What is called the human interest in fiction is doubtless more absorbing
than any other, but other legitimate sources of interest exist. The
marvellous always possesses a fascination, and justly; for while it is
neither human nature nor fact, it ministers to an æsthetic appetite of
the mind which neither fact nor human nature can gratify. Superstition
has been well abused; but that were a sad day which should behold
the destruction in us of the quality which keeps superstition alive.
Fortunately that day can never come--least of all under a Positivist
administration.
Such works as "The Tempest," "Faust," and "Consuelo" show their authors
at their best, because, being obliged by the subject to soar above the
level of vulgar possibility, the writers catch a gleam of transcendent
sunlight on their wings. And he who would mirror in his works the whole
of man must needs include the impossible along with the rest. Whoever
has lived thoughtfully feels that there has been something in his
experience beyond what appears in "Tom Jones," "Adam Bede," and "Vanity
Fair." They are earth without sky. I do not refer to that goody-goody
Sunday-school sky which weeps and smirks over the mimic worlds of so
many worthy novelists, male and female; but to that unfathomed mystery
opening all around us--the sky of Shakespeare and Dante, of Goethe and
Georges Sand. A reader with a healthy sense of justice feels that an
occasional excursion mystery-ward is no more than he has a right to
demand. And such excursions are wholesome for literature no less than
for him. For the story-teller, sensible of the risk he runs of making
his supernatural element appear crude and ridiculous, exerts himself to
the utmost, and his style and method purify and wax artistic under the
strain.
These remarks must smooth the way to the confession that in the present
volume no "human interest" will be found, or has been attempted. The
gist of the work (or at least of three-fourths of it) is to show how the
impossible might occur. Now, in order to appreciate the delicate flavour
of a ghost, it is indispensable that the palate should not be cloyed by
a contemporary diet of flesh and blood. In other words, the reality of
the personages amidst whom the disembodied spirit appears should be
insisted upon no further than is necessary to the telling them apart;
only that side of the human figures which is most in accord with the
superhuman should be made prominent. If the writer has managed this part
of his business properly, he is open to criticism only in so far as he
may have sinned in the way of conception and literary execution; and
upon those points he is happily spared the necessity of pronouncing
judgment. He may however be permitted to observe that the following
stories are among the very lightest and least profound of their class;
there are no tears or terrors in them; barely even a smile or a sigh;
and, in short, their success--should they achieve any--will be mainly
due to the fact that with such small pretensions failure would actually
become difficult.
One of the tales, it should be added, is a mere _jeu d'esprit_, the
presence of which in the collection is justifiable only on the plea
that it makes believe to be what the others are--relieving a note too
monotonously sounded by lowering it to the key of mockery. Possibly,
nevertheless, it may turn out to be the float which will save the
weightier portion of the cargo from going too speedily to the bottom.
All the stories have appeared, during the last four years, in various
periodicals, to the editors of which my acknowledgments are due for
leave to reproduce them.
_January, 1879._