We have spoken of the author as the friend of the reader. This figure of speech has been chosen for the purpose of making apparent the intimate relations between the substance of the story and the personality of the reader. As a matter of fact, however, it is only the personality of the _reader_ which is in any way alive and consciously perceived: the writer is so entirely impersonal (or should be) that he becomes completely merged in his characters. His spirit is felt in every line of description and every touch of character; but, as we might say, his own form should never be seen. With no suggestion of sacrilege we might even say that he is to the creations in the novel what God is to nature: the eye sees nature in all its beauty, but only the heart can perceive by a hidden vision of its own the presence of the divine. Such is the ideal part which an artist should play in his story. But, though the artist as a personality is or should be entirely unseen, he is only the more truly present; and the greater his soul and the nobler his life and the broader his imagination and the more poetic his fancy, the more truly does his book become a treasure to the reader. All dramatic writers, whether epic poets, poetic dramatists, or novelists, are known by the characters they create. It is not important that those characters should ever have really existed in the world: what is demanded is that they be natural and possible and true to the principles of life. The creative writer will of course create characters never seen before. He will never be a mere copyist; or if he is he becomes a biographer, and ceases to be a dramatic artist. Of course, also, these characters must have their collisions with other characters or with the forces of fate. That is necessary to give dramatic interest, the interest of plot. And characters are known by what they do; so unless they really meet adequate dramatic situations they cannot be said to exist at all, even though the author has described them minutely and told us that they have an endless variety of noble and beautiful qualities: for us only those qualities exist which we see in action. So in brief we may say that a great novelist (or other dramatic writer) is known by the great deeds of his great characters. From this point of view Shakspere is our greatest author. His Lear, Othello, Desdemona, Portia, Macbeth, Hamlet, Caesar, Brutus, Cleopatra, and the rest form a noble company of great men and women. Instinctively we compare these fictitious characters with the characters of history. Many of them are taken from history; but by art and imagination they are created anew in shapes that live before our eyes as the characters of history (often quite different personages) really lived before the eyes of their contemporaries, but could not live before our eyes.