PREFACE

LET me make it quite clear at the outset: I have laid no claims to be thought a literary critic: the following papers are not studies in literature. While other men were more healthily and patriotically employed in digging up their allotments and gardens, for physical reasons I was forced to confine myself to the garden of my mind, by no means a fruitful soil: I have but little creative genius: abandoning this barren task I then began to dig in the gardens of other men's minds: this book is the result. All I have sought to do has been to convey some of the pleasure I have gained from desultory reading of all kinds during the last few years, to those who take the trouble to turn these pages the art of criticism is not mine. I have not obtruded my own personality more than was absolutely necessary. I have merely walked about prolific vineyards and orchards and plucked a cluster of grapes here, a plum there, to entice you to share some of my golden pleasures. That I have missed some of the best will be obvious to any one who looks at the chapter-headings; that I have included much unripe and indigestible, or over-ripe and putrid fruit I beg leave to deny. There was so much that was very good that I could have filled another volume with ease. Some of these essays have already appeared in print. For permission to include them in this volume I wish to thank the editors of The Fortnightly Review and To-day.

PART I

NOVELISTS AND NOVELS

"Oh, it's only a novel... only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineations of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."