into it more
closely. With results.

There is a question of bulk and output. This is appalling to a
laborious writer, a student or a thinker. Week by week there pours
forth an unending deluge of love fiction, and week by week this deluge
is absorbed into the systems of millions of human beings. We speak
glibly of the world-wide fame of some classic, when, in point of fact,
the people familiar with that classic are isolated specks in the vast,
solid mass to whom some novelettist is a household god. The classic
will have, say, one votary in the family, the novelettist will capture
the family _en bloc_. An engineer will receive a cargo of novelettes,
all of which have been digested, or even feverishly devoured, by his
mother, wife, or sisters. He will pass them on to the Steward, who
will read them and give them to the sailors and firemen. And this
obtains in every ship wherever the English language is spoken. What
classic can claim a public that does not seem microscopic compared to
this?

I cannot but observe, too, that Miss Anonyme often writes exceedingly
well. No extraneous vapourings are admitted, and the plot is steadily
developed to its inevitable conclusion of "happy ever after." The
metaphors are somewhat stereotyped, and quotations from Tennyson are
awkwardly handled, but--what would you for a penny? Johnson's
explanation--that they write well in order to be paid well--is
correct. Miss Anonyme knows her "market," and she writes for it as
well as can be expected under the circumstances.

A point worth noting is that this talk about "pernicious literature"
is not sincere. Literature cannot be pernicious in itself. At the
present time people can get exactly what they desire, because the
question of price does not arise. The finest works are to be had at
every free library, and for a few pence at every book-shop, and the
public carefully avoids them. Novels containing chapter after chapter
of neurotic aphrodisiacs and pornography masquerading as literature
are priced at "a shilling net," and are avidly purchased and read by
the simple, God-fearing, sea-faring man.

There is, of course, a tragic side to this question. I mean that,
after all, a sublime simplicity of mind is a necessary predicate to
the acceptance of this "cheap" fiction. "_A penn'orth o' loove_,"
George the Fourth calls a novelette, and there's something very grim
to me in that phrase also.

I have already noted the "passionate love of music" i