And if the hateful women are unattractive, is there not in the atmosphere that surrounds their misdeeds something—now and again, just for a minute or two—vastly and vaguely agreeable? I speak of the atmosphere as I suppose it to be, not as idealised in Ouida's fashion. It is not the atmosphere, I should imagine, of what in the dear old snobbish phrase was called "high life"—gay here and there, but mostly ordered and decorous: there is too much ignored. It is the atmosphere, really, of a profuse Bohemianism, of mysterious little houses, of comical lavishness, and unwisdom, and intrigue. I do not pretend—as one did in boyhood—to know anything about it save as a reader of fiction, but there are moments when, in the quiet country or after a day's hard work in one's garret, the thought of such an atmosphere is pleasant. We—we others, the plodders and timid livers—could not live in it; better ten hours a day in a bank and a dinner of cold mutton; but fancy may wander in it agreeably for a brief time, and I am grateful to Ouida for its suggestion.
III
I do not propose to discourse at length on Ouida's style. As it is, I do not admire it much. But I cannot see that it is worse than the average English in the novels and newspapers of the period. It is crude, slap-dash if you will, incorrect at times. But it is eloquent, in its way. It does not seem to have taken Swift for an ideal; it is not simple, direct, restrained. But it is expressive, and it is so easy to be crude, and slap-dash, and incorrect, and with it all to express nothing. There are many writers who are more correct than Ouida, and very many indeed who are a hundred times less forcible, and (to my taste) less
