books; the mocker, chiefly among those Catholic youths whom Mr Joyce presents to us in this work and in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Mr Joyce is both a scholar and a mocker. But his standing as a philosophical humorist must be determined by the answer to the question, whether he universalizes the objects of his mockery, or is in the main merely a local satirist. It has been maintained by a recent critic of Swift that the caricature of humanity in Gulliver was suggested by Swift's observation of the "Wild Irish." Swift however bore the Teagues of his time no ill will; but Mr Joyce is so minutely personal in his mockery that the doubt arises whether his original intention—to catch in a work of art the whole phantasmagoria of a day of life in Dublin—has not been prejudiced by something short of good humour. Thus A. E. passes by, and Mr Joyce sets us all cachinnating. It is extremely well done, and we cannot help joining in, but it is not—shall I say, very high class. I except all that relates to Bloom in this epic work. In the philosophic Bloom Mr Joyce has added a new character to that company of real-imaginary personalities whom we know better than our nearest acquaintances, perhaps better than ourselves.
I see that it is in debate among those who have received Ulysses as a great event in literature, whether the work has artistic unity. Of unity in one sense Mr Joyce is always sure; for though, Heaven knows! there is enough variety in his book, everything in it is atoned to one mood, the only mood, in fact, which he appears to have at his command. In a normal work of art (if one may use the expression) certain incidents would be discordant and would shake our faith in the moral and intelligent governor of the little world to which we are admitted, to wit, the artist; but in the world of mockery which Mr Joyce has brought into being, anything may drop into its place as easily as a paragraph in a newspaper. In a normal work of art—I will say it, in a true work of art, this faith in a moral and intelligent creator is stirred in proportion to its manifestation of the author's artistic power. I do not say this in order to accuse Mr Joyce of atheism, or of not being a god himself, but to explain what I mean by saying that his work, with its infinite variety, is monotonous, as only the cinema or the hippodrome entertainment is monotonous, and that monotony is not unity. Also, is it not a mistake in construction that this memorable Day has two begin-
