This may be exemplified by an illustration from modern literature. Victor Hugo, in his _Légende des Siècles_, has in one passage only placed in our Lord's lips a few words which are not found in the Evangelist.[147] Every one will at once feel that these words ring hollow, that there is in them something exaggerated and factitious--and _that_ although the dramatist had the advantage of having a _type_ of style already constructed for him. People talk as if the representation in detail of a perfect character were a comparatively easy performance. Yet every such representation shows some flaw when closely inspected. For instance, a character in which Shakespeare so evidently delighted as Buckingham, whose end is so noble and martyr-like, is thus described, when on his trial, by a sympathising witness:
"'How did he bear himself?' 'When he was bought again to the bar, to hear, His knell rung out, his judgment, he was struck With such an agony, he sweat extremely, And something spoke in choler, _ill and hasty_; But he fell to himself again, and sweetly In all the rest show'd a most noble patience.'"[148]
Our argument comes to this point. Here is one man of all but the highest rank in dramatic genius, who utterly fails to invent even one sentence which could possibly be taken for an utterance of our Lord. Here is another, the most transcendent in the same order whom the human race has ever known, who tacitly confesses the impossibility of representing a character which shall be "one entire and perfect chrysolite," without speck or flaw. Take yet another instance. Sir Walter Scott appeals for "the fair licence due to the author of a fictitious composition;" and admits that he "cannot pretend to the observation of complete accuracy even in outward costume, much less in the more important points of language and manners."[149] But St. John was evidently a man of no such pretensions as these kings of the human imagination--no Scott or Victor Hugo, much less a Shakespeare. How then--except on the assumption of his being a faithful reporter, of his recording words actually spoken, and witnessing incidents which he had seen with his very eyes and contemplated with loving and admiring reverence--can we account for his having given us long successions of sentences, continuous discourses in which we trace a certain unity and adaptation;[150] and a character which stands alone among all recorded in history or conceived in fiction, by presenting to us an excellence faultless in every detail? We assert that the one answer to this question is boldly given us by St. John in the forefront of his Epistle--"That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes--concerning the Word who is the Life--declare we unto you."
St. John's mode of writing history may profitably be contrasted with that of one who in his own line was a great master, as it has been ably criticised by a distinguished statesman. Voltaire's historical masterpiece is a portion of the life of Maria Theresa, which is unquestionably written from a partly ideological point of view. For, those who have patience to go back to the "sources," and to compare Voltaire's narrative with them, will see the process by which a literary master has produced his effect. The writer works as if he were composing a classical tragedy restricted to the unities of time and place. The three days of the coronation and of the successive votes are brought into one effect, of which we are made to feel that it is due to a magic inspiration of Maria Theresa. Yet, as the great historical critic to whom we refer proceeds to demonstrate, a different charm, very much more real because it comes from truth, may be found in literal historical accuracy without this academic rouge. Writers more conscientious than Voltaire would not have assumed that Maria Theresa was degraded by a husband who was inferior to her. They would not have substituted some pretty and pretentious phrases for the genuine emotion not quite veiled under the official Latin of the Queen. "However high a thing art may be, reality, truth, which is the work of God, is higher!"[151] It is this conviction, this entire intense adhesion to truth, this childlike ingenuousness which has made St. John as an historian attain the higher region which is usually reached by genius alone--which has given us narratives and passages whose ideal beauty or awe is so transcendent or solemn, whose pictorial grandeur or pathos is so inexhaustible, whose philosophical depth is so unfathomable.[152]