derable literary achievement; but its triumph is that it
has been mightily argued about during the repasts of the elite. I need
scarcely say that it is not Mr. Forster's best book; no author's best book
is ever the best received--this is a rule practically without exception. A
more curious point about it is that it contains a lot of very straight
criticism of the elite. And yet this point is not very curious either. For
the elite have no objection whatever to being criticized. They rather like
it, as the alligator likes being tickled with peas out of a pea-shooter.
Their hides are superbly impenetrable. And I know not which to admire the
more, the American's sensitiveness to pea-shooting, or the truly correct
Englishman's indestructible indifference to it. Mr. Forster is a young
man. I believe he is still under thirty, if not under twenty-nine. If he
continues to write one book a year regularly, to be discreet and
mysterious, to refrain absolutely from certain themes, and to avoid a too
marked tendency to humour, he will be the most fashionable novelist in
England in ten years' time. His worldly prospects are very brilliant
indeed. If, on the other hand, he writes solely to please himself,
forgetting utterly the existence of the elite, he may produce some
first-class literature. The responsibilities lying upon him at this crisis
of his career are terrific. And he so young too!

"THE NEW MACHIAVELLI"

[_2 Feb. '11_]

A pretty general realization of the extremely high quality of "The New
Machiavelli" has reduced almost to silence the ignoble tittle-tattle that
accompanied its serial publication in the _English Review_. It is years
since a novel gave rise to so much offensive and ridiculous chatter before
being issued as a book. When the chatter began, dozens of people who would
no more dream of paying four-and-sixpence for a new novel that happened to
be literature than they would dream of paying four-and-sixpence for a
cigar, sent down to the offices of the _English Review_ for complete sets
of back numbers at half a crown a number, so that they could rummage
without a moment's delay among the earlier chapters in search of tit-bits
according to their singular appetite. Such was the London which calls
itself literary and political! A spectacle to encourage cynicism! Rumour
had a wonderful time. It was stated that not only the libraries but the
booksellers also would decline to handle "The New Machiavelli." The
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