me intellectual anarchist. If the critics of the more important
journals were not so enthusiastic as their provincial confreres,
they were at least gentle with "The Improbable Marquis." A critic of
genius would have said that such books were not worth writing, still
less worth reading. An outspoken critic would have said that it was
too dull to be an acceptable presentation of a life that we all find
interesting. As it was, most of the critics praised the style in
which it was written because it was quite impossible to call it an
enthralling or even an entertaining book. Some of the younger
critics, who still retained an interest in their own personalities,
discovered that its vacuity made it a convenient mirror by means of
which they would display the progress of their own genius. In common
gratitude they had to close these manifestations of their merit with
a word or two in praise of the book they were professing to review.
"The Improbable Marquis" was very favourably received by the Press
in general.

It was, as the publisher made haste to point out in his
advertisements, a book of the year, and, reassured by its flippant
exterior, the libraries and the public bought it with avidity. The
author pasted his swollen collection of newspaper-cuttings into an
album, and carefully revised his novel in case a second edition
should be called for. There was one review which he had read more
often than any of the others, and nevertheless he hesitated to
include it in his collection. "This book," wrote the anonymous
reviewer, "is as nearly faultless a book may be that possesses no
positive merit. It differs only from seven-eighths of the novels
that are produced today in being more carefully written. The author
had nothing to say, and he has said it." That was all, three
malignant lines in a paper of no commercial importance, the sort of
thing that was passed round the publisher's office with an
appreciative chuckle. In the face of the general amiability of the
Press, such a notice in an obscure journal could do the book no
harm.

Only the author sat hour after hour in his study with that diminutive
scrap of paper before him on the table, and wondered if it was
true.

IV. Fame

It was some little time before the public, the mysterious section of
the public that reads works of fiction, discovered that the
publisher, aided by the normal good-humour of the critics, had
persuaded them to sacrific