aspect, is no more artistic than the writer of Sunday-school books.  In judging the influence exerted by the great body of writers of fiction whose names have been mentioned in this chapter, I shall therefore proceed on the understanding that that novelist who writes almost exclusively of good people is not necessarily the one whose influence has been the best, nor that he who has drawn many weak or evil-doing characters has necessarily taught the worst lessons.  The standard by which we must judge an author, as well from an artistic as from a moral point of view, must be founded on the recognition that both good and evil prevail in the world, and that whoever undertakes to give a picture of life must paint both the evil and the good in their true colors.

In commenting on the fiction of the eighteenth century, its prevailing coarseness was reprehended.  But this characteristic was objected to on the score of taste, but not at all on that of truth or morality.  The novelist of that time would not have faithfully represented the society about him had he not allowed himself that license which universally prevailed.  Nor could the coarseness of the eighteenth-century writer be objected to on moral grounds.  Morality is concerned with thoughts, not with expression.  Whether we speak plainly the ideas in our mind, whether we communicate them by means of some, circumlocution, or whether we keep them wholly to ourselves, is a matter of fashion, not of morality.[213] Our great-grandmothers were not less chaste because they spoke of things regarding which we remain silent in a mixed society:  they were simply less squeamish.  Mrs. Behn in her day, and Fielding in his, described a licentious scene openly and honestly without a suspicion of evil.

But a great change has come over public taste, and I may even say over public morality, during the present century.  Licentious conduct is no longer a venial offence; gross and immodest expressions are no longer allowed in respectable society.  The improvement has certainly been great, although not as great as it seems.  Out of our higher morality, out of our new and boasted refinement, has sprung a vice more ugly than coarseness, more degrading than sensuality, and that vice is hypocrisy, which shelters all others behind its deceptive mask.  Many a parent now winks at the hidden vice of a son, the exposure of which would fill him with shame and indignation.  Thousands of young men feel that they can privately lead a life of dissipation, so long as they keep a respectable face to the world.  It is not the vice that society punishes, it is the being found out.  So when we think of our improved morality and refinement, we must temper our pride with the reflection that we may be simply more hypocritical, and not more virtuous than our ancestors.  Still, the fact that licentiousness must now wear a mask of respectability, that social status is now greatly affected by moral worth, shows that a real advance has been made.  This advance has left plainly marked traces on the fiction of our time, where, too, we shall find plentiful evidence of that hypocrisy which has become our besetting sin.