He must make all these objections for himself as violently as possible: then, in reaction, thinking it over he will probably find that there is something in what I say. At any rate, he will have a sort of rudimentary map of the Kingdom of the Art of Letters in his mind. The old-fashioned maps had their advantages. Their cartographer left in his plans blank spaces in places where his enemies dwelt and labelled them: “Here be Crocodiles,” “Here be Stenches!” or “Anthropophagi! Avoid this Land!”--and that was useful because it told you what parts of the earth were pernicious to that type of Cartographer. So, if you were of his type, you avoided territories by him miscalled. On the other hand, if you disliked the sort of fellow that that map-maker was, you adventured into the territory labelled “of the Anthropophagi” to find it inhabited solely by sirens, into the Land of Stenches to find it distinguished by the most beneficent of chalybeate springs, or amongst the Crocodiles, who were charming people, ready at any moment to shed tears over your depleted pockets, your lost loves, or your rheumatic-gout! It is with a map of that sort that I am trying to provide you. No other sort is of the remotest value. Nor is it even possible, critics being human. I am looking at the last page of a Manual of English Literature compiled by a critic who takes himself and is taken very seriously indeed. I read: “_His work often decadent, appealing to senses; a pessimist. Lacks restraint; small variety in mood!_” Think of that as the last word--the very last word--of a Manual of English Literature for the use of the English Classes of the most numerically attended University in the Universe! Could I at my worst do worse? Or so badly! For that is that writer’s critical estimate--that is all that thirty thousand pupils of a State University are given as an appraisal of--Algernon Charles Swinburne! CHAPTER TWO TOWARDS DEFOE It is not part of my purpose--nor within the scope of a short manual would it be possible!--to trace the influence of the _Golden Ass_ or the _Satiricon_ on the course or development of the novel--and indeed their influences probably came into action so late that the effect was rather to give coloration to the pastiches of later writers like the late Mr. Walter Pater or the very much living Mr. Ezra Pound. It is the same, to all intents and purposes, with such mediaeval compilations of short-stories as the _Decameron_, the _Heptameron_ or the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_. The _Decameron_ must in particular have been as enormously read in the course of centuries as _Madame Bovary_, but, except for the _Heptameron_ and the rest of the works of that tradition, it can have led to no developments but merely to a few imitations such as the _Contes Drolatiques_ of Balzac.