that he may be kind to others. It can never be wrong to tell him
the truth; for, in his disputable state, weaving as he goes his
theory of life, steering himself, cheering or reproving others, all
facts are of the first importance to his conduct; and even if a
fact shall discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he
should know it; for it is in this world as it is, and not in a
world made easy by educational suppressions, that he must win his
way to shame or glory. In one word, it must always be foul to tell
what is false; and it can never be safe to suppress what is true.
The very fact that you omit may be the fact which somebody was
wanting, for one man's meat is another man's poison, and I have
known a person who was cheered by the perusal of Candide. Every
fact is a part of that great puzzle we must set together; and none
that comes directly in a writer's path but has some nice relations,
unperceivable by him, to the totality and bearing of the subject
under hand. Yet there are certain classes of fact eternally more
necessary than others, and it is with these that literature must
first bestir itself. They are not hard to distinguish, nature once
more easily leading us; for the necessary, because the efficacious,
facts are those which are most interesting to the natural mind of
man. Those which are coloured, picturesque, human, and rooted in
morality, and those, on the other hand, which are clear,
indisputable, and a part of science, are alone vital in importance,
seizing by their interest, or useful to communicate. So far as the
writer merely narrates, he should principally tell of these. He
should tell of the kind and wholesome and beautiful elements of our
life; he should tell unsparingly of the evil and sorrow of the
present, to move us with instances: he should tell of wise and
good people in the past, to excite us by example; and of these he
should tell soberly and truthfully, not glossing faults, that we