PUBLISHER: "My dear Miss Fitzmorse, you must remember that we've paid you a large price for your book, and brought it out at great expense--and we naturally wish to sell it!"] These views are somewhat difficult to reconcile with those expressed in other parts of the paper about the same time. An eminent conductor and composer has recently stated that no noise which is deliberately made can be said to be ugly--e.g. a railway whistle or a boy whistling in the street. So in letters a similar creed had already come into fashion--any subject was fit for treatment if it was "arresting" or "elemental," a doctrine that _Punch_ outside his "Booking Office" found it hard to swallow. In "The Qualities that Count" one of his writers applied this principle to the poetry and letters of the hour:-- If you're anxious to acquire a reputation For enlightened and emancipated views, You must hold it as a duty to discard the cult of Beauty, And discourage all endeavours to amuse. You must back the man who, obloquy enduring, Subconsciousness determines to express, Who in short is "elemental," "unalluring," But "arresting" in his Art--or in his dress. Or is your cup habitually brimming With water from the Heliconian fount? Then remember the hubristic, the profane, the pugilistic, Are the only things in poetry that count. So select a tragic argument, ensuring The maximum expenditure of gore, And the epithets "arresting," "unalluring," "Elemental" will re-echo as before. But if your bent propels you into fiction, You should clearly and completely understand That your duty in a novel is not to soar, but grovel, If you want it to be profitably banned. So be lavish and effusive in suggesting A malignant and mephitic atmosphere, And you're sure to be applauded as "arresting," "Elemental," "unalluring," and "sincere." [Sidenote: _Mr. Gosse and the Georgian Poets_]