Here， inRobinson Crusoe， we are trudging a plain high road； one thing happens afteranother； the fact and the order of the fact is enough. But if the open air and adventuremean everything to Defoe they mean nothing to Jane Austen. Here is thedrawing-room， and people talking， and by the many mirrors of their talk revealingtheir characters. And if， when we have accustomed ourselves to the drawing-roomand its reflections， we turn to Hardy， we are once more spun around. The moors areround us and the stars are above our heads. The other side of the mind is nowexposed-the dark side that comes uppermost in solitude， not the light side thatshows in company. Our relations are not towards people， but towards Nature anddestiny. Yet different as these worlds are， each is consistent with itself. The maker ofeach is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective and however great a strainthey may put upon us they will never confuse us， as lesser writers so frequently do，by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book. Thus to go from onegreat novelist to another-from Jane Austen to Hardy， from Peacock to Trollope，from Scott to Meredith-is to be wrenched and uprooted； to be thrown this wayand then that. To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable notonly of great finesse of perception， but of great boldness of imagination if you aregoing to make use of all that the novelist-the great mist-gives you.