Yet another example is Professor Walter Raleigh.  Fifty per cent. of you will leap up and say that I am being perverse.  But I am not.  It has been demonstrated to me satisfactorily, by contact with Liverpool people, that Professor Raleigh’s personal influence at that university in certain ways made for righteousness.  Nevertheless, Professor Raleigh has himself demonstrated to me that, wherever the root of the matter may be, it is not in him.  One must remember that he is young, and that his underived opinions are therefore less likely to clash with the authoritative opinions of living creative artists on their contemporaries and predecessors than if he were of the same generation as the Collinses and the Saintsburys.  But wait a few years.  Wait until something genuinely new and original comes along and you will see what you will see.  If he wished not to ruin his reputation among artists, among people who really create things, he ought not to have published his books on “Style” and on “Shakespere.”  He ought to have burnt them.  For they are as hollow as a drum and as unoriginal as a bride-cake:  nothing but vacuity with an icing of phrases.  I am brought back again to the anecdote of the musician.  No one who had the least glimmering of an individual vision of what style truly is could possibly have tolerated the too fearfully ingenious mess of words that Professor Raleigh courageously calls a book on “Style.”  The whole thing is a flagrant contradiction of every notion of style.  It may not be generally known (and I do not state it as a truth) that Professor Raleigh is a distant connexion of the celebrated family of Pains, pyrotechnicians.  I would begin to go to the Empire again if I could see on the programme:  “10.20.  Professor Raleigh, in his unique prestidigitatory performance with words.”  Yes, I would stroll once more into the hallowed Promenade to see that.  It would be amusing.  But it would have no connexion with literature.

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD’S HEROINES

[3 Oct. ’08]

It was the commercial genius of Mr. Hall Caine that invented the idea of publishing important novels during the “off” season.  Miss Marie Corelli, by a sure instinct, followed suit.  And now all sorts of stars, from genuine artists to mere successful artisans, take care to publish in the off season.  Thus within the last few weeks we have had novels from Eden Phillpotts, Miss Beatrice Harraden, Anthony Hope, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli.  At this rate the autumn will soon become the slack time; August will burn and throb with a six-shilling activity; publishers’ clerks will form a union; and the Rt.  Hon. W.F.D.  Smith, M.P., who has always opposed an eight hours day, will bring in a Bill for an eight months year.

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