"The realist writes a novel with one purpose in view. And that purpose is to render into written words the normal aspect of things. "The aim of the romanticist is entirely different. He is concerned only with things which are exciting, astonishing--in a word, abnormal. "I do not like literary labels, and I think that the names 'realist' and 'romanticist' have been so much misused that they are now almost meaningless. The significance of the term changes from year to year; the realists of one generation are the romanticists of the next. "Bulwer Lytton was considered a realist in his day. But we think of him only as a sentimental and melodramatic romanticist whose work has no connection with real life. "Charles Dickens was considered a realist by the critics of his own generation, and it is probable that he considered himself a realist. But his strongest instinct was toward the melodramatic. He wrote chiefly about simple people, it is true, and chiefly about his own land and time. But the fact that a writer used his contemporaries as subjects does not make him a realist. Dickens's people were unusual; they were better or worse than most people, and they had extraordinary adventures; they did not lead the sort of life which most people lead. Therefore, Dickens cannot accurately be called a realist." "You called Dostoievski a realist," I said. "What writers who use the English language seem to you to deserve best the name of realist?" "I think," said Mr. Herrick, "that the most thoroughgoing realist who ever wrote in England was Anthony Trollope. _Barchester Towers_ and _Framley Parsonage_ are masterpieces of realism; they give a faithful and convincing picture of the every-day life of a section of English society with which their author was thoroughly familiar. Trollope reflected life as he saw it--normal life. He was a great realist. "In the United States there has been only one writer who has as great a right to the name realist as had Anthony Trollope. That man is William Dean Howells. Mr. Howells has always been interested in the normal aspect of things. He has taken for his subject a sort of life which he knows intimately; he has not sought for extraordinary adventures for his theme, nor has he depicted characters remote from our experience. His novels are distinguished by such fidelity to life that he has an indisputable claim to be called a realist. "But, as I said, it is dangerous and unprofitable to attempt to label literary artists. Thackeray was a realist. Yet _Henry Esmond_ is classed as a romantic novel. In that book Thackeray used the realistic method; he spent a long time in studying the manners and customs of the time about which he was writing; and all the details of the sort of life which he describes are, I believe, historically accurate. And yet _Henry Esmond_ is a romance from beginning to end; it is a romantic novel written by a realist, and written according to what is called the realistic method.