Volume VII - Modernist Magazines Project

134 Booksounce of civet, to sweeten our imagination. And all was quietand solemn araound ! *At the forty-first page I closed the Manxman^ and gave it tomy valet. It was as if for forty-one leaden minutes I had beenlistening to the speech of Emptiness incarnate ; but a pompousEmptiness, a rhetorical Emptiness, an Emptiness with the mannerof an Oracle and the accent of an Auctioneer : an Emptiness thatwould have lulled me to slumber if it hadn't sickened me. Iwonder how Mr. Hall Caine keeps awake as he writes.Nature abhors a vacuum, but the British Public, it wouldappear, loves an Emptiness. The Public, however, doesn't matter.The Great Heart of the People has warmed to bad literature inall ages and in all countries. The disgraceful thing is that inEngland bad literature is taken seriously by persons who profess tobe Critics. The critics of France don't take Monsieur GeorgesOhnet seriously ; the critics of Russia don't take Alexis GorlofFseriously; but the critics of England do take Mr. Hall Caineseriously. Well, it only shows what a little pretentiousness inthis ingenuous land will accomplish.The value of pretentiousness can scarcely be too highly commendedto young authors. If you are more desirous of impressingthe ignorant than of doing good work, if you would rather makethe multitude stare than make the remnant gaze—Be pretentious,and let who will be clever. A young author who appears to have* A friend assures me that if I had pursued my wanderings a littlefurther in Mr. Hall Caine's garden of prose, I might have culled stillfairer blossoms ; and gives as a specimen this, from page 141 : "Shemet him on the hill slope with a cry of joy, and kissed him. It cameinto his mind to draw away, but he could not, and he kissed her back."How quaint Manx customs are. In London he would almost certainlyhave kissed her lips.taken