can be said of it is that you can’t read a page, up to about page 200, without grinning. (Unhappily Mr. Booth overestimated his stock of grins, which ran out untimely.) The true art of fiction, however, is not chiefly connected with grinning, or with weeping.  It consists, first and mainly, in a beautiful general composition.  But in Anglo-Saxon countries any writer who can induce both a grin and a tear on the same page, no matter how insolent his contempt for composition, is sure of that immortality which contemporaries can award.

* * * * *

Another novel that is not the novel of the season is Mr. John Ayscough’s “Marotz,” about which much has been said.  I do not wish to labour this point.  “Marotz” is not the novel of the season.  I trust that I make myself plain.  I shall not pronounce upon Mr. Masefield’s “Captain Margaret,” because, though it has been splashed all over by trowelfuls of slabby and mortarish praise, it has real merits.  Indeed, it has a chance of being the novel of the season.  Mr. Masefield is not yet grown up.  He is always trying to write “literature,” and that is a great mistake.  He should study the wisdom of Paul Verlaine: 

    Prends l’eloquence et tords-lui son cou.

Take literature and wring its neck.  I suppose that Mr. H. de Vere Stacpoole’s “The Blue Lagoon” is not likely to be selected as the novel of the season.  And yet, possibly, it will be the novel of the season after all, though unchosen.  I will not labour this point, either.  Any one read “The Blue Lagoon” yet?  Some folk have read it, for it is in its sixth edition.  But when I say any one, I mean some one, not mere folk.  It might be worth looking into, “The Blue Lagoon.” Verbum sap., often, to Messrs. Robertson Nicoll and Shorter.  In choosing “Confessio Medici” as the book of the season in general literature, Dr. Nicoll [Now Sir William Robertson Nicoll] has already come a fearful cropper, and he must regret it.  I would give much to prevent him from afflicting the intelligent when the solemn annual moment arrives for him to make the reputation of a novelist.

GERMAN EXPANSION

[18 July ’08]

I think I could read anything about German Colonial expansion.  The subject may not appear to be attractive; but it is.  The reason lies in the fact that one is always maliciously interested in the failures of pompous and conceited persons.  In the same way, one is conscious of disappointment that the navy pother has not blossomed into a naked scandal.  A naked scandal would be a bad thing, and yet one feels cheated because it has not occurred.  At least I do.  And I am rather human.  I can glut myself on German colonial expansion—­a wondrous flower.  I have just read with genuine avidity M. Tonnelat’s “L’Expansion allemande hors d’Europe” (Armand Colin, 3 fr. 50).  It is a very good book.  Most of it does not deal with colonial expansion,