Here we have one of the most diverting instances of Mr. Benson’s trick-playing style.  He didn’t mean that; he only said it.  Much, if not most, of “The Thread of of Gold” is merely absurd.  Some of it is pretentious, some of it inept.  All of it is utterly banal.  All of it has the astounding calm assurance of mediocrity.  It is a solemn thought that tens of thousands of well-dressed mortals alive and idle to-day consider themselves to have been uplifted by the perusal of this work.  It is also a solemn thought that God in His infinite mercy and wisdom is still allowing Mr. Benson to persevere in his so holy task, thus responding to Mr. Benson’s hopes.

THE LITERARY PERIODICAL

[8 Sep. 10]

I have just had news of a purely literary paper which is shortly to be started.  I do not mean a paper devoted to literary criticisms chiefly, but chiefly to creative work.  This will be something of a novelty in England.  Its founders are two men who possess, happily, a practical acquaintance with publishing.  The aim of the paper will be to print, and to sell, imaginative writing of the highest character.  Its purpose is artistic, and neither political nor moral.  Dangers and difficulties lie before an enterprise of this kind.  The first and the principal difficulty will be the difficulty of obtaining the high-class stuff in sufficient quantities to fill the paper.  The rate of pay will not and cannot be high, and authors capable of producing really high-class stuff—­I mean stuff high-class in execution as well as in intention—­are strangely keen on getting the best possible remuneration for it.  Idle to argue that genuine artists ought to be indifferent to money!  They are not.  And what is still more curious, they will seldom produce their best work unless they really do want money.  This is a fact which will stand against all the sentimental denyings of dilettanti.  And, of course, genuine artists are quite right in getting every cent they can.  The richest of them don’t get enough.  But even if the rates of pay of the new organ were high, the difficulty would still be rather acute, because the whole mass of really high-class stuff produced is relatively very small.  High-class stuff is like radium.  And the number of men who can produce it is strictly limited.  There are dozens and scores of men who can write stuff which has all the mannerisms and external characteristics of high-class stuff, but which is not high-class.  Extinct exotic periodicals, such as the Yellow Book, the Savoy, the Dial, the Anglo-Saxon, and such publications as the Neolith, richly prove this.  What was and is the matter with all of them is literary priggishness, and dullness.  One used to read them more often as a duty than as a pleasure.

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