he did. Published volumes were few in his day (though not, of course,
few enough). Even he, in all the plenitude of his indulgence, would
now have to demur that at least 90 per cent. of the volumes that the
publishers thrust on us, so hectically, every spring and autumn, are
abiblia [Greek].

What would he have to say of the novels, for example? These
commodities are all very well in their way, no doubt. But let us have
no illusions as to what their way is. The poulterer who sells strings
of sausages does not pretend that every individual sausage is in
itself remarkable. He does not assure us that `this is a sausage that
gives furiously to think,' or `this is a singularly beautiful and
human sausage,' or `this is undoubtedly the sausage of the year.' Why
are such distinctions drawn by the publisher? When he publishes, as he
sometimes does, a novel that is a book (or at any rate would be a book
if it were decently printed and bound) then by all means let him
proclaim its difference--even at the risk of scaring away the majority
of readers.

I admit that I myself might be found in that majority. I am shy of
masterpieces; nor is this merely because of the many times I have been
disappointed at not finding anything at all like what the publishers
expected me to find. As a matter of fact, those disappointments are
dim in my memory: it is long since I ceased to take publishers'
opinions as my guide. I trust now, for what I ought to read, to the
advice of a few highly literary friends. But so soon as I am told that
I `must' read this or that, and have replied that I instantly will, I
become strangely loth to do anything of the sort. And what I like
about books within books is that they never can prick my conscience.
It is extraordinarily comfortable that they don't exist.