“Break it up,” was the reply, “and make them talk. See, here’s a man called Fred. Make him talk to the first woman he meets—Susan, I see, you’ve called her—let him ask her how she is, and where she’s going, and whether it’s a fine day. Do this with every proper name you can find, and you’ll soon see the mass disintegrate and look promising for the printer’s hands.” I followed his advice, and (triumph of triumphs) the article was accepted. But I felt unhappy and disquieted even in my hour of success. The fact is, the plot of my story was a dream. Yes; it came straight to me at midnight from the god Oneiros himself, complete to the very smallest detail, and where was I to look for another? I very seldom dream at all, and never, before or afterwards, a complete story; and, as I can never originate a plot, my chances for the future are the reverse of promising. Yet I labour on with a persistency beyond all praise, and always during the night—a detrimental practice, involving great expenditure of candles and tissue. By daylight my ideas entirely evaporate, and I have abandoned the attempt as hopeless. The sight, too, of a fair blank sheet of paper makes my thoughts take wing on the instant. They can only be arrested on scraps of waste paper or (best of all) on the pages of a novel. It is said that the criticisms on Corelli are literally “given to the dogs.” But my revenge upon a dull novel is, I flatter myself, more recondite still. I punish a poor story by using it as the palimpsest for a poorer one. Hence the highest tribute I can pay to my heroes in literature is an unspoken (I mean an unwritten) one. I leave their pages immaculate. My mind might be teeming at midnight with the noblest of thoughts, yet I could not bring myself to record them, even in thought, upon the pages of “Quentin Durward,” “Esmond,” “Silas Marner,” the “Return of the Native,” or “Wuthering Heights.” Judging it for power alone—power that never flags from the first page to the last—I know of nothing that approaches “Wuthering Heights,” except the preface Charlotte Bronte wrote for it. Yet I never read the book without compassionating the authoress. The creation of a character like Heathcliff must have been one long struggle against herself, to be faced without flinching, as one of the penalties of genius. What her own choice would have been is shown by the relief with which she flings behind her the nightmare of the past to picture the hope and happiness of Earnshaw’s love. Her second book, if she had lived to write it, would certainly have been more genial; it could scarcely have been so great. * * * * * THE END * * * * * CAMBRIDGE PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER ALEXANDRA STREET