Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/205

BEAU BEERBOHM " ZULBIKA DOBSON," by Max Beerbohm, is a novel for the worthy. Like it — and you are proved civilized. Dote on and adorate it — sleep with it beside your pillow — vow to sheathe it in vellum, slenderly tooled, and ensconce it on that supreme shelf where your copy of *'A H . . L . . L . . . ." (its predestined mate) has hitherto lorded it alone, and, no matter what your career may say to the contrary, nor whether other, coarser tests plough you, you may take it that you have passed with honours. But mislike it, even faintly — yawn only once, skip but a single page — or a single word on a page — or even one of the invisible couplings that unite word with word faultlessly throughout, and it must be said that, practically, you do not count. Nor would you deserve to. For one thing, Zuleika, though a novel, is actually written. A reward as well as a test, it is made in addition by that one fact a noble refutation. It clears our letters of a serious charge — taking all the sting out of that taunt which a certain savage caricaturist, called Max, once let fly at our faithful English fiction. His drawing will be remembered. Gazing blankly at our special line of novelists, each mounted briskly on his little tub, came the ghost of R. L. S., courteously guided by Mr. Edmund Gosse ; and " Yes, yes," it was saying as it eyed the heated row, "but where are your Men of Letters?" That drawing will have to be revised now ; and in the new edition Mr. Gosse 179