find two journals on the reverse sides of politics each, on

the same day, openly garbling a piece of news for the
interest of its own party, we smile at the discovery (no

discovery now!) as over a good joke and pardonable stratagem.
Lying so open is scarce lying, it is true; but one of the

things that we profess to teach our young is a respect for
truth; and I cannot think this piece of education will be

crowned with any great success, so long as some of us
practise and the rest openlyapprove of public falsehood.

There are two duties incumbent upon any man who enters on the
business of writing: truth to the fact and a good spirit in

the treatment. In every department of literature, though so
low as hardly to deserve the name, truth to the fact is of

importance to the education and comfort of mankind, and so
hard to preserve, that the faithfultrying to do so will lend

some dignity to the man who tries it. Our judgments are
based upon two things: first, upon the original preferences

of our soul; but, second, upon the mass of testimony to the
nature of God, man, and the universe which reaches us, in

divers manners, from without. For the most part these divers
manners are reducible to one, all that we learn of past times

and much that we learn of our own reaching us through the
medium of books or papers, and even he who cannot read

learning from the same source at second-hand and by the
report of him who can. Thus the sum of the contemporary

knowledge or ignorance of good and evil is, in large measure,
the handiwork of those who write. Those who write have to

see that each man's knowledge is, as near as they can make
it, answerable to the facts of life; that he shall not

suppose himself an angel or a monster; nor take this world
for a hell; nor be suffered to imagine that all rights are

concentred in his own caste or country, or all veracities in
his own parochial creed. Each man should learn what is

within him, that he may strive to mend; he must be taught
what is without him, that he may be kind to others. It can

never be wrong to tell him the truth; for, in his disputable
state, weaving as he goes his theory of life, steering

himself, cheering or reproving others, all facts are of the
first importance to his conduct; and even if a fact shall

discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he should
know it; for it is in this world as it is, and not in a world

made easy by educational suppressions, that he must win his
way to shame or glory. In one word, it must always be foul

to tell what is false; and it can never be safe to suppress
what is true. The very fact that you omit may be the fact

which somebody was wanting, for one man's meat is another
man's poison, and I have known a person who was cheered by

the perusal of CANDIDE. Every fact is a part of that great
puzzle we must set together; and none that comes directly in

a writer's path but has some nice relations, unperceivable by
him, to the totality and bearing of the subject under hand.

Yet there are certain classes of fact eternally more
necessary than others, and it is with these that literature

must first bestir itself. They are not hard to distinguish,
nature once more easily leading us; for the necessary,

because the efficacious, facts are those which are most
interesting to the natural mind of man. Those which are

coloured, picturesque, human, and rooted in morality, and
those, on the other hand, which are clear, indisputable, and

a part of science, are alone vital in importance, seizing by
their interest, or useful to communicate. So far as the

writer merely narrates, he should principally tell of these.
He should tell of the kind and wholesome and beautiful

elements of our life; he should tell unsparingly of the evil
and sorrow of the present, to move us with instances: he

should tell of wise and good people in the past, to excite us
by example; and of these he should tell soberly and

truthfully, not glossing faults, that we may neither grow
discouraged with ourselves nor exacting to our neighbours.

So the body of contemporaryliterature, ephemeral and feeble
in itself, touches in the minds of men the springs of thought

and kindness, and supports them (for those who will go at all
are easily supported) on their way to what is true and right.

And if, in any degree, it does so now, how much more might it
do so if the writers chose! There is not a life in all the

records of the past but, properlystudied, might lend a hint
and a help to some contemporary. There is not a juncture in

to-day's affairs but some useful word may yet be said of it.
Even the reporter has an office, and, with clear eyes and

honest language, may unveil injustices and point the way to
progress. And for a last word: in all narration there is

only one way to be clever, and that is to be exact. To be
vivid is a secondary quality which must presuppose the first;

for vividly to convey a wrong impression is only to make
failure conspicuous.

But a fact may be viewed on many sides; it may be chronicled
with rage, tears, laughter, indifference, or admiration, and

by each of these the story will be transformed to something
else. The newspapers that told of the return of our

representatives from Berlin, even if they had not differed as
to the facts, would have sufficiently differed by their

spirits; so that the one description would have been a second
ovation, and the other a prolonged insult. The subject makes

but a trifling part of any piece of literature, and the view
of the writer is itself a fact more important because less

disputable than the others. Now this spirit in which a
subject is regarded, important in all kinds of literary work,

becomes all-important in works of fiction, meditation, or
rhapsody; for there it not only colours but itself chooses

the facts; not only modifies but shapes the work. And hence,
over the far larger proportion of the field of literature,

the health or disease of the writer's mind or momentary
humour forms not only the leading feature of his work, but

is, at bottom, the only thing he can communicate to others.
In all works of art, widely speaking, it is first of all the

author's attitude that is narrated, though in the attitude
there be implied a whole experience and a theory of life. An

author who has begged the question and reposes in some narrow
faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even many of

the sides of this various existence; for, his own life being
maim, some of them are not admitted in his theory, and were

only dimly and unwillingly recognised in his experience.
Hence the smallness, the triteness, and the inhumanity in

works of merely sectarian religion; and hence we find equal
although unsimilar limitation in works inspired by the spirit

of the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. So
that the first duty of any man who is to write is

intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself
up for a leader of the minds of men; and he must see that his

own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. Everything
but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see

the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does
not wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and

he should recognise from the first that he has only one tool
in his workshop, and that tool is sympathy. (13)

The second duty, far harder to define, is moral. There are a
thousand different humours in the mind, and about each of

them, when it is uppermost, some literature tends to be
deposited. Is this to be allowed? Not certainly in every

case, and yet perhaps in more than rigourists would fancy.
It were to be desired that all literary work, and chiefly

works of art, issued from sound, human, healthy, and potent
impulses, whether grave or laughing, humorous, romantic, or

religious.
Yet it cannot be denied that some valuable books are

partiallyinsane; some, mostly religious, partially inhuman;
and very many tainted with morbidity and impotence. We do