crowds, and some degradation there must be where the one adapts
himself to the many. The British public is not seen at its best
when it is enjoying a holiday in a foreign country, nor when it is
making excursions into the realm of imaginative literature: those
who cater for it in these matters must either study its tastes or
share them. Many readers bring the worst of themselves to a novel;
they want lazy relaxation, or support for their nonsense, or escape
from their creditors, or a free field for emotions that they dare
not indulge in life. The reward of an author who meets them half-
way in these respects, who neither puzzles nor distresses them, who
asks nothing from them, but compliments them on their great
possessions and sends them away rejoicing, is a full measure of
acceptance, and editions unto seventy times seven.

The evils caused by the influence of the audience on the writer are
many. First of all comes a fault far enough removed from the
characteristic vices of the charlatan--to wit, sheer timidity and
weakness. There is a kind of stage-fright that seizes on a man
when he takes pen in hand to address an unknown body of hearers, no
less than when he stands up to deliver himself to a sea of
expectant faces. This is the true panic fear, that walks at mid-
day, and unmans those whom it visits. Hence come reservations,
qualifications, verbosity, and the see-saw of a wavering courage,
which apes progress and purpose, as soldiers mark time with their
feet. The writing produced under these auspices is of no greater
moment than the incoherent loquacity of a nervous patient. All
self-expression is a challenge thrown down to the world, to be
taken up by whoso will; and the spirit of timidity, when it touches
a man, suborns him with the reminder that he holds his life and
goods by the sufferance of his fellows. Thereupon he begins to