Curiously enough, the case is very much the same with the second example given in the same criticism. I have forgotten most of the little Latin poetry I knew; but I shall not easily forget that beautiful strain of music in the Descende Coelo, which is rendered here

  ‘Hearest thou? Or does a lovely hallucination

  Beguile me? I think I hear thee and

  Go straying through the haunted groves.’

  But it seems to me quite arbitrary and fanciful to say that Keats was thinking of this because he wrote the two lines

  ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

  Fled is that music: — Do I wake or sleep?’

  What is the good of being a poet, if you are not allowed to ask, all by yourself, whether you have had a vision or a waking dream? What are poets for, except to go about asking everybody whether they wake or sleep? I should imagine that this sort of dreamy doubt could be paralleled in scores and hundreds of poems; it is the obvious poetical comment on any deep or mystifying experience. What is the poor poet to do, if he is not even permitted to say that some wonderful thing was like a dream, without being convicted of having sneaked it out of an old school-book, of the works of Quintus Horatius Flaccus? It seems to me that, before we look for a poet’s reasons in somebody’s else poem, we might naturally ask whether there are already any reasons in his own poem. Surely anybody must feel that the Ode to a Nightingale, by its own life and logic, was bound to end with that suggestion of a man waking from a trance, bemused and bewildered. I do not doubt that Horace had experienced much the same sensations after straying through the haunted groves of Italy as Keats had experienced in the woods about Burford. Poets do very often have these queer fits; and there is, of course, some similarity between them; which is why they can be described by the same name of poetry. But beyond the broad brotherhood of the poets, I cannot see any particular coincidence in these two cases. Nor, indeed, do I think the two emotions described here are exactly identical; though they are certainly less wide apart than the impersonal crumbling of time and the crowd of hungry human beings. But to draw a fine distinction between the two would undoubtedly be a delicate verbal exercise; and I do not propose to attempt it here. I am dealing here entirely in terms of common sense; and it seems to me common sense to leave original poets alone with their original ideas, and not strain logic and language to cracking in order to prove that they are not original. When I say I do not like poetical parallels, I do not mean that I dislike poetical comparisons. Some critical profit might be gained by comparing Keats and Horace, and noting the differences between their two ways of dealing with superficially similar ideas. But to see the similarities, without seeing the differences, seems to me a dangerous game.

  It is especially dangerous, because behind that covert of coincidence there crouches that monster, the Baconian. By the Baconian I do not merely mean a man who thinks Bacon wrote Shakespeare, as some quite intelligent men have thought. I mean the sort of man who goes mad on Bacon and uses the mad arguments that many Baconians have used. I mean the man who searches Bacon’s Essays for some mention of the sun in connexion with the moon; and then searches Shakespeare’s Plays, triumphantly producing an allusion to the moon in actual conjunction with the sun. I mean the man who will not let Shakespeare call roses red or lilies white, without pouncing on the fact that somebody else had made the same botanical discovery. I mean the man who is proud of the quantity of his parallel quotations, and apparently indifferent to their quality. In short, I object not only to the loss of proportion but of that general sense of probability which is so considerable a part of sanity. We have to consider not only what is improbable, but what is probable; and especially the coincidences that are overwhelmingly probable. And when I see these things neglected by a good writer in a good review, I venture to raise a mild protest.

  V. On a Censorship for Literature

  T HE recurring discussion about a Censorship for Literature or the Arts is a good example of the extreme difficulty in these days of discussing anything. Nobody seems to know where to begin. Nobody seems able to distinguish between one thing and another. For instance, to take a minor point, it is one thing to believe in A Censor and quite another thing to believe in The Censor. If I had to have my books censored, I would much rather they were censored by the Spanish Inquisition than by the British Home Office. The Spanish Inquisition was not an institution that I specially admire, but it did act on some intelligent principles; I know what the principles were and I agree with a great many of them. As to the principles of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, my difficulty is threefold. Not only do I not agree with them, but I do not know what they are. Not only do I not know what they are, but I am sure that he does not know what they are.

  To begin with, supposing that the Censorship deals only with sexual decorum (which is generally far from being the case), there are at least three totally distinct things that are now generally discussed under that head. First, there is the preaching or propagating of some theory about sex considered anti-social or anarchical. Second, there is a certain sort of descriptive writing likely to excite appetites that may be anti-social or anarchical. Third, there is the use of certain terms, often merely old-fashioned, for things which later convention covers in some other way. I can understand a man wanting none of these things censored. I can understand him wanting all of these things censored. I can understand him wanting some censored and not others. But, anyhow, they have nothing to do with each other. No two of them need be found together in the same sentence or the same book. A man could preach sexual anarchy in language as cold as that of an astronomical treatise, and about as seductive as a page of Bradshaw. A man could describe sensual things with an unscrupulous appeal to the senses, without preaching any theory at all and without using any coarse words at all. Lastly, a man might use all the coarse words in Rabelais and make the theme rather repulsive than attractive. He might use all the coarse words in the Bible and be every bit as moral as the Bible, or even as Puritan as the grimmest expositor of the Bible.

