he may be disgusted. But if he attends the first performance
he cannot fail to notice, after the first few minutes of it, that he was
quite mistaken, and that what the actors are performing is still another
play. The audience is collaborating.

PART IV

THE ARTIST AND THE
PUBLIC

I

I can divide all the imaginative writers I have ever met into two
classes--those who admitted and sometimes proclaimed loudly that they
desired popularity; and those who expressed a noble scorn or a gentle
contempt for popularity. The latter, however, always failed to conceal
their envy of popular authors, and this envy was a phenomenon whose
truculent bitterness could not be surpassed even in political or
religious life. And indeed, since (as I have held in a previous chapter)
the object of the artist is to share his emotions with others, it would
be strange if the normal artist spurned popularity in order to keep his
emotions as much as possible to himself. An enormous amount of dishonest
nonsense has been and will be written by uncreative critics, of course
in the higher interests of creative authors, about popularity and the
proper attitude of the artist thereto. But possibly the attitude of a
first-class artist himself may prove a more valuable guide.

The _Letters of George Meredith_ (of which the first volume is a
magnificent unfolding of the character of a great man) are full of
references to popularity, references overt and covert. Meredith could
never--and quite naturally--get away from the idea of popularity. He was
a student of the English public, and could occasionally be unjust to it.
Writing to M. Andre Raffalovich (who had sent him a letter of
appreciation) in November, 1881, he said: "I venture to judge by your
name that you are at most but half English. I can consequently believe
in the feeling you express for the work of an unpopular writer.
Otherwise one would incline to be sceptical, for the English are given
to practical jokes, and to stir up the vanity of authors who are
supposed to languish in the shade amuses them." A remark curiously
unfair to the small, faithful band of admirers which Meredith then had.
The whole letter, while warmly and touchingly grateful, is gloomy.
Further on in it he says: "Good work has a fair chance to be recognised
in the end, and if not, what does it matter?" But there is constant
proof that it did matter very much. In a letter to William Hardman,
written when he was well