Doyle, Barrie, Caine, Locke,
Barker, Mrs. Ward, Beresford, Hewlett, Watson, Quiller-Couch--one and
all, high and low, they are tempted by the public demand for sophistry,
the ready market for pills. A Henry Bordeaux, in France, is an
exception; in England he is the rule. The endless thirst to be soothed
with cocksure asseverations, the great mob yearning to be dosed and
comforted, is the undoing, over there, of three imaginative talents out
of five.
And, in America, of nearly five out of five. Winston Churchill may serve
as an example. He is a literary workman of very decent skill; the native
critics speak of him with invariable respect; his standing within the
craft was shown when he was unanimously chosen first president of the
Authors' League of America. Examine his books in order. They proceed
steadily from studies of human character and destiny, the proper
business of the novelist, to mere outpourings of social and economic
panaceas, the proper business of leader writers, chautauquas
rabble-rousers and hedge politicians. "The Celebrity" and "Richard
Carvel," within their limits, are works of art; "The Inside of the Cup"
is no more than a compendium of paralogy, as silly and smattering as a
speech by William Jennings Bryan or a shocker by Jane Addams.
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