One of the most curious and depressing things about our modern literary criticism is the tendency it has to slide into an ethical criticism before we know what to expect. We go to a Browning Society, for example,--at least some of us who are stout-hearted go,--presumably to hear about Mr. Browning’s poetry. What we do hear about are his ethics. Insinuate a doubt as to the artistic setting of a poem, and you are met at once by the spirited counter-statement that the poet has taught us a particularly noble lesson in that particularly noble verse. Push your heresy a step further by hinting that the question at issue is not so much the nobility of the lesson taught as the degree of beauty which has been made manifest in the teaching, and you find yourself in much the same position as that unfortunate Epicurean who strayed wantonly into the lecture-hall of Epictetus, and got philosophically crushed for his presumption. The fiction of the day, a commonplace product for the most part, which surely merits lighter treatment at our hands, is subjected to a similar discipline; and the novelist, finding his own importance immensely increased thereby, rises promptly to the emergency, and, with characteristic diffidence, consents to be our guide, philosopher, and friend. It is amusing to hear Bishop Copleston, writing for that young and vivacious generation who knew not the seriousness of life, remind them pointedly that “the task of pleasing is at all times easier than that of instructing.” It is delightful to think that there ever was a period when people preferred to be pleased rather than instructed. It is refreshing to go back in spirit to those halcyon days when poets sang of their ladies’ eyebrows rather than of the inscrutable problems of fate, and when Mrs. Battle relaxed herself, after a game of whist, over that genial and unostentatious trifle called a novel. Fancy Mrs. Battle relaxing herself to-day over “Daniel Deronda,” or “The Ordeal of Richard Feveril,” or “The Story of an African Farm”!