"
The second and third of these essays are on Biography and Fiction
respectively and principally; treating, however, of collateral subjects
as well. Deep is the relation between the life shadowed forth in a
biography, and the life in a man's brain which he shadows forth in a
fiction--when that fiction is of the highest order, and written in love,
is beheld even by the writer himself with reverence. Delightful, surely,
it must be; yes, awful too, to read to-day the embodiment of a man's
noblest thought, to follow the hero of his creation through his
temptations, contests, and victories, in a world which likewise is--
"All made out of the carver's brain;"
and to-morrow to read the biography of this same writer. What of his own
ideal has he realized? Where can the life-fountain be detected within
him which found issue to the world's light and air, in this ideal self?
Shall God's fiction, which is man's reality, fall short of man's
fiction? Shall a man be less than what he can conceive and utter? Surely
it will not, cannot end thus. If a man live at all in harmony with the
great laws of being--if he will permit the working out of God's idea in
him, he must one day arrive at something greater than what now he can
project and behold.
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