There is felt to be an unsatisfactory want of finish in leaving a
question hanging out of the book, like a loose end, without some kind
of attempt to pull it back and make it part of an integral design.
After all, the book is torn away from its author and given out to the
world; the author is no longer a wandering _jongleur_ who enters the
hall and utters his book to the company assembled, retaining his book
as his own inalienable possession, himself and his actual presence and
his real voice indivisibly a part of it. The book that we read has no
such support; it must bring its own recognisances. And in the
fictitious picture of life the effect of validity is all in all and
there can be no appeal to an external authority; and so there is an
inherent weakness in it if the mind that knows the story and the eye
that sees it remain unaccountable. At any moment they may be
questioned, and the only way to silence the question is somehow to
make the mind and the eye objective, to make them facts in the story.
When the point of view is definitely included in the book, when it can
be recognized and verified there, then every side of the book is
equally wrought and fashioned. Otherwise it may seem like a thing
meant to stand against a wall, with one side left in the rough; and
there is no wall for a novel to stand against.
That this is not a fanciful objection to a pictorial book like Vanity
Fair, where the point of view is _not_ accounted for, is proved, I
think, by the different means that a novelist will adopt to
authenticate his story--to dramatize the seeing eye, as I should
prefer to put it.
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