e. The seven men selected are those who show promise.

By promise is meant a suggestion that the young man will become a big
man, that is to say that, in ten years or so, he will be the vehicle of
the modern idea through the style of the time; he may not be very
popular, but he will not be unpopular; he will be quoted, criticised,
discussed; briefly, he will matter. Now I do not suggest that the seven
men named will inevitably become big men. There is not room for seven
big novelists, but it is among them that, in all likelihood, the two or
three leaders will be found. And then there is the dark horse, still,
perhaps, in some university, in America or in a colony, perhaps in a
factory or a shop, who may sally forth, swift as a comet, and destroy
our estimate; I have at least one such dark horse in my mind. But in a
valuation we must reckon on the known, and it is submitted that we know
nothing beyond this list.

The manner in which these men will express themselves cannot be
determined absolutely. The literary tradition is changing, and a new one
is being made. If the future is to give us a Balzac or a Fielding he
will not write like a Balzac or a Fielding: he will use a new style.
That is why there is very little hope for those who competently follow
the tradition of the past. If a _Madame Bovary_ were to be written
to-day by a man of thirty it would not be a good book; it would be a
piece of literary archaeology. If the seven young men become the men of
to-morrow, it will be because they break away from the old traditions,
the tradition of aloofness and the tradition of comment. They do not
rigidly stand outside the canvas, as did Flaubert and de Maupassant; nor
do they obviously intervene as did Thackeray. If they look back at all
it is to Dostoievsky and Stendhal, that is to say, they stand midway
between the expression of life and the expression of themselves; indeed,
they try to express both, to achieve art by 'criticising life'; they
attempt to take nature into partnership. Only they do this to a greater
or lesser extent; some do little more than exploit themselves, show the
world in relation to their own autobiography; others hold up the mirror
to life and interpose between picture and object the veil of their
prejudice; and one of them is almost a commentator, for his prejudice is
so strong as to become a protagonist in his drama. All this is to be
expected, for one cannot expect a little group of seven which e