has put under proper suspicion some very clever writers of our day, and cost them all public confidence in whatever they do,—­the trick of posing for what they are not.  We do not mean only that the reader does not believe their stories of personal adventure, and regards them personally as “frauds,” but that this quality of deception vitiates all their work, as seen from a literary point of view.  We mean that the writer who hoaxes the public, by inventions which he publishes as facts, or in regard to his own personality, not only will lose the confidence of the public but he will lose the power of doing genuine work, even in the field of fiction.  Good work is always characterized by integrity.

These illustrations help us to understand what is meant by literary integrity.  For the deception in the case of the correspondent who invents “news” is of the same quality as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in a prose fiction; there is a moral and probably a mental defect in both.  The story of Robinson Crusoe is a very good illustration of veracity in fiction.  It is effective because it has the simple air of truth; it is an illusion that satisfies; it is possible; it is good art:  but it has no moral deception in it.  In fact, looked at as literature, we can see that it is sincere and wholesome.

What is this quality of truthfulness which we all recognize when it exists in fiction?  There is much fiction, and some of it, for various reasons, that we like and find interesting which is nevertheless insincere if not artificial.  We see that the writer has not been honest with himself or with us in his views of human life.  There may be just as much lying in novels as anywhere else.  The novelist who offers us what he declares to be a figment of his own brain may be just as untrue as the reporter who sets forth a figment of his own brain which he declares to be a real occurrence.  That is, just as much faithfulness to life is required of the novelist as of the reporter, and in a much higher degree.  The novelist must not only tell the truth about life as he sees it, material and spiritual, but he must be faithful to his own conceptions.  If fortunately he has genius enough to create a character that has reality to himself and to others, he must be faithful to that character.  He must have conscience about it, and not misrepresent it, any more than he would misrepresent the sayings and doings of a person in real life.  Of course if his own conception is not clear, he will be as unjust as in writing about a person in real life whose character he knew only by rumor.  The novelist may be mistaken about his own creations and in his views of life, but if he have truthfulness in himself, sincerity will show in his work.