he bad smell has gone--it is playing tricks with your mind: and if you get
into the way of doing that, you will find that your mind has a nasty way of
playing tricks upon you. Here! hold on! I am rapidly becoming like
Chadband! Send me Vincent, will you--there's a good man? He comes next."

XXXIV

OF CRITICISM

Father Payne had told me that my writing was becoming too juicy and too
highly-scented. "You mustn't hide the underlying form," he said; "have
plenty of plain spaces. This sort of writing is only for readers who want
to be vaguely soothed and made to feel comfortable by a book--it's a
stimulant, it's not a food!"

"Yes," I said with a sigh, "I suppose you are right."

"Up to a certain point, I am right," he replied, "because you are in
training at present--and people in training have to do abnormal things: you
can't _live_ as if you were in training, of course; but when you begin
to work on your own account, you must find your own pace and your own
manner: and even now you needn't agree with me unless you like."

I determined, however, that I would give him something very different next
time. He suggested that I should write an essay on a certain writer of
fiction. I read the novels with great care, and I then produced the driest
and most technical criticism I could. I read it aloud to Father Payne a
month later. He heard it in silence, stroking his beard with his left hand,
as his manner was. When I had finished, he said: "Well, you have taken my
advice with a vengeance; and as an exercise--indeed, as a
_tour-de-force_--it is good. I didn't think you had it in you to
produce such a bit of anatomy. I think it's simply the most uninteresting
essay I ever heard in my life--chip, chip, chip, the whole time. It won't
do you any harm to have written it, but, of course, it's a mere caricature.
No conceivable reason could be assigned for your writing it. It's like the
burial of the dead--ashes to ashes, dust to dust!"

"I admit," I said, "that I did it on purpose, to show you how judicious I
could be."

"Oh yes," he said, "I quite realise that--and that's why I admire it. If
you had produced it as a real thing, and not by way of reprisal, I should
think very ill of your prospects. It's like the work of an analytical
chemist--I tell you what it's like, it's like the diagnosis of the symptoms
of some sick person of rank in a doctor's case-book! But, of course, you
know you mustn't write like that, as well as