“Simply because the peril is inherent in the nature of the book you contemplate.  Unless I totally misunderstand your views, you indulge in the rather extraordinary belief that all works of fiction should be eminently didactic, and inculcate not only sound morality but scientific theories.  Herein, permit me to say, you entirely misapprehend the spirit of the age.  People read novels merely to be amused, not educated; and they will not tolerate technicalities and abstract speculation in lieu of exciting plots and melodramatic denouements.  Persons who desire to learn something of astronomy, geology, chemistry, philology, etc., never think of finding what they require in the pages of a novel, but apply at once to the text-books of the respective sciences, and would as soon hunt for a lover’s sentimental dialogue in Newton’s ‘Principia,’ or spicy small-talk in Kant’s ‘Critique,’ as expect an epitome of modern science in a work of fiction.”

“But, sir, how many habitual novel readers do you suppose will educate themselves thoroughly from the text-books to which you refer?”

“A modicum, I grant you; yet it is equally true that those who merely read to be amused will not digest the scientific dishes you set before them.  On the contrary, far from appreciating your charitable efforts to elevate and broaden their range of vision, they will either sneer at the author’s pedantry, or skip over every passage that necessitates thought to comprehend it, and rush on to the next page to discover whether the heroine, Miss Imogene Arethusa Penelope Brown, wore blue or pink tarlatan to her first ball, or whether on the day of her elopement the indignant papa succeeded in preventing the consummation of her felicity with Mr. Belshazzar Algernon Nebuchadnezzar Smith.  I neither magnify nor dwarf, I merely state a simple fact.”

“But, Mr. Manning, do you not regard the writers of each age as the custodians of its tastes as well as its morals?”

“Certainly not; they simply reflect and do not mould public taste.  Shakespeare, Hogarth, Rabelais, portrayed men and things as they found them; not as they might, could, would, or should have been.  Was Sir Peter Lely responsible for the style of dress worn by court beauties in the reign of Charles II.?  He faithfully painted what passed before him.  Miss Earl, the objection I urge against the novel you are preparing does not apply to magazine essays, where an author may concentrate all the erudition he can obtain and ventilate it unchallenged; for review writers now serve the public in much the same capacity that cup-bearers did royalty in ancient days; and they are expected to taste strong liquors as well as sweet cordials and sour light wines.  Moreover, a certain haze of sanctity envelops the precincts of ‘Maga,’ whence the incognito ‘we’ thunders with oracular power; for, notwithstanding the rapid annihilation of all classic faith in modern times which permits the conversion of Virgil’s Avernus into a model