ounce of civet, to sweeten our imagination. And all was quiet and solemn araound![1]
At the forty-first page I closed the Manxman, and gave it to my valet. It was as if for forty-one leaden minutes I had been listening to the speech of Emptiness incarnate; but a pompous Emptiness, a rhetorical Emptiness, an Emptiness with the manner of an Oracle and the accent of an Auctioneer: an Emptiness that would have lulled me to slumber if it hadn't sickened me. I wonder how Mr. Hall Caine keeps awake as he writes.
Nature abhors a vacuum, but the British Public, it would appear, loves an Emptiness. The Public, however, doesn't matter. The Great Heart of the People has warmed to bad literature in all ages and in all countries. The disgraceful thing is that in England bad literature is taken seriously by persons who profess to be Critics. The critics of France don't take Monsieur Georges Ohnet seriously; the critics of Russia don't take Alexis Gorloff seriously; but the critics of England do take Mr. Hall Caine seriously. Well, it only shows what a little pretentiousness in this ingenuous land will accomplish.
The value of pretentiousness can scarcely be too highly commended to young authors. If you are more desirous of impressing the ignorant than of doing good work, if you would rather make the multitude stare than make the remnant gaze—Be pretentious, and let who will be clever. A young author who appears to have
- ↑ A friend assures me that if I had pursued my wanderings a little further in Mr. Hall Caine's garden of prose, I might have culled still fairer blossoms; and gives as a specimen this, from page 141: "She met him on the hill slope with a cry of joy, and kissed him. It came into his mind to draw away, but he could not, and he kissed her back." How quaint Manx customs are. In London he would almost certainly have kissed her lips.
