“How particularly sleek you look,” he said, scrutinising George’s face as the latter sat down.
“I feel sleek,” George answered with a slight laugh. “I believe that is what is the matter with the book I have been writing since I saw you. I am not satisfied with it, and I want your opinion. I sat up all last night to write the last chapter in my old den. I think it is better than the rest.”
“That is a pity. It will look like a new silk hat on a beggar—or like a wig on a soup-tureen, as the Frenchmen say. But I daresay you are quite wrong about the rest of it. You generally are. For a man who can write a good story in good English when he tries, you have as little confidence as I ever saw in any one. The public does not write books and does not know how they are written. It will never find out that you wrote the beginning in clover and the end in nettles.”
“Oh—the public!” exclaimed George. “One never knows what it will do.”
“One may guess, sometimes. The public consists of a vast collection of individuals collected in a crowd around the feet of four great beasts. There is the ignorant beast and the learned beast, the virtuous beast and the vicious beast. They are all four beasts in their way, because they all represent an immense accumulation of prejudice, in four different directions and having four different followings, all pulling different ways. You cannot possibly please them all and it is quite useless to try.”
“I suppose you mean that the four beasts are the four kinds of critics. Is that it?”
“No,” Johnson answered. “That is not it at all. If we critics had more real influence with the public, the public would be all the better for it. As it is, the real critic is dying out, because the public will not pay enough to keep him alive. It is sad, but I suppose it is natural. This is the age of free thought, and the phrase, if you interpret it as most people do, means that all men are to consider themselves critics, whether they know anything or not. Have you brought your manuscript with you?”
“No. I wanted to ask first whether you would read it.”
“You need not be so humble, now that you are a celebrity,” said Johnson with a laugh. “You do not look the part, either. What has happened to you?”
“I am going to be married,” George answered. “I am to marry my cousin, Miss Trimm.”