ng in heaven or earth need make us face promise like Dick's. Defy all ritual and olism if you must. But, for sheer topsyness, commend me to his notion of insistn the consummation's preceding, instead Illowing, the ceremony! There is quite as superstition in one order of things as in ther. Dick Lynneker is bound, quite as as his family, by prejudices. After all, lack mass is only the real mass reversed. have dwelt on this instance because it = to me typical, in its way, of the work e whole group of English novelists. ExFor Mr. Arnold Bennett, who seems to be ed with the mean and low-minded people nom he feels that the world consists, they ll protesting. But they have nothing to st. When their own fitful attempts to set s straight result in failure or disaster, blame the status quo. It never occurs to to blame their own way of going about usiness of changing things. A little study story or even of sociology would teach what not to waste their time on. But

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he does not think much better of wo does Arnold Bennett) are trying t themselves, trying to think it all out of reason. The syndicate is not trying anything out. It rests content with re every affirmation of history: "You 1 is not argument: it is the mere sticki tongues. The conventionally accep must be wrong; and that is all ther

Take the matter of their whole a sex-which is, by and large, the que are most preoccupied with. A certai a scholar and a gentleman, was po to me, the other day, the accuracy cer's treatment of Troilus. Troilus sida go, not because he does not passionately, but because the chival demands it of him, demands that protect her reputation. Pandar can him from his knightly duty. If ev loved exuberantly, it was Troilus. inhibition works. Chaucer knew wh talking about. Whereas, as my in [239]

out the scruples of a comparatively unalous person. No real lover wants to put eloved "up against" anything disagreeAnd this being brave for someone else a natural expression of love. You may ave to the rack and the gridiron for elf; but being vicariously brave to the and the gridiron is a mean, modern kind urage. Suppose you do not believe in the order: the social order, none the less, verful enough to make a decent man want proval for the woman he loves. He does ish to have her inconvenienced-not if he her.

I the woman who does not wish to run gainst the social order gets scant symfrom the modern British hero. She to want to run counter to it; and if s anything to say about it, she will jolly ave to. I do not know how other people bout Betty Gale, but I am exceedingly for her. I am sufficiently sorry for the ho married Mr. Onions's murderer, the

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and muddle-headed gentlemen to deal
Our authors do succeed in makin
conventional folk disagreeable. That
make the hero acutely perceptive of
ventional vices. But if ever there was
of the beam and the mote! Look a
list of them: the hero of The Invisibl
of The Strangers' Wedding, of Ro
Corner, of Plashers Mead, of Th
Account. Was there ever a more
bunch of egotists anywhere? A gr
of fun has been poked at the he
the romantic period: the Manfreds an
the Heathcliffs and Rochesters. Thei
against society have been jests for th
to split their sides over, these fifty ye
they were dignified creatures in com
and they had far more sense of fa
knew, for example, when they bucked
what they were bucking. They knew
cess was not going to be entirely com
and they did not complain of discom
cause they saw a reason why it sh
made hot for them. They simply felt
[241]

with Lara might well expect orst; but at least she would know what pect. Lara would never have shillyed about among the conventions like Lynneker, or Capes, or Jacob Stahl, ing his mind from chapter to chapter, ever knowing precisely what he did want, w. Lara would have known what he d and why. He would not even have ted to attribute to himself an evil moIf he had one. But none of these young would attribute to himself an evil motive. ever they want must be right; and if ially they want the exact opposite, then nust be right, too. The bewildered wofollows in their wake.

at is why, by and large, they are so pting. Yes, more corrupting than the escent geniuses of the nineties. You be shocked by Dorian Gray, or by ey Beardsley's gentlemen and ladies; but were never tricked into imagining that it "up to you" to look like an Aubrey Isley drawing or to behave like Dorian [242]

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