what are obstacles for but to be overleapt? What avails heart-disease,
what avail eld and feverish haste and total lack of literary training,
as against the romantic instinct of the lady who created the Rev.
Charles Hailing? `THE GIFT OF GIFTS was acclaimed as a masterpiece by
all the first-class critics.' Also, it very soon `brought in' ten
times as much money as was needed to pay off the debts of its author's
eldest son. Nor, though Charles Hailing died some months later, are we
told that he died from the strain of composition. We are left merely
to rejoice at knowing he knew at the last `that his whole family was
provided for.'

I wonder why it is that, whilst these Charles Hailings and Aylmer
Deanes delightfully abound in the lower reaches of English fiction, we
have so seldom found in the work of our great novelists anything at
all about the writing of a great book. It is true, of course, that our
great novelists have never had for the idea of literature itself that
passion which has always burned in the great French ones. Their own
art has never seemed to them the most important and interesting thing
in life. Also it is true that they have had other occupations--fox-
hunting, preaching, editing magazines, what not. Yet to them
literature must, as their own main task, have had a peculiar interest
and importance. No fine work can be done without concentration and
self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. It is nonsense to imagine that our
great novelists have just forged ahead or ambled along, reaching their
goal, in the good old English fashion, by sheer divination of the way
to it. A fine book, with all that goes to the making of it, is as fine
a theme as a novelist can have. But it is a part of English hypocrisy-
-or, let it be more politely said, English reserve--that, whilst we
are fluent enough in grumbling about small inconveniences, we insist
on making light of any great difficulties or griefs that may beset us.