In fact I now recall that I once, regretfully, compiled my choice of the world's ten worst writers. Regretfully, I say, because I suspected that about every author in my list I was, in all likelihood, entirely wrong. For I found that, somehow, I had listed only such writers as possessed their recognized "cults" of perfervid admirers, and such writers as a respectable lapse of time had attested--perhaps--really to make some sort of mysterious appeal to a largish number of persons. One might of course, in private, assume that æsthetically these persons bemuse themselves with notions of their own superiority and refinement. Such anæsthetic notions still enable self-complacency to pull through many pages that are perused with rather less admiration of the author than of the reader,--although, for that matter, the majority of generally acknowledged and most permanent literary reputations would seem to be based upon some similar innocuous self-deceit. Here, in any event, are the ten "established" authors endowed with "cults" whose masterpieces once appeared to me the most violently uninteresting and ill written: Jane Austen, George Borrow, Miguel de Cervantes, Henry James, Herman Melville, George Meredith, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Love Peacock, François Rabelais, and Walt Whitman. I submitted this list without any comment save that I had made all suitable endeavors toward Melville since 1907: the antipathy was not new-born, among the bleated idiocies of his later ovine, or more robustiously arietin, admirers. And upon consideration, Peacock, I admitted, had not ever annoyed me with the relentless and deep tediousness of the others: and I for a moment inclined to strike out his name in disfavor of Marcel Proust or of James G. Huneker or of W.H. Hudson, who were at the time regarded vociferously; but refrained because that week's pother about any of these three might, after all, very well and speedily prove transient. The ten I named, though, seemed actually established in one or another sort of enduringness,--which was, to me, a fact that roused wonder not unmingled with regret. For there really must be something of enjoyment deep-hidden in the writings of these appalling persons. And, naturally, one dislikes to miss it. § 85 I repeat all this because to-day, upon reflection, and upon the strength of these Realistic Novels, I somewhat incline to substitute for the name of Thomas Love Peacock the name George Moore. The reputations of Mr. Moore and of Ananias, in fact, as masters of fictitious narrative, stand high above almost equally slender pediments; with no proof anywhere existent that Ananias even attempted the difficult art wherein Mr. Moore has certainly never succeeded. I am now about to speak with all possible moderation. For I very cordially admire the talent of Mr. Moore. That is one of the reasons why I must regret its occultation in these Realistic Novels.