have used artificially constructed characters for the purpose of raising prejudice against certain ideas, or have misled by a calculated mixture of fact and fiction. It was in recommending to the public one of these novels—an exceptionally silly and crude piece of work—that the Bishop of London described Christianity as “woman’s best friend.”
