le do not want the book. There have as yet been no repeat orders
from libraries or booksellers. We can only face the fact and hope to
do better with the next. As you know, in my opinion the book was not
up to your usual high level."

"Who wants his damned opinion?" growled Hubert out loud, though alone,
and crumpled up the letter. Why, publishers weren't even critics!

As to these last, their unanimity for once was wonderful.

There are ingenious authors who amuse themselves by printing excerpts
from reviews of their last novel, alternately conflicting, thuswise;
"An able novel: _Tooting Sentinel_. Weak and formless: _Times_. An
arresting piece of work, whoever by: _Stafford News_. An amateur
affair: _Standard_;"--thinking in this manner to have blackened for
evermore the ancient art of Criticism in any decent-minded person's
eyes. They scarcely realise, poor injured souls, that the thing is an
Art. Were it but a machine, it doubtless would attain the same result
from each book, whether put before it by a Fleet Street expert or a
Stafford tyro. Because it is an Art, however, and all Art is merely
the expression of an individual emotion, it follows that each book must
react on every critic in a different way. These notices, so pompous
with _The Times_ or _Stafford News_ above them, are not worked out with
prayer by the whole paper's staff; they stand for one opinion, no
less--and no more--than the opinion of a woman-reader over the
tea-tray. Opinions, moreover, vary; praise to God! How fresh and
hopeful, what a message, seems this story to the un-read Staffordian;
how stale and hopeless, what an ancient dish, it appears to him of
Printing House Square, who has read more than he can hope ever to
forget!

And yet beneath it all there is a principle. Bad Of Its Sort is bad,
whatever sort one likes; which is all Plato's Ideas in a convenient
nutshell.

And every one agreed that _Was it Worth While?_ was bad of its sort.
It tried to be something it was not, and what can be more shocking?

Hubert, then, had an admirable chance of showing what effect a failure,
after some years of moderate success, had on his character; and took it
to the full. As the reviews came in, he grew more and more violent.
It was not many days before he countermanded all the extra papers, but
his faithful Press-Cutters sent in the notices religiously and he could
not help reading them. Helena would come down first (she always did)