' Why
are such distinctions drawn by the publisher? When he publishes, as he
sometimes does, a novel that is a book (or at any rate would be a book
if it were decently printed and bound) then by all means let him
proclaim its difference--even at the risk of scaring away the majority
of readers.
I admit that I myself might be found in that majority. I am shy of
masterpieces; nor is this merely because of the many times I have been
disappointed at not finding anything at all like what the publishers
expected me to find. As a matter of fact, those disappointments are
dim in my memory: it is long since I ceased to take publishers'
opinions as my guide. I trust now, for what I ought to read, to the
advice of a few highly literary friends. But so soon as I am told that
I `must' read this or that, and have replied that I instantly will, I
become strangely loth to do anything of the sort. And what I like
about books within books is that they never can prick my conscience.
It is extraordinarily comfortable that they don't exist.
And yet--for, even as Must implants distaste, so does Can't stir sweet
longings--how eagerly would I devour these books within books! What
fun, what a queer emotion, to fish out from a fourpenny-box, in a
windy by-street, WALTER LORRAINE, by ARTHUR PENDENNIS, or PASSION
FLOWERS, by ROSA BUNION! I suppose poor Rosa's muse, so fair and so
fervid in Rosa's day, would seem a trifle fatigued now; but what
allowances one would make! Lord Steyne said of WALTER LORRAINE that it
was `very clever and wicked.
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