either as reporter or correspondent, of statements put forward as facts, which are untrue.  This sort of facility and smartness may get a writer employment, unfortunately for him and the public, but there is no satisfaction in it to one who desires an honorable career.  It is easy to recall the names of brilliant men whose fine talents have been eaten away by this habit of unveracity.  This habit is the greatest danger of the newspaper press of the United States.

It is easy to define this sort of untruthfulness, and to study the moral deterioration it works in personal character, and in the quality of literary work.  It was illustrated in the forgeries of the marvelous boy Chatterton.  The talent he expended in deception might have made him an enviable reputation,—­the deception vitiated whatever good there was in his work.  Fraud in literature is no better than fraud in archaeology, —­Chatterton deserves no more credit than Shapiro who forged the Moabite pottery with its inscriptions.  The reporter who invents an incident, or heightens the horror of a calamity by fictions is in the case of Shapiro.  The habit of this sort of invention is certain to destroy the writer’s quality, and if he attempts a legitimate work of the imagination, he will carry the same unveracity into that.  The quality of truthfulness cannot be juggled with.  Akin to this is the trick which 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.