have ever grasped.  I have known publishers go into the bankruptcy court and come out again safely and yet never grasp the significance of those two things.  The first is that it is intensely stupid to ask a novelist to study the market with a view to obtaining large circulations.  If he does not write to please himself—­if his own taste does not naturally coincide with the taste of the million—­he will never reach the million by taking thought.  The Hall Caines, the Miss Corellis, and the Mrs. Humphry Wards are born, not made.  It may seem odd, even to a publisher, that they write as they do write—­by sheer glad instinct.  But it is so.  The second thing is that when a novelist has made “his name and his market” by doing one kind of thing he can’t successfully go off at a tangent and do another kind of thing.  To make the largest possible amount of money out of an artist the only way is to leave him alone.  When will publishers grasp this?  To make the largest possible amount of money out of an imitative hack, the only way is to leave him alone.  When will publishers grasp that an imitative hack knows by the grace of God forty times more about the public taste than a publisher knows?

TOURGENIEV AND DOSTOIEVSKY

[31 Mar. ’10]

I have read with very great interest Mr. Maurice Baring’s new volume about Russia, “Landmarks in Russian Literature” (Methuen, 6s. net).  It deals with Gogol, Tourgeniev, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, and Tchehkoff.  It is unpretentious.  It is not “literary.”  I wish it had been more literary.  Mr. Baring seems to have a greater love for literature than an understanding knowledge of it.  He writes like a whole-hearted amateur, guided by common sense and enthusiasm, but not by the delicate perceptions of an artist.  He often says things, or says things in a manner, which will assuredly annoy the artist.  Thus his curt, conventional remarks about Zola might have been composed for a leading article in the Morning Post, instead of for a volume of literary criticism.  Nevertheless, I cannot be cross with him.  In some ways his book is illuminating.  I mean that it has illuminated my darkness.  His chapters on Russian characteristics and on realism in Russian literature are genuinely valuable.  In particular he makes me see that even French realism is an artificial and feeble growth compared with the spontaneous, unconscious realism of the Russians.  If you talked to Russians about realism they probably would not know quite what you meant.  And when you had at length made them understand they would certainly exclaim:  “Well, of course!  But why all this fuss about a simple matter?” Only a man who knows Russia very well, and who has a genuine affection for the Russian character, could have written these chapters.  And I am ready to admit that they are more useful than many miles of appreciation in the delicate balancing manner of, say, an Arthur Symons.