old days, when an average Englishman, tried by some business worry,
would say, "Never mind, Thackeray's new book will be out to-morrow."
They stand, these three sets, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, the very
heart of one's library of fiction. Wearied by sex novels, problem
novels, theological novels, and all the other novels with a purpose,
one returns to the shelf and takes down a volume from this circle,
not because one has not read it, but because one has read it thirty
times and wishes for sheer pleasure's sake to read it again. Just as
a tired man throws off his dress coat and slips on an old study
jacket, so one lays down the latest thoughtful, or intense, or
something worse pseudo work of fiction, and is at ease with an old
gossip who is ever wise and cheery, who never preaches and yet gives
one a fillip of goodness. Among the masters one must give a foremost
place to Balzac, who strikes one as the master of the art in French
literature. It is amazing that in his own day he was not appreciated
at his full value, and that it was really left to time to discover
and vindicate his position. He is the true founder of the realistic
school in everything wherein that school deserves respect, and has
been loyal to art. He is also certain to maintain his hold and be an
example to writers after many modern realists have been utterly and
justly forgotten.

Two books from the shelf of fiction are taken down and read once a
year by a certain bookman from beginning to end, and in this matter
he is now in the position of a Mohammedan converted to Christianity,
who is advised by the missionary to choose one of his two wives to
have and to hold as a lawful spouse. When one has given his heart to
Henry Esmond and the Heart of Midlothian he is in a strait, and
begins to doubt the expediency of literary monogamy. Of course, if
it go by technique and finish, then Esmond has it, which from first