Primarily, at least, there is one rather peculiar thing which must in justice be said about it.  The readers of this strange science must be allowed to be, upon the whole, as disinterested as a prophet seeing visions or a child reading fairy-tales.  Here, again, we find, as we so often do, that whatever view of this matter of popular literature we can trust, we can trust least of all the comment and censure current among the vulgar educated.  The ordinary version of the ground of this popularity for information, which would be given by a person of greater cultivation, would be that common men are chiefly interested in those sordid facts that surround them on every side.  A very small degree of examination will show us that whatever ground there is for the popularity of these insane encyclopaedias, it cannot be the ground of utility.  The version of life given by a penny novelette may be very moonstruck and unreliable, but it is at least more likely to contain facts relevant to daily life than compilations on the subject of the number of cows’ tails that would reach the North Pole.  There are many more people who are in love than there are people who have any intention of counting or collecting cows’ tails.  It is evident to me that the grounds of this widespread madness of information for information’s sake must be sought in other and deeper parts of human nature than those daily needs which lie so near the surface that even social philosophers have discovered them somewhere in that profound and eternal instinct for enthusiasm and minding other people’s business which made great popular movements like the Crusades or the Gordon Riots.

I once had the pleasure of knowing a man who actually talked in private life after the manner of these papers.  His conversation consisted of fragmentary statements about height and weight and depth and time and population, and his conversation was a nightmare of dulness.  During the shortest pause he would ask whether his interlocutors were aware how many tons of rust were scraped every year off the Menai Bridge, and how many rival shops Mr. Whiteley had bought up since he opened his business.  The attitude of his acquaintances towards this inexhaustible entertainer varied according to his presence or absence between indifference and terror.  It was frightful to think of a man’s brain being stocked with such inexpressibly profitless treasures.  It was like visiting some imposing British Museum and finding its galleries and glass cases filled with specimens of London mud, of common mortar, of broken walking-sticks and cheap tobacco.  Years afterwards I discovered that this intolerable prosaic bore had been, in fact, a poet.  I learnt that every item of this multitudinous information was totally and unblushingly untrue, that for all I knew he had made it up as he went along; that no tons of rust are scraped off the Menai Bridge, and that the rival tradesmen and Mr. Whiteley were creatures of the poet’s brain.  Instantly I conceived