* * * * *

Mr. Jacobs is not alone.  Among our very successful novelists there are many like him in what I will roundly term intellectual sluggishness, though there is, perhaps, none with quite his talent.  Have these men entered into a secret compact not to touch a problem even with a pair of tongs?  Or are they afraid of being confused with Hall Caine, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli, who anyhow have the merit of being interested in the wide aspects of their age?  I do not know.  But I think we might expect a little more general activity from some of our authors who lie tranquil, steeped in success as lizards in sunshine.  I speak delicately, for I am on delicate ground.  I do, however, speak as a creative artist, and not as a critic.  Occasionally my correspondents upbraid me for not writing like a critic.  I have never pretended to look at things from any other standpoint than that of a creative artist.

KENNETH GRAHAME

[24 Oct. ’08]

It is a long time since I read a new book by Mr. Kenneth Grahame, but the fault is his rather than mine.  I suppose that I was not the only reader who opened “The Wind in the Willows” (Methuen, 6s.) with an unusual and apprehensive curiosity.  Would it disappoint?  For really, you know, to live up to “The Golden Age” and “Pagan Papers” could not be an easy task—­and after so many years of silence!  It is ten years, if I mistake not, since Mr. Kenneth Grahame put his name to anything more important than the official correspondence of the Bank of England.  Well, “The Wind in the Willows” does not disappoint.  Here, indeed, we have the work of a man who is obviously interested in letters and in life, the work of a fastidious and yet a very robust artist.  But the book is fairly certain to be misunderstood of the people.  The publishers’ own announcement describes it as “perhaps chiefly for youth,” a description with which I disagree.  The obtuse are capable of seeing in it nothing save a bread-and-butter imitation of “The Jungle Book.”  The woodland and sedgy lore in it is discreet and attractive.  Names of animals abound in it.  But it is nevertheless a book of humanity.  The author may call his chief characters the Rat, the Mole, the Toad,—­they are human beings, and they are meant to be nothing but human beings.  Were it otherwise, the spectacle of a toad going through the motor-car craft would be merely incomprehensible and exasperating.  The superficial scheme of the story is so childishly naive, or so daringly naive, that only a genius could have preserved it from the ridiculous.  The book is an urbane exercise in irony at the expense of the English character and of mankind.  It is entirely successful.  Whatever may happen to it in the esteem of mandarins and professors, it will beyond doubt be considered by authentic experts as a work highly distinguished, original, and amusing—­and no more to be comprehended by youth than “The Golden Age” was to be comprehended by youth.