on the fairness of the game, give one a feeling of sickening disgust.  The honest violence of a plain man playing a fair game fairly—­even if he means to knock you over—­may appear shocking, but it remains within the pale of decency.  Damaging as it may be, it is in no sense offensive.  One may well feel some regard for honesty, even if practised upon one’s own vile body.  But it is very obvious that an enemy of that sort will not be stayed by explanations or placated by apologies.  Were I to advance the plea of youth in excuse of the naiveness to be found in these pages, he would be likely to say “Bosh!” in a column and a half of fierce print.  Yet a writer is no older than his first published book, and, notwithstanding the vain appearances of decay which attend us in this transitory life, I stand here with the wreath of only fifteen short summers on my brow.

With the remark, then, that at such tender age some naiveness of feeling and expression is excusable, I proceed to admit that, upon the whole, my previous state of existence was not a good equipment for a literary life.  Perhaps I should not have used the word literary.  That word presupposes an intimacy of acquaintance with letters, a turn of mind and a manner of feeling to which I dare lay no claim.  I only love letters; but the love of letters does not make a literary man, any more than the love of the sea makes a seaman.  And it is very possible, too, that I love the letters in the same way a literary man may love the sea he looks at from the shore—­a scene of great endeavour and of great achievements changing the face of the world, the great open way to all sorts of undiscovered countries.  No, perhaps I had better say that the life at sea—­and I don’t mean a mere taste of it, but a good broad span of years, something that really counts as real service—­is not, upon the whole, a good equipment for a writing life.  God forbid, though, that I should be thought of as denying my masters of the quarter-deck.  I am not capable of that sort of apostasy.  I have confessed my attitude of piety towards their shades in three or four tales, and if any man on earth more than another needs to be true to himself as he hopes to be saved, it is certainly the writer of fiction.

What I meant to say, simply, is that the quarter-deck training does not prepare one sufficiently for the reception of literary criticism.  Only that, and no more.  But this defect is not without gravity.  If it be permissible to twist, invert, adapt (and spoil) M. Anatole France’s definition of a good critic, then let us say that the good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.  Far be from me the intention to mislead an attentive public into the belief that there is no criticism at sea.  That would be dishonest, and even impolite.  Everything can be found at sea, according to the spirit of your quest—­strife, peace, romance, naturalism of the most pronounced kind, ideals, boredom, disgust, inspiration—­and every conceivable opportunity, including the opportunity to make a fool of yourself—­exactly as in the pursuit of literature.  But the quarter-deck criticism is somewhat different from literary criticism.  This much they have in common, that before the one and the other the answering back, as a general rule, does not pay.