CHAPTER XVII.
I AM INTRODUCED INTO SOCIETY.
Bolton and I were sitting, up to our ears in new books which had been accumulating for notice for days past, and which I was turning over and dipping into here and there with the jaded, half-disgusted air of a child worn out by the profusion of a Thanksgiving dinner.
"I feel perfectly savage," I said. "What a never-ending harvest of trash! Two, or at the most, three tolerable ideas, turned and twisted in some novel device, got up in large print, with wide margins—and, behold, a modern book! I would like to be a black frost and nip them all in a night!"
"Your dinner didn't agree with you, apparently," said Bolton, as he looked up from a new scientific work he was patiently analyzing, making careful notes along the margin; "however, turn those books over to Jim, who understands the hop, skip, and jump style of criticism. Jim has about a dozen or two of blank forms that only need the name of the book and publisher inserted, and the work is done."
"What a perfect farce," said I.
"The notices are as good as the books," said Bolton. "Something has to be said to satisfy the publishers and do the handsome thing by them; and the usual string of commendatory phrases and trite criticism, which mean nothing in particular, I presume imposes upon nobody. It is merely a form of announcing that such and such wares are in the market. I fancy they have very little influence on public opinion."
"But do you think," said I, "that there is any hope of a just school of book criticism—something that should be a real guide to buyers and readers, and a real instruction to writers?"