After some preliminary observations on the deplorable condition of the pulp industry, Mr. Blinkingham unfolded his colossal scheme. "By way of preface," remarked the great literary _impresario_, "let me call your attention to the momentous statement made by the Editor of _The Athenæum_ in the issue of May 7th: 'We doubt whether there has ever been a generation of men of letters so startlingly uneducated as this, so little interested in the study of the great writers before them.' The Editor of _The Athenæum_ takes a most gloomy view of the situation, which is fraught with an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion inimical to a revival of criticism. Yet he sees in such a revival the only way of salvation, the only means of healing the internecine feud which is now convulsing the young literary world. "For my own part I am convinced that a better way is to lure back the modernists to a study of great writers by presenting them in a more palatable form, not by compressing or abridging them--for that has been tried before--but by having them re-written in conformity with present-day standards by eminent contemporary writers. This notion had been germinating in my head for some time past, but I did not see my way clear until I read the luminous and epoch-making remark of Mr. C. K. SHORTER, that he would sooner have written _Tom Jones_ than any book published these two hundred years. In a moment, in a flash, my scheme took shape. 'He shall write it, or rather re-write it,' I said to myself, and I have already submitted to this eminent man of letters my rough _scenario_ of the lines on which FIELDING'S novel should be brought home to the Georgian mind. In reply he has made a counter-suggestion that the characters should be rearranged on a Victorian basis, CHARLOTTE BRONTË replacing _Sophia_, THACKERAY _Mr. Allworthy_, while the title-rôle should be assigned to an enterprising publisher. But I am not without hope that he will adopt my plan. "The revival of interest in the works of RICHARDSON, the other great eighteenth-century novelist, is, I think I may safely say, a foregone conclusion. Miss DOROTHY RICHARDSON has enthusiastically welcomed the proposition that she should reconstruct the romances of her illustrious namesake, and confidently expects, on the basis of the method employed by her in _The Tunnel_, that she will be able to excavate at least a hundred volumes from the materials supplied in _Sir Charles Grandison_ and _Clarissa Harlowe_.