ABSTRACT
The story-for all this is put in the form ofa romance-is meditative rather than exciting. The personages live with a kind of dreamy otherworldliness highly characteristic of times remote and out ofjoint, of ages of decadence, ruined efforts, and pathetic failures. Whether all this is precisely the material ofa popular novel, I will not say. But it is entirely in the tone ofthe fin-de-siecle chaos ofthat epoch offalse hopes and transient ambitions. I see with regret that this is not to the taste of some of the 'lightning critics' of our time. A silly Yankee 'notion' has captured our smart Press to issue reviews ofbooks 'on the day of their publication.' Nobody wants four dozen notices ofa book on the same day; but it is thought to be 'up-to-date' and to show snlartness. Clever young women and handy youths who have attended 'Extension Lectures' will turn out a 'review' in 24 hours or less. The one thing necessary is to be smart, up-to-date, to show the 'note of modernity,' to be 'convincing,' to be 'realistic.' Realism too often means to copy the language and the fun of shop-men and shop-girls out for a bankholiday. To convince, slang and practical jokes, the ways of the man in the street or ofpopular farces are essential. And the 'note ofmodernity' is to be studied in the Court presided over by Sir Francis Jenne. The language of Scott or Fielding was 'stilted,' 'conventional,' 'theatrical,' and hopelessly 'old-fashioned.' The up-to-date Shakespeare will read in the great murder scene-'Buck up, Mac, give the old boy beans, or else leave me to go for him!' And in the famous grave-yard scene, Hamlet 'up-to-date' will say: 'Is life worth living, Horry? you bet your bottom dollar it isn't.' We must all 'speak by the card' (of Fleet Street in 1904) or Equivocation (i.e., anything ideal) will undo us.
