There are those who, after enjoying the first two books, have complained rather bitterly of the succeeding ones. One charge against Proust seems to be that he deals more than is necessary with what are called “unpleasant” subjects and people; another is clearly, though not usually put into so few words, that he is a snob. As regards the first charge, it is true that Proust, like most French writers, is apt to claim with Terence, _Humani nihil a me alienum puto_; to urge that he is ever coarse, that he is ever anything, in fact, but extremely discriminating in his touch, is, as a matter of fact, absurd. But the other charge is more valuable because, while mistaken, it does emphasise a side of Proust’s interests in life which is of some considerable significance. It is true that Proust is extremely interested not only in individuals but in those extensions of personality which are classes, cliques, bodies of men and women, which, however formed, by coming together succeed in developing a sort of communal outlook upon life. It is true also that a good deal of the book is occupied with two of these classes in particular, both of them rich, the aristocracy and the pushing _bourgeoisie_ that likes to employ the artist and the intellectual as “stepping-stones from their dead selves to higher things.” But to call this interest snobbery is, surely, a sign of rather careless reading. It is to assume that the _naïveté_ of the young man’s first adoration of the old families of France, long before he had learnt to know them, is, in fact, the attitude of Proust himself. Even in the case of the young man snobbery seems a hard term for his actual state of mind.