autobiography that many readers of Main Street have prophesied against Mr. Lewis's future.
To those who wish to believe that they have found not merely a new novel but also a new novelist, capable of fresh flights for distance and altitude, certain reassuring considerations may be presented. Main Street, unlike three-fourths of the novels of the day, is not autobiographical. It is to an extraordinary degree an objective representation of contemporary society extended through a period of not more than half-a-dozen years. In this society Mr. Lewis himself has not a single "personal representative." Neither Dr. Kennicott, nor Carol, nor Guy Pollock, nor Vida Sherwin, nor Sam Clark, nor Percy Breshnahan, nor Erik Valbord, nor Miles Bjornstam, nor Fern Mullins, nor Mrs. Bogart is his "register." Each one of these persons is a perfectly distinct individual with firm centre and contours honestly constructed after innumerable observations and hard, earnest work of the realistic imagination. Mr. Lewis will not exhaust his material while he retains his present capacity for research. Deeply indebted as he may be to Mr. Wells for the illumination of his point of view as an observer of the human spectacle, he has studied the art of constructing the novel under other masters with far greater respect for their profession than that famous producer who semi-annually charges a new lay figure with the task of communicating to the world the latest state of his own consciousness. The contemporary English novelist whose best work is
