expensive names.  Other papers, daily and weekly, have also joined in the din and the fray.  As the discussion is perfectly futile, I do not propose to add to it.  In spite of the more or less violent expression of preferences, nobody really cares whether a novel is long or short.  In spite of the fact that a certain type of mind, common among publishers, is always apt to complain that novels at a given moment are either too long or too short, the length of a novel has no influence whatever on its success or failure.  One of the most successful novels of the present generation, “Ships that Pass in the Night,” is barely 60,000 words long.  One of the most successful novels of the present generation, “The Heavenly Twins,” is quite 200,000 words long.  Both were of the right length for the public.  As for the mid-Victorian novels, most of the correspondents appear to have a very vague idea of their length.  It is said they “exceed 200,000 words.”  It would be within the mark to say that they exceed 400,000 words.  There is not one of them, however, that would not be tremendously improved by being cut down to about half.  And even then the best of them would not compare with “The Mayor of Casterbridge” or “Nostromo” or “The Way of all Flesh.”  The damning fault of all mid-Victorian novels is that they are incurably ugly and sentimental.  Novelists had not yet discovered that the first business of a work of art is to be beautiful, and its second not to be sentimental.

ARTISTS AND MONEY

[6 Oct. ’10]

A month ago, apropos of the difficulties of running a high-class literary periodical, I wrote the following words:  “Idle to argue that genuine artists ought to be indifferent to money!  They are not.  And what is still more curious, they will seldom produce their best work unless they really do want money.”  This pronouncement came at an unfortunate moment, which was the very moment when Mr. Sampson happened to be denying, with a certain fine heat, the thesis of Lord Rosebery that poverty is good for poets.  Somebody even quoted me against Mr. Sampson in favour of Lord Rosebery.  This I much regret, and it has been on my mind ever since.  I do not wish to be impolite on the subject of Lord Rosebery.  He is an ageing man, probably exacerbated by the consciousness of failure.  At one time—­many years ago—­he had his hours of righteous enthusiasm.  And he has always upheld the banner of letters in a social sphere whose notorious proud stupidity has been immemorially blind to the true function of art in life.  But if any remark of Lord Rosebery’s at a public banquet could fairly be adduced in real support of an argument of mine, I should be disturbed.  And, fact, I heartily agreed with Mr. Sampson’s demolishment of Lord Rosebery’s speech about genius and poverty.  Lord Rosebery was talking nonsense, and as with all his faults he cannot be charged with the stupidity of his class, he must have known that he was talking nonsense.  The truth is that as the official mouthpiece of the nation he was merely trying to excuse, in an official perfunctory way, the inexcusable behaviour of the nation towards its artists.