tion of printing. This great and admirable writer had
one constant fault, which is so vulgar and trivial that it remains
as much of a wonder as it is of an offence. He seeks emphasis by the
expedient of big type and small type, of capitals and small capitals,
of italics and black letter, and of tawdry little illustrations. Long
before the reader arrives at the point at which it is intended that his
emotions shall be stirred, his eye warns him that the shock is coming.
He knows beforehand that the rhetorical bolt is to fall just there, and
when it comes it is ten to one that he finds the effect disappointing.
Or the change from the uniformity of the page draws his eye to the
'displayed' passages, and he is tantalised into reading them out of
their proper place and order. Take, for instance, an example which just
occurs to me. In 'It is Never Too Late to Mend,' Fielding and Robinson
are lost in an Australian forest--'bushed,' as the local phrase goes. At
that hour they are being hunted for their lives. They fall into a sort
of devil's circle, and, as lost men have often done, they come in the
course of their wanderings upon their own trail. For awhile they follow
it in the hope that it will lead them to some camp or settlement.
Suddenly Fielding becomes aware that they are following the track of
their own earlier footprints, and almost in the same breath he discovers
that these are joined by the traces of other feet. He reads a fatal and
true meaning into this sign, looks to his weapons, and starts off at a
mended pace. 'What are you doing?' asks Robinson, and Fielding answers
(in capital letters): 'I am hunting the hunters!' The situation is
admirably dramatic. Chance has so ordered it that the pursued are
actually behind the pursuers, and the presence of the intended murderers
is proclaimed by a device which is at once simple, natural, novel, and
surprising. All the elements for success in thrilling narrative are
here, and the style never lulls for a second, or for a second allows
the strain of the position to relax. But those capital letters have
long since called the eye of the reader to themselves, and the point the
writer tries to emphasise is doubly lost. It has been forestalled, and
has become an irritation. You come on it twice; you have been robbed of
anticipation and suspense, which, just here, are the life and soul of
art. You know before you ought to be allowed to guess; and, worst of
all, perhaps, you feel tha