list to-day whose fame can vie with that of, say, Mr Roosevelt. It
is strange to think that Dickens himself could not in his own day create
as much stir as, say, Lord Salisbury. He lacked political flavour; he
was merely one of the latter day prophets who lack the unique
advertisement of being stoned. It will be said that such an instance is
taken from the masses of the world, most of whom do not read novels,
while all are affected by the politician, but in those circles that
support literature the same phenomenon appears; the novel may be known;
the novelist is not. The novel is not respected and, indeed, one often
hears a woman, at a big lending library, ask for 'three of the latest
novels.' New novels! Why not new potatoes? She takes the books away
calmly, without looking at the titles or the names. She is quite
satisfied; sometimes she does not care much whether or not she has read
those novels before, for she does not remember them. They go in at one
ear and come out at the other presumably, as a judge said, because there
is nothing to stop them.

It is undeniable that the great mass of readers forget either names or
titles; many forget both. Some of the more educated remember the author
and ask their library for 'something by E. M. Dell,' because she writes
such sweet, pretty books, a definition where slander subtly blends with
veracity. But, in most cases, nothing remains of either author or title
except a hazy impression; the reader is not quite sure whether the book
she liked so much is _Fraternity_ or the _Corsican Brothers_. She will
know that it had something to do with family, and that the author's name
began with 'G' ... unless it was 'S'. It cannot be otherwise, so long as
novels are read in the way they are read, that is to say, if they are
taken as drugs. Generally, novels are read to dull the mind, and many
succeed, ruining the chances of those whose intent is not morphean,
which fulfil the true function of art, viz., to inflame. The object of a
novel is not to send the reader to sleep, not to make him oblivious of
time on a railway journey; it is meant to show character, to stimulate
observation, to make life vivid, and as life is most vivid when it is
most unpleasant, the novel that is worth reading is naturally set
aside. For such novels stir the brain too much to let it go to sleep.
Those novels are judged in the same way as the baser kind, and that is,
perhaps, why the novel itself stands so low. I