No doubt this Crichton is having a certain vogue now, but it cannot last.  I wish him no evil, of course, but I cannot help thinking he will presently have had his day.  This epoch of cleverness must be very near its last flare.  The last and the abiding thought of humanity is peace.  A dull man will presently be sought like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.  Dulness will be the New Genius.  “Give us dull books,” people will cry, “great dull restful pictures.  We are weary, very weary.”  This hectic, restless, incessant phase in which we travail—­fin-de-siecle, “decadent,” and all the rest of it—­will pass away.  A chubby, sleepy literature, large in aim, colossal in execution, rotund and tranquil will lift its head.  And this Crichton will become a classic, Messrs. Mudie will sell surplus copies of his works at a reduction, and I shall cease to be worried by his disgusting success.

THE POSE NOVEL

I watched the little spurts of flame jet out from between the writhing pages of my manuscript, watched the sheets coil up in their fiery anguish and start one from another.  I helped the fire to the very vitals of the mass by poking the brittle heap, and at last the sacrifice was over, the flames turned from pink to blue and died out, the red glow gave place to black, little luminous red streaks coiled across the charred sheets and vanished at the margins, and only the ashes of my inspiration remained.  The ink was a lustrous black on the dull blackness of the burnt paper.  I could still read this much of my indiscretion remaining, “He smiled at them all and said nothing.”

“Fool!” I said, and stirred the crackling mass into a featureless heap of black scraps.  Then with my chin on my fists and elbows on knees I stared at the end of my labours.

I suppose, after all, there has been some profit out of the thing.  Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, and one may well thank Heaven it was only a novel.  Still, it means many days out of my life, and I would be glad to find some positive benefit accruing.  Clearly, in the first place, I have eased my mind of some execrable English.  I am cleaner now by some dozen faulty phrases that I committed and saw afterwards in all the nakedness of typewriting. (Thank Heaven for typewriting!  Were it not for that, this thing had gone to the scoffing of some publisher’s reader, and another had known my shame.) And I shall not write another pose novel.

I am inclined to think these pose novels the wild oats of authorship.  We sit down in the heyday of our youth to write the masterpiece.  Obviously, it must be a novel about a man and a woman, and something as splendid as we can conceive of in that way.  We look about us.  We do not go far for perfection.  One of the brace holds the pen and the other is inside his or her head; and so Off! to the willing pen.  Only a few years ago we went slashing among the poppies