house of individuality
from which, if we reject the nursery hypotheses mentioned above, it
is clearly obvious that authors derive their works. That the drama
must needs be closely related to the dramatist is just one of those
simple discoveries that invariably elude the subtle professional
mind; but in this wiser hour I may be permitted to assume that the
author was the conscious father of his novel, and that he did not
find it surprisingly in his pocket one morning, like a bad shilling
taken in change from the cabman overnight.

Before he published his novel at the ripe age of thirty-seven the
author had lived an irreproachable and gentlemanly life. Born with at
least a German-silver spoon in his mouth, he passed, after a normally
eventful childhood, through a respectable public school, and spent
several agreeable years at Cambridge without taking a degree. He then
went into his uncle's office in the City, where he idled daily from
ten to four, till in due course he was admitted to a partnership,
which enabled him to reduce his hours of idleness to eleven to three.
These details become important when we reflect that from his
childhood on the author had a great deal of time at his disposal. If
he had been entirely normal, he would have accepted the conventions
of the society to which he belonged, and devoted himself to motoring,
bridge, and the encouragement of the lighter drama. But some
deep-rooted habit of his childhood, or even perhaps some remote
hereditary taint, led him to spend an appreciable fraction of his
leisure time in the reading of works of fiction. Unlike most lovers
of light literature, he read with a certain mental concentration, and
was broad-minded enough to read good novels as well as bad ones.

It is a pleasant fact that it is impossible to concentrate one's mind
on anything without in time becoming wiser, and in the course of
years the author became quite a skilful critic of novels. From the
first he had allowed his reading to colour his impressions of life,
and had obediently lived in a world of blacks and whites, of heroes
and heroines, of villains and adventuresses, until the grateful
discovery of the realistic school of fiction permitted him to believe
that men and women were for the most part neither good nor bad, but
tabby. Moreover, the leisurely reading of many sentences had given
him some understanding of the elements of style. He perceived that
some combinations of words were illogical