But I don't think you have genius, Maud. People have got that
ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads--that one
mustn't write save at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell
you, writing is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair
specimens of the Sunday-school prize; study them; discover the
essential points of such composition; hit upon new attractions;
then go to work methodically, so many pages a day. There's no
question of the divine afflatus; that belongs to another sphere
of life. We talk of literature as a trade, not of Homer, Dante,
and Shakespeare. If I could only get that into poor Reardon's
head. He thinks me a gross beast, often enough. What the devil--I
mean what on earth is there in typography to make everything it
deals with sacred? I don't advocate the propagation of vicious
literature; I speak only of good, coarse, marketable stuff for
the world's vulgar. You just give it a thought, Maud; talk it
over with Dora.'

He resumed presently:

'I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying
the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we
sit down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only
commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make
the best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would
produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty
thousand copies. But it needs skill, mind you: and to deny it is
a gross error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you
must, one way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity. For
my own part, I shan't be able to address the bulkiest multitude;
my talent doesn't lend itself to that form. I shall write for the