The true ground of dispute, then, does not lie here. The art which can
stoop to be "procuress to the lords of hell," is art no longer. But, on
the other hand, it would be difficult to point to any great work of art,
generally acknowledged to be such, which explicitly concerns itself with
the vindication of any specific moral doctrine. The story in which the
virtuous are rewarded for their virtue, and the evil punished for their
wickedness, fails, somehow, to enlist our full sympathy; it falls flatly
on the ear of the mind; it does not stimulate thought. It does not
satisfy; we fancy that something still remains to be said, or, if this be
all, then it was hardly worth saying. The real record of life--its terror,
its beauty, its pathos, its depth--seems to have been missed. We may admit
that the tale is in harmony with what we have been taught ought to happen;
but the lessons of our private experience have not authenticated our moral
formulas; we have seen the evil exalted and the good brought low; and we
inevitably desire that our "fiction" shall tell us, not what ought to
happen, but what, as a matter of fact, does happen.
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