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12 FOREWORD
perhaps
the best novelist alive. A first-rate
unconventional work of art is not a straw
better than a conventional one, and to become
slightly light-headed about either is not only
permissible but seemly. Nevertheless, to go
silly over a mediocre innovation is far more
excusable than to be taken in by its equivalent
in a familiar style. While to rave about
Messrs. Wells, Moore and Galsworthy seems to
me shocking. Surely there can be no difficulty
about treating these writers as ordinary citizens
of the Republic of Letters a state, let us try
to remember, that not only extends in space
beyond the horizons of Tooting but in time
the Edwardian and even the Victorian
beyond
era.
A critic, I submit, should judge a work of
art, not in relation to the age and circumstances
in which it was produced, but by an absolute
standard based on the whole corpus of that art
to which the particular work belongs. We do
not want to hear how good " Tono-Bungay "
seems by comparison with Mrs. Ward's last
production. Marvellous, no doubt : so, no
doubt, are Mrs. Ward's intellectual gifts by
comparison with those of a walrus. But we
want to have Mrs. Ward judged as a specimen
of Humanity and " Tono-Bungay "
as a
specimen of Literature. It must be tried by
the standards we try " Tristram Shandy " and