  One would think that the very first thing that anybody discussing the question would realize would be the distinction between these three tests. But, if we read a column in a newspaper, or a page in a popular book, professing to deal with the problem, we generally find them all mixed up together, whether the writer is denouncing the mixture or defending the mixture. The truth is that in this matter most people’s moral ideas are now already mixed. To take the first section in order to suppress false doctrine, we must have a definition of true doctrine. And very few people now know exactly what doctrine is true, even if they feel a great many current ones are false. For the second, it is, after all, a moral doctrine which declares that mere appeals to mere appetites are wrong. It is a moral doctrine most decent people vaguely feel, but now a little too vaguely to be applied vigilantly. But, of these first two divisions, I may be allowed to add that they do emphatically involve immortal and unalterable truth. The fact that a chaotic and ill-educated time cannot clearly grasp that truth does not alter the fact that it always will be the truth.

  There is a right relation of the sexes; there is a right rule about it; and there is a wrong appeal calculated to encourage a wrong relation. But of the third thing it is not so. It is worth remarking that this third section, of the mere use of words, is the only one of which the modern talk is true. Of this it is true to say that it is only a question of convention, of custom, of different periods of history, of different stages of progress. It was not as gross of Shakespeare to use a certain word in a playhouse as it would have been gross of Dickens to use it in a drawing-room. But it would be just as wrong for Shakespeare to neglect his wife as for Dickens to neglect his wife. I am not here raising the delicate controversy about whether either of these authors did neglect his wife. The point is that if they did they were wrong; and I will wager that they knew they were wrong; for they were traditional Christian men. The notion that, because language can change, therefore life and love can change, is one of the many muddles of a thoroughly muddled mind. We might as well say that because Shakespeare had trunkhose and Dickens bad trousers, it is but natural that the next great English author should have three legs.

  So long as the modern world plays with the preposterous idea that everything changes with the fashion, it is useless for it to attempt to control the changes in anything so fanciful as fiction. People will pursue the moment that is just passing; but they will not be persecuted for the moment that has just passed. You may send a man to prison for five years for writing a silly book, if you can say to him, ‘If you were in prison for five hundred years, it would still be a silly book.’ But you cannot say to a man, ‘If you had waited fifteen years, this sort of book might have been fashionable; but, as it is, I send you to prison in the interval for being in advance of your age.’ That sort of persecution will never have any effect; for it combines injustice with indifference. It is at once an undeserved condemnation and an undeserved compliment. The fanatics of the past are sometimes blamed because they played the tyrant while appealing to eternal truth. But it is far more intolerable to play the tyrant while not appealing to eternal truth. It is most intolerable of all to play the tyrant while appealing only to temporary fiction. Nobody can be expected to stand the Inquisitor who says, ‘I am burning you alive for what you said to-day, and what I shall probably think to-morrow.’ And that is the tone of nearly all the tentative repressions and remonstrances of our time.

  The plain truth is that modern society must have a morality before it can have a censor of morals. I should say that it must have a religion before it can have a morality. But that is another question which I should not discuss fully here. Anyhow, the trouble is that people are making a fuss about unreal romances when they ought to be making a fuss about real life. It is a case of taking care of the facts and the fictions will take care of themselves. If we cleanse the community, the community will cleanse its poetry and its prose. But it is absurd to expect that people who do not respect their own promises, made at their own weddings, will be horrified because every novel does not end in a Victorian manner with wedding-bells. It is ridiculous to expect that people will be stung to fury by the behaviour of Joan in Green Pyjamas or Peter in Cocktail-Time, when they have managed to get reconciled to it in their own daughters or sons-in-law. I do not mean, of course, that all our family life is like that. Nor is all our fiction like that. But many who demand a Censorship are really demanding that we should tolerate in life what we will not tolerate in literature.

  VI. On Detective Story Writers

  T HE very first words of the story of Trent’s Last Case ought to tell any intelligent and traditional person that the whole mind of the writer moves on a higher level than the ordinary murder story. Without making any parade of being more than a story-teller, he is a story-teller understanding style and distinction and the deeper philosophy that is never a fad or an ism; and, above all, understanding that weight and movement of words, in which style and distinction and philosophy and experience are one. For the very first words of this detective story, written to be read in a railway train, are, ‘Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?’ I hope I may be excused if I find an interesting illustration of this very question in the public advertisements, and even the literary tributes at the back of the book. For among those who have expressed their enthusiastic thanks to Mr. Bentley for writing a real detective story that was also a real book, are some of the very finest specialists in the department of the crime novel, and also some of the first minds in the domain of general thought and culture. On the one hand, they include real experts in the scientific and exact treatment of such police problems, like Mr. R. Austin Freeman and Mr. Freeman Wills Crofts. On the other hand, they include men brilliant and distinguished in totally different fields of serious speculation and controversy, like Father Ronald Knox, and Mr. G. D. H. Cole. Last, but the very reverse of least, they include those writers, rather especially lady writers, who, without any special show of specialism, have written quite perfectly constructed crime stories that are also entertaining comedies; notably Mrs. Agatha Christie and Miss Dorothy Sayers.

  In addition to these authorities it would be easy, to my personal knowledge, to quote dozens of famous writers and thinkers, dons and doctors and diplomatists and poets of the most classical turn, who have put this book along with The Wallet of Kai Lung or The Diary of a Nobody in the small and secret shelf of the Best Books. To mention only at random two of my friends, who will not resent the revelation: Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who never reads detective stories, admires this one; and Mr. Maurice Baring, who reads all the detective stories that can be had for love or money, admires this one most of all. All this being so, I cannot but be interested in one small detail of the ceremonial embassy of thanks to Mr. Bentley; I mean the fact that the first name that gets announced of all that mission and printed on top of all such names, is the name of Mr. Edgar Wallace; and that Mr. Edgar Wallace alone is thought worthy to have his proclamation printed in large letters on the occasion. Evidently, it is his compliment alone that really counts ‘Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?

  God forbid that I or anybody else should speak, ungratefully or ungraciously of Mr. Edgar Wallace. I have enjoyed hundreds of his stories and hope to enjoy hundreds more; and it seems quite likely that I shall continue to have the chance of such enjoyment. To despise such stories is of all things the most despicable. It is like despising pantomimes or public-houses or comic songs or common enjoyments of every kind that bind us into the brotherhood of man. And when we are dealing with popular literature of this sound and lively sort it is very ungracious to complain of the amazing multiplicity of the output which a man like Mr. Wallace manages to achieve. It is like complaining that a really good alehouse provides too much ale; which would seem not only a blasphemy but almost a contradiction in terms. It is like complaining that a really good popular singer can sing too many different songs; a complaint that is entirely a compliment. It is unreasonable to abuse Mr. Wallace for having entertained and excited us too much. It is ungenerous to resent generosity. It may well be a pleasure to have given pleasure to so many; and it ought to be a pleasure for them to acknowledge it.

  But when all this is acknowledged, there remains a rational proportion in these things; and the selection of Mr. Edgar Wallace, out of all the other authorities, as if he were the one person who really matters, is not rational. There is no possible reason for it, except a vulgar reason connected with mere size or noise or notoriety or mass-production. The satire called Reunion All Round is a thing that matters and will continue to matter; it may matter to our descendants a hundred years hence as the satire called Gulliver’s Travels matters to us. It is amusing and it is meant to amuse; but it is not only meant to kill time, but to kill trash and falsehood. I am glad to note that Miss Dorothy Sayers, who is one of those who do write murder stories as if they could write something else, tests her admiration of Mr. Bentley’s book in this fashion, and says: ‘It is the one detective story of the present century which I am certain will go down to posterity as a classic. It is a masterpiece.’ A masterpiece is a thing that matters; and a man cannot produce, and probably does not pretend to produce, masterpieces or things that matter, to be sold by the million or poured out in a perpetual stream. Thus a man like Father Ronald Knox, the author of Reunion All Round, in giving the laurel to a literary work, is dealing with something on his own level, and may be storing up something to be remembered; as we remember the decent pride of Pope in the compliment of his contemporaries:

  ‘And Congreve loved and Swift endured my lays.’

  It is the same, of course, with the tributes or contributions of other serious writers to sensational romance. The general movement called Guild Socialism may matter very much a hundred years hence; at any rate, it matters now; and a man who has expounded it with the economic clarity and close ness of Mr. Cole certainly matters now. The solid, detailed, scientific argument of Dr. Thorndyke, in the romances of Mr. Austin Freeman, matters now; and may quite probably continue to matter. In that sense, pelting the world with a prodigious number of quite readable sensational romances does not matter; and most probably is not meant to matter. As a matter of fact, there is one section of Mr. Edgar Wallace’s work, some of his sketches about South Africa, that really is of a more solid and intrinsically valuable type. Perhaps he was a better writer before he was a best-seller, like Sir Hall Caine; perhaps he described real Kaffirs better than unreal Chinamen, just as Sir Hall Caine was so much better when he was confined to the Isle of Man, and not let loose on the Universe of Man.