century had found _la bonne compagnie_--the rich, that is to
say--dancing waltzes to sentimental _Olgas_ and _Blue Danubes_, but they
had drawn quite other conclusions. Yet waltzes and waltz-tunes are just
as good as, and no better than, fox-trots and ragtime. Both have their
merits; but it is a mistake, perhaps, for artists to take either
seriously.

Be that as it may, the serious artists of the nineteenth century never
dreamed of supposing that the pleasures of the rich were the proper
stuff of art; so it was only natural that the twentieth should go to the
hotel lounges for inspiration. And, of course, it was delightful for
those who sat drinking their cocktails and listening to nigger-bands to
be told that, besides being the jolliest people on earth, they were the
most sensitive and critically gifted. They, along with the children and
savages whom in so many ways they resembled, were the possessors of
natural, uncorrupted taste. They first had appreciated ragtime and
surrendered themselves to the compelling qualities of Jazz. Their
instinct might be trusted: so, no more classical concerts and
music-lessons; no more getting Lycidas by heart; no more Baedeker; no
more cricking one's neck in the Sistine Chapel: unless the coloured
gentleman who leads the band at the Savoy has a natural leaning towards
these things you may depend upon it they are noble, pompous, and
fraudulent. And it was delightful, too, for people without a vestige of
talent--and even then these were in the majority--people who could just
strum a tune or string a few lines of doggerel, to be told that all
that distinguishes what used to be called "serious art" from their
productions was of no consequence whatever, and that, on the contrary,
it was these, if any, that ought to be taken seriously. The output of
verse, which was manifestly much too easy to write and difficult to
read, went up suddenly by leaps and bounds. What is more, some of it got
printed: publishers, and even editors, bowed the knee. Naturally, the
movement was a success at the Ritz and in Grub Street, Mayfair. On the
other hand, because to people who reflected for an instant it seemed
highly improbable that fox-trotters and shimmy-shakers were sensitive or
interesting people, that Christy Minstrels were great musicians, or
that pub-crawlers and _demi-mondaines_ were poets, there sprang
simultaneously into existence a respectable, intelligent, and
ill-tempered opposition which did,