by satisfying the tests of the handful.  Whether any of these others deal mainly with the superior stolid comfortable, I cannot certainly say; but I think not.  I am ready to assert that in quite modern English fiction there exists no large and impartial picture of the superior stolid comfortable which could give pleasure to a reader of taste.  Rather hard on the class that alone has made novel-writing a profession in which a man can earn a reasonable livelihood!

* * * * *

The explanation of this state of affairs is obscure.  True, that distinguished artists are very seldom born into the class.  But such an explanation would be extremely inadequate.  Artists often move creatively with ease far beyond the boundaries of their native class.  Thomas Hardy is not a peasant, nor was Stendhal a marquis.  I could not, with any sort of confidence, offer an explanation.  I am, however, convinced that only a supreme artist could now handle successfully the material presented by the class in question.  The material itself lacks interest, lacks essential vitality, lacks both moral and spectacular beauty.  It powerfully repels the searcher after beauty and energy.  It may be in a decay.  One cannot easily recall a great work of art of which the subject is decadence.

The backbone of the novel-reading public is excessively difficult to please, and rarely capable of enthusiasm.  Listen to Mudie subscribers on the topic of fiction, and you will scarcely ever hear the accent of unmixed pleasure.  It is surprising how even favourites are maltreated in conversation.  Some of the most successful favourites seem to be hated, and to be read under protest.  The general form of approval is a doubtful “Ye-es!” with a whole tail of unspoken “buts” lying behind it.  Occasionally you catch the ecstatic note, “Oh! Yes; a sweet book!” Or, with masculine curtness:  “Fine book, that!” (For example, “The Hill,” by Horace Annesley Vachell!) It is in the light of such infrequent exclamations that you may judge the tepid reluctance of other praise.  The reason of all this is twofold; partly in the book, and partly in the reader.  The backbone dislikes the raising of any question which it deems to have been decided:  a peculiarity which at once puts it in opposition to all fine work, and to nearly all passable second-rate work.  It also dislikes being confronted with anything that it considers “unpleasant,” that is to say, interesting.  It has a genuine horror of the truth neat.  It quite honestly asks “to be taken out of itself,” unaware that to be taken out of itself is the very last thing it really desires.  What it wants is to be confirmed in itself.  Its religion is the status quo.  The difficulties of the enterprise of not offending it either in subject or treatment are, perhaps, already sufficiently apparent.  But incomparably the greatest obstacle to pleasing it lies in the positive fact that it prefers not to be pleased.  It undoubtedly