I realised a little while ago that I was getting sadly belated in the
matter of novel-reading. I had come to decline on a few old favourites
and was breaking no new ground. That is a provincial frame of mind,
just as when a man begins to discard dressing for dinner, and can
endure nothing but an old coat and slippers. It is easy to think of it
as unworldly, peaceable, philosophical; but it is mere laziness. The
really unworldly philosopher is the man who is at ease in all costumes
and at home in all companies.

I did not take up my novel-reading in a light spirit or for mere
diversion. To begin a new novel is for me like staying at a strange
house; I am bewildered and discomposed by the new faces, by the hard
necessity of making the acquaintance of all the new people, and in
determining their merits and their demerits. But I was bent on more
serious things still. I knew that it is the writers of romances, and
not the historians or the moralists, who are the real critics and the
earnest investigators of life and living. There may be at the present
day few subtle psychologists or surpassing idealists at work writing
novels, and still fewer great artists; but for a man to get out of the
way of reading contemporary fiction is not only a disease, it is almost
a piece of moral turpitude--or at best a sign of lassitude, stupidity,
and Toryism; because it means that one's mind is made up and that one
has some dull theory which life and the thoughts of others may confirm
if they will, but must not modify: from which deadly kind of
incrustation may common-sense and human interest deliver us.

It is a matter of endless debate whether a novel should have an ethical
purpose, or whether it should merely be an attempt to present