19. By the mere explanation of the difference between the ideal and the natural, the poetic and novelistic, views of the world, we may seem to have already settled the question as to the beneficial effects of each. The question, be it observed, is not as to the comparative influence of the discipline of art and that of real life. The man who seeks his entire culture in art of any kind will soon find the old antagonism between speculation and action begin to appear. There will be a chasm, which he cannot fill, between his life in the closet and his life in the world; his impotence to carry his thought into act will limit and weaken the thought itself. But this ill result will equally ensue, whether the art in which he finds his nurture be that of the novelist or that of the poet. The novel-reader sees human action pass before him like a panorama, but he feels none of its pains and penalties; his fancy feeds on its pleasures, but he has not to face the struggle of resistance to pleasure, or the suffering which follows on indulgence. Nor is it merely from that weakness of effect which, in one sense, must always belong to representation as opposed to reality, that the novel suffers. The representation itself is incomplete. The novelist, like every other artist, must abridge and select. For many of the elements whose action builds up our human soul, there is no place in his canvas. A great part of the discipline of life arises simply from its slowness. The long years of patient waiting and silent labor, the struggle with listlessness and pain, the loss of time by illness, the hope deferred, the doubt that lays hold on delay--these are the tests of that pertinacity in man which is but a step below heroism. The exhibition of them in the novel, however, is prevented by that rapidity of movement which is essential to its fascination; and hence to one whose acquaintance with life was derived simply from novels, its main business would be unknown. They are perhaps more brought home to us by Defoe than by any other writer of fiction; but this is due to that very deficiency of artistic power which makes his agglomeration of details[17] such heavy reading to all but school-boys. FOOTNOTE: [17] Modern criticism inclines to the view that Defoe's "agglomeration of details" is the result of high and conscious art. If 'Robinson Crusoe' were kept away from schoolboys it would doubtless be read pleasurably by adults. I. PRUDENCE THE NOVELIST'S HIGHEST MORALITY 20. The novel, then, as being a work of art, must fail to teach the lesson of life in its completeness: as an inferior work of art, it has peculiar weaknesses of its own. However extensive the influence of the literature of fiction may have been, its intensity has been in inverse proportion. A great poem, once made our own, abides with us for ever. "Amid the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,"[18]