Chapter 33

by Herman Melville

　　WHICH MAY PASS FOR WHATEVER IT MAY PROVE TO BE WORTH.But ere be given the rather grave story of Charlemont, a reply must incivility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in viewof past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain anticsappear, exclaims: How unreal all this is! Who did ever dress or act likeyour cosmopolitan? And who, it might be returned, did ever dress or actlike harlequin?Strange, that in a work of amusement, this severe fidelity to real lifeshould be exacted by any one, who, by taking up such a work,sufficiently shows that he is not unwilling to drop real life, and turn,for a time, to something different. Yes, it is, indeed, strange that anyone should clamor for the thing he is weary of; that any one, who, forany cause, finds real life dull, should yet demand of him who is todivert his attention from it, that he should be true to that dullness.There is another class, and with this class we side, who sit down to awork of amusement tolerantly as they sit at a play, and with much thesame expectations and feelings. They look that fancy shall evoke scenesdifferent from those of the same old crowd round the custom-housecounter, and same old dishes on the boardinghouse table, with charactersunlike those of the same old acquaintances they meet in the same old wayevery day in the same old street. And as, in real life, the proprietieswill not allow people to act out themselves with that unreservepermitted to the stage; so, in books of fiction, they look not only formore entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality, than reallife itself can show. Thus, though they want novelty, they want nature,too; but nature unfettered, exhilarated, in effect transformed. In thisway of thinking, the people in a fiction, like the people in a play,must dress as nobody exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, actas nobody exactly acts. It is with fiction as with religion: it shouldpresent another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.If, then, something is to be pardoned to well-meant endeavor, surely alittle is to be allowed to that writer who, in all his scenes, does butseek to minister to what, as he understands it, is the implied wish ofthe more indulgent lovers of entertainment, before whom harlequin cannever appear in a coat too parti-colored, or cut capers too fantastic.One word more. Though every one knows how bootless it is to be in allcases vindicating one's self, never mind how convinced one may be thathe is never in the wrong; yet, so precious to man is the approbation ofhis kind, that to rest, though but under an imaginary censure applied tobut a work of imagination, is no easy thing. The mention of thisweakness will explain why such readers as may think they perceivesomething harmonious between the boisterous hilarity of the cosmopolitanwith the bristling cynic, and his restrained good-nature with theboon-companion, are now referred to that chapter where some similarapparent inconsistency in another character is, on general principles,modestly endeavored to-be apologized for.