"A novel," said the Publisher, "will bear ten times as much advertising as any other kind of book. This is a fact."
"A novel," said the Critic, "is the most highly developed type of literature. Therefore, it is the fittest to survive. This is a theory. And I should like——"
But the Critic did not share the Philosopher's long-speech prerogative. His audience was inclined to limit him to the time when he could be pungent.
The Business Man broke in upon him: "A novel is good because it is just plain reading—no theories or explanations—or at least, if there are any, you can skip them."
"Novels," said the Doctor of Divinity solemnly, "are valuable because they give an insight into life. I deprecate the vice of excessive novel-reading in young persons. But for myself I wish that there were more really interesting novels to read. Most of the old ones I have read already."
A smile flickered around the circle. "What do you call old?" asked the Cynic. "Have you read 'The Vulgarities of Antoinette'?"
"Nonsense," said the Publisher; "some novels grow as old in a twelvemonth as others do in a decade. A book is not really aged until it ceases to be advertised. 'The Celestial Triplets,' for example. But fortunately it is a poor year that does not produce at least three new novelists of distinction."
"For my part," said the True Story Teller, seated on her throne among the rocks and dispensing gentle influence like the silent sweetness of the summer afternoon, "for my part, I am not sure that fiction is the only kind of literature worth reading. Essays, biography, history and poetry still have their attractions for me. But what I should like to know is what made one kind of novel so popular yesterday, and what puts another kind in its place to-day, and what kind is likely to last forever? What gives certain novels their amazing vogue?"
"A new public," answered the Cynic. "Popular education has done it. Fifty years ago thinking and reading went together. But nowadays reading is the most familiar amusement of the thoughtless. It is the new public that buys four hundred thousand copies of a novel in a single year."
"A striking explanation," said the Critic, "but, you know, De Quincey said practically the same thing more than fifty years ago in his essay on Oliver Goldsmith. Yet the sale of 'The Prude of Pimlico' exceeds the sale of the leading novel of De Quincey's day by at least five hundred per cent. How do you explain that?"