THE CLEAN LITERATURE.
“I might plead many things on behalf of romance, bnt will confine myself to one plea, taking Scott for my illustration —or Dickens, if you will. The worlds they drew were kindly worlds, if extravagant; worlds in which, as in the quieter worlds of .Tane Austen or Trollope, it was a privilege to live. They, as did Goldsmith and Fielding before them, took our span of life as companionable, humorous, on the whole making for good. Now'—to drive at practice—any clever fellow can pull faces at humanity and deride it, as anyone with little expense can invent mishaps and misunderstandings. A novelist who traffics with sex and suicidle, domestic bickerings and disillusions, is playing the very easiest game in the world. Any illiterate can make a ‘hit’ with such a theme, if his mind he the sort to descend to it. But to people a wide stage with characters at once good (as more are) and brave in patience or adventure — that is the artist’s test, as it seems to me. It means that in growing he has learnt to judge his fellow-sinners charitably and to help them, before he leaves a world of all sorts in which it has been worth while to live.”—"Q.” 1
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Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1929, Page 2
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209THE CLEAN LITERATURE. Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1929, Page 2
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