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Show NOTIONS ABOUT NOVELS is the only kind of literature worth reading. Essays, b.I Ograp h y, histo-rv. and poetry still have their at-tractions for me. But what I should like to know is what made one kind of novel so popular yesterday, and what puts another kind in its place to-day, and what kind is likely to last forever? What gives certain novels their amazing vogue?" "A new public," answered the Cynic. "Popular education has done it. Fifty years ago thinking and reading went together. But nowadays reading is the most familiar amusement of the thoughtless. It is the new public that buys four hundred thousand copies of a novel in a single year." "A striking explanation," said the Critic, "but, you know, De Quinccy said practically the same thin" more than fifty years ago in his essay on Oliver Gol~smith. Yet the sale of 'The Prude of Pimlico' exceeds the sale of the leading novel of De Quincey's day by at least five hundred per cent. How do you explain that?" "Very simply," said the Cynic. "A thousand per centum increase in the new public; stock of intelligence still more freely watered." !l26 NOTIONS ABOUT NOVELS "But you are not answering my question about the different kinds of novels," said the lady. "Tell me why the types of fiction change." "Fashion, dear lady," replied the Cynic. "It is like tight sleeves and loose sleeves. People feel comfortable when they wear what everybody is wearing and read what everybody is reading. The art of modern advertising is an appeal to the instinct of imitation. Our friend the Publisher has become a millionaire by discovering that the same law governs the sale of books and of dry-goods." "Not at all," interrupted the Critic; "your explanation is too crude for satire and too shallow for science. There is a regular evolution in fiction. First comes the external type, the novel of plot; then the internal type, the novel of character; then the social type, the novel of problem and purpose. The development proceeds from outward to inward, from objective to subjective, from simplicity to complc: rity." "But," said the lady, "if I remember rightly, the facts happened the other way. 'Pamela' and 'Joseph Andrews' and 'Caleb Williams' are character 227 |