The third and only other form that I remember as common to both novel and short story, though indeed not equally _convenient_ to both, is the rare form of Letters. That again, like any other that will not bear a prolonged strain, is oftener available for short story than for big romance. The most consummate instance of its employment, in very lengthy work, is one in which with infinitely slow progression it serves above all things the purpose of minute and searching analysis--I have named the book in this line of description of it: I have named _Clarissa_. For the short story it is used very happily by Balzac--who, though not at first a master of sentences, is an instinctive master of methods--it is used by him in the _Mémoires de Deux Jeunes Mariées_. And in a much lighter way, of bright portraiture, of neat characterisation, it is used by an ingenious, sometimes seductive, writer of our period, Marcel Prévost, in _Lettres de Femmes_. It is possible, of course, to _mix_ these different forms; but for such mixture we shall conclude, I fancy, that prolonged fiction offers the best opportunity. Such mixture has its dangers for the short story; you risk, perhaps, unity of effect. But there are short stories in which monotony is avoided, and the force of the narrative in reality emphasised, by some telling lines from a letter, whose end or whose beginning may be otherwise imparted to us. I devote a few lines to but two or three of the forms which by common consent are for the short story only. One of them is simple dialogue. For our generation, that has had the fascination of an experiment--an experiment made perhaps with best success after all in the candid and brilliant fragments of that genuine humorist, Mr. Pett Ridge. The method in most hands has the appearance of a difficult feat. It _is_ one, often--and so is walking on the slack-wire, and the back-spring in acrobatic dance. Of course a writer must enjoy grappling with difficulties. We understand that. But the more serious artist reflects, after a while, that the unnecessary difficulty is an inartistic encumbrance. ‘Why,’ he will ask, ‘should the story-teller put on himself the fetters of the drama, to be denied the drama’s opportunities?’ Pure dialogue, we may be sure, is apt to be an inefficient means of telling a story; of presenting a character. There may be cited one great English Classic who has employed the method--the author of _Pericles and Aspasia_, of that little gem of conversation between Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. But then, with Walter Savage Landor, austere and perfect, the character existed already, and there was no story to tell. Mere dialogue, under the conditions of the modern writer, leaves almost necessarily the problem unsolved, the work a fragment. It can scarcely be a means to an end; though it may, if we like, be a permissible little end in itself, a little social chatter, pitched in a high key, in which one has known tartness to be mistaken for wit.