In a time like ours, when literary tabloids take the place of wholesome mental food, when many successful novels can be read at a sitting or a lying--requiring no exertion either of soul or body--the portentous size of these Polish stories is a magnificent challenge. If some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested, what shall we do with Sienkiewicz? In Mr. Curtin's admirable translation, the Trilogy covers over twenty-five hundred closely printed pages; the _Knights of the Cross_ over seven hundred and fifty, _Children of the Soil_ over six hundred and fifty; _Without Dogma_ (Englished by another hand) has been silently so much abridged in translation that we do not know what its actual length may be. We do not rebel, because the next chapter is invariably not a task, but a temptation; but when we wake up with a start at the call _Finis_, which magic word transfers us from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and contemplate the vast fabric of our dream, we cannot help asking if there is any law in the construction that requires so much material. Gogol, in his astonishing romance, _Taras Bulba_, which every lover of Sienkiewicz should read, gives us the same impression of Vastness, in a book Lilliputian in size. Nor is there any apparent reason why the Polish narratives should stop on the last page, nor indeed stop at all. Combat succeeds combat, when in the midst of the hurly-burly, the Master of the Show calls time. It is his arbitrary will, rather than any inevitable succession of events, that shuts off the scene: the men might be fighting yet. This passion for mere detail mars the first part of _With Fire and Sword_; one cannot see the forest for the trees. One reason for this immensity is the author's desire to be historically accurate, the besetting sin of many recent dramas and novels. Before beginning to write, Sienkiewicz reads all the authorities and documentary evidence he can find. The result is plainly seen in the early pages of _With Fire and Sword_, which read far more like a history than like a work of fiction--note the striking contrast in _Pan Michael_! The _Knights of the Cross_ appeared with maps. The topography of _Quo Vadis_ was so carefully prepared that it almost serves as a guide-book to ancient Rome. Now the relation of History to Fiction has never been better stated than by Lessing: "The dramatist uses history, not because it has happened, but because it has so happened that he could scarcely find anything else better adapted to his purpose." No work of fiction has ever gained immortality by its historical accuracy.