present these qualities as existing impersonally--howsoever general in "writing" may be this insane practise,--is to present (here again) an existence which is inconceivable. But, passing over these grave common imbecilities, it does seem to be somebody's duty to protest against the equally grave and common delusion that Mr. Moore, even in these Realistic Novels, is "a master of English prose." The assertion is as a rule advanced, I suspect, by ordinarily well-balanced persons who have just seen or heard Mr. Joseph Conrad described as "a master of English prose," and have not utterly recovered: the prose of Mr. Moore, in any event,--not here, but in his embellished romancing about himself,--one may very often grant to be adequate. Yet Mr. Moore's vocabulary is far from adequate, for anyone who seeks distinction in an art of which the masters are omniverbarious. Here, too, variety appears a grace unthought-of; and his employment (in these Realistic Novels) of the ready-made, time-battered phrase amounts--where his clichés do not, indeed, effuse a perturbing aspect of feeble-mindedness,--to mere wallowing in the slovenly. I am still speaking with all possible moderation, as to a man whose writing, in his major performances, I admire. And yet I fear that what I have just said may sound overstated.... Well, I open the revised and final version of _A Mummer's Wife_, as it chances, at page 220; and Mr. Moore there tells me, "A word sufficed to set the whole gang recounting experiences and comparing notes." I turn to page 229, and, still avoiding dialogue, I find Mr. Moore in the rôle of narrator averring, "At the end of the act she received an ovation." Hastily I proceed to page 236, where Mr. Moore philosophises,--"As is generally the case, there was right upon both sides." Even then do I afford him another chance; I go on to the next chapter, which, upon page 245, I discover to begin, "It never rains but it pours." And thereupon I close the book: for really nobody, no matter how widely he be acclaimed a master of vigorous and delightful prose, is privileged to talk with me in just that flat and meagre tone.... If, for the rest, you have an hour to waste, not quite unedifyingly, you might compare almost any one of the earlier versions of Mr. Moore's more ambitious passages with its replacer in the Carra Edition, and marvel over his faith in the stylistic thaumaturgy wrought by interjecting the word "and." And so will it become apparent to you that the haven of the artist's dream and the unfalteringly sought ideal of "revising" is not utterly inaccessible, and can be won to by and by, through steadily adhering to this bland and magic monosyllable, and by employing it to link each sentence in the book with the sentence which precedes it and with the sentence which follows it, and so to connect all the sentences into one single and sliding and ever slipping forward sentence, and languidly