Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold!
The unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting.
Why couldn't the world that concerns us- be a fiction? And if somebody asked, 'but to be a fiction there surely belongs an author?'- couldn't one answer simply: 'Why? Doesn't this "belongs" perhaps belong to the fiction, too?'