with every paper
in this country, it has learnt that the proper thing is to praise Mr.
Conrad's work. Not to appreciate Mr. Conrad's work at this time of day
would amount to bad form. There is a cliche in nearly every line of the
_Athenaeum_'s discriminating notice. "Mr. Conrad is not the kind of author
whose work one is content to meet only in fugitive form," etc. "Those who
appreciate fine craftsmanship in fiction," etc. But there is worse than
cliches. For example: "It is too studiously chiselled and hammered-out for
that." (God alone knows for what.) Imagine the effect of studiously
chiselling a work and then hammering it out! Useful process! I wonder the
_Athenaeum_ did not suggest that Mr. Conrad, having written a story, took
it to Brooklands to get it run over by a motor-car. Again: "His effects
are studiously wrought, _although_--such is his mastery of literary
art--they produce a swift and penetrating impression." Impossible not to
recall the weighty judgment of one of Stevenson's characters upon the
_Athenaeum_: "Golly, what a paper!"

* * * * *

The _Athenaeum_ further says: "His is not at all the impressionistic
method." Probably the impressionistic method is merely any method that the
_Athenaeum_ doesn't like. But one would ask: Has it ever read the opening
paragraph of "The Return," perhaps the most dazzling feat of impressionism
in modern English? The _Athenaeum_ says also: "Upon the whole, we do not
think the short story represents Mr. Conrad's true _metier_" It may be
that Mr. Conrad's true _metier_ was, after all, that of an auctioneer;
but, after "Youth," "To-morrow," "Typhoon," "Karain," "The End of the
Tether," and half a dozen other mere masterpieces, he may congratulate
himself on having made a fairly successful hobby of the short story. The
most extraordinary of all the _Athenaeum's_ remarks is this: "The one ship
story here, 'The Brute,' makes us regret that the author does not give us
more of the sea in his work." Well, considering that about two-thirds of
Mr. Conrad's work deals with the sea, considering that he has written
"Lord Jim," "The Nigger of the _Narcissus_" "Typhoon," "Nostromo," and
"The Mirror of the Sea," this regret shall be awarded the gold medal of
the silly season. If the _Athenaeum_ were a silly paper, like the
_Academy_, I should have kept an august silence on this ineptitude. But
the _Athenaeum_ has my respect. It ought to remember the respon