my mother to the Sheers ale-house in Maypole Alley, near Clare Market, and with her drank three quarterns of brandy; and after leaving her I drank in one place or another about that neighbourhood all the evening, till the evil hour of twelve, having been seen and known by many of my acquaintance; all of them cautioning me, and wondering at my presumption to appear in that manner. At length my senses were quite overcome with the quantities and variety of liquors I had all the day been drinking of, which paved the way for my fate to meet me; and when apprehended, I do protest, I was altogether incapable of resisting.

Match-sellers and muffin-men, singers and fiddlers, quacks and rogues, vagrants and beggars, 'minders' and ragpickers, freaks and ingenuities: these are just a few of the callings by which men rise to fame from the streets. Unhappily, though electric light and police keep the most unsavoury types underground, the best (or, at least, the most interesting) seem to have disappeared with the worst-which may explain the recent outcry for a brighter London. Fleet Street is practically the only part of the town where street characters still abound. In the maze of alleyways where once Dr. Johnson-himself almost a street character-walked, there are several personalities known to all who work in the street of ink. In particular, there is a ragpicker who pursues her calling with a diligence that would have made her a prime minister if she had dealt in promises instead of more useful kinds of rubbish. At her sides, carried like milkmaid's pails but under her skirt, are sacks for her pickings. You will seldom see her at work. Every now and again, however, she suns herself in Robin Hood Court while drinking a cannikin of steaming soup. Sometimes a small boy has attempted to annoy her but never twice-she has an eloquence that flays. Sometimes she is given a Christmas-box: she receives it with royal indifference. Then again there is the blind newspaper-seller, a man of speed and cheerfulness. In those alleyways he occasionally realises the charm of solitude and perhaps begins to sing some popular ditty of years gone by-Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true, for instance. But should he hear a footstep, he stops embarrassed and a blush mantles his weather-beaten cheek. You see, even the fierce publicity that beats upon the life of a street character cannot deprive him of his private feelings. That blush is a revelation that there is often a sensitive soul behind the outward delight in eating, sleeping and waking amid the crowd's hurrying feet. Often, however, there is not. Policemen can often tell you the history of some poor unfortunate, mis-shapen creature who by staying every day at the same street corner has been able to leave a row of houses in his will.

M. WILLSON DISHER.

CURRENT FICTION

A GENERATION ago a man of letters, disconcerted by the number of poems submitted to his notice, took refuge from criticism in statistics, and contributed to this Review an article in which he sheerly enumerated the sixty-six greatest living English poets. It is a matter of some interest that he forgot Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Otherwise his list, which begins with the author of The Light of Asia and ends with W. B. Yeats '-the alphabet, of course, does not seem foolish even to the judgment of posterity, and emboldens me to suggest the compilation of a similar list—a similar list, but not of poets.

determining the order

This is an age of novels, as 1889-1898 was one of lyrical, and 1590-1635 of dramatic, poetry. No doubt at least fifty living poets could be cited by a student to-day, and I am not perfectly assured that the volume of poetic effusions has of late sensibly diminished.1 Nevertheless, fiction dominates, though it has its rivals. The sardonic biography, as popularised by Mr. Lytton Strachey, the scandalous' ana,' and still the lyric, have their many admirers. But none will challenge, though some few deplore, fiction's superb domination. On the one hand, we see libraries, both free and proprietary, divide the whole mass of printed works into fiction and non-fiction; on the other hand, we see young men, ambitious of winning fame by their pens, rejecting all other forms of composition to write novels. Lord Byron would not now become a poet. He might conceivably, have rescued Dr. Johnson from Boswell's devotion, and he might have satirised the country houses at which he had been made a guest, but almost certainly he would have written in prose a more or less imaginary narrative of Juan's adventures.

Granting, however, that the novel is overwhelmingly popular, some may object that it has yet to be proved important. The cinema is popular. The cross-word puzzle is popular. Does the latter require, has the former deserved, serious consideration? And, since you yourself imprudently refer to the so-called Eliza

1 On the relations of demand and supply in publishing see Mr. Stanley Unwin's The Price of Books (Allen & Unwin, 1925).

' But this is not incompatible with fiction.

bethans, where is your Shakespeare to mould and make illustrious the craft of fiction? Let us at once admit that there is not about novel-writing the prestige of making poems. In comparison with the proud claim 'I am a poet,' the assertion 'I am a novelist' is merely informative. But glamour comes with decline, and if and when fiction ceases to be profitable the novelist will be proud, and his art, because it is no longer discussed, will be more adequately esteemed. Nor is it a just argument to urge that fiction has enlisted the genius of no Shakespeare. What of Shakespeare's contemporaries? The works of half a dozen are given a sort of surreptitious and Sabbatarian notoriety before the patrons of private dramatic societies, perhaps a score are occasionally read in the closet. As for the poets of the 'nineties, which of them can indisputably be stated to surpass any novelist of to-day? 1

Let us to our business. When once it has been allowed that the preparation of a list of contemporary novelists would not be altogether frivolous, some information must be given concerning the methods whereby this list was drawn up and corrected, unless it is to be taken as devoid of any authority beyond that chancing to adhere to its signatory's name. Know then that the list is no casual freak of memory or of prejudice. It is a work of science. As a work of science it should be judged.

The original list was compiled by a reviewer of fiction who in the last four years has read approximately a thousand of the five thousand published during that period, besides a number of novels as yet, happily, unpublished. This gentleman, hereinafter called the Arbiter, began by rejecting from his memory and his notes all novels which might be called juvenile, and later decided also to reject all 'detective' or 'mystery' novels, as appealing to faculties different from those employed in the appreciation of fiction proper. To facilitate his inquiries, he further excluded volumes of short stories. They are fiction, it is true; but as the epic and lyric are disparate, so are the novel and short story. The remainder he put to the following test: Are they better read than not?' More precisely :-suppose a man engaged during the busiest hours of the day in professional or banausic activities; suppose him set down at some late hour of the evening, when he is too weary to think and too lively to dream, before a shelf bearing Whitaker's Almanack, Burke's or Debrett's Peerage, a treatise on some science, say anthropology, in which he takes no direct interest, a volume of Georgian poetry, and a classic of fiction, say Waverley, which he has not read for many

For a qualitative, as contrasted with a quantitative, analysis of current fiction, the student is referred to the works of Mr. Gerald Gould and of Mr. Brimley Johnson.

years and never expected to read again; suppose him simultaneously offered the latest unread work of any contemporary novelist, what novelists will he in these circumstances patronise, what novels prefer as recreation to Whitaker?

Such a test, like any possible test, is open to criticism. It has, I admit, been impressionistically defined. Some people never or rarely read novels, and might, therefore, reach down Whitaker or, if their mood were romantic, a Peerage without due hesitation. Others are fiction fans,' and would read any novel, however stupid, in preference to none. But this hypothetical man is the average man-he reads many novels, and some he likes. More pertinently it may be argued that the test supposes that the novelists' chief aim is to amuse. Well, is it not their chief aim? Some novelists are more intelligent than others, and ensue while they write the suffrages of a relatively small and relatively intellectual public, but none, living authors and Sir Walter Scott excepted, has written for profit alone. If then a novelist, by whatever device, has succeeded, or is likely to succeed, in amusing the average educated reader, his name ought to stand in our list. He seems to have done what Fielding, Balzac, Dostoievsky and Mr. Hardy tried to do. It would be impertinent in us, fellow-children and slaves of time, to seek more precisely to evaluate his work.

Laboratory experiments, wherein a man of the kind suggested was actually put to the test defined, were needed. They seemed too costly to be practicable. No millionaire, though many were invited, was shrewd enough to win undying fame by associating himself with the experiment and employing barristers and business men to select, when scientifically depressed, their favourite fiction. Therefore it became necessary for the Arbiter to appoint a consultative committee which would correct his hypotheses by theirs, mitigate judgments professional by lay, challenge his prejudices by their own, and generally conjecture the reactions of the average reader to the names put forward by the Arbiter. Only one, I am pleased to record, of the nine persons nominated for service on the Consultative Committee refused his assistance. To the eight who assumed this tiresome and unremunerated task I offer, and the public should offer, thanks.

Four of the eight are women, two married and two unmarried, none engaged in any profession. Of the four men one is a poet, one is a publisher, one is closely associated with the industry of brickmaking, and one, a mere lad, representing the post-war generation, has not until the time of writing discovered an occupation in which his talents may be given play. No apology need be

I.e., a reader who demands in his study of novels that emotionalism shall be tempered by some play of intellect; cf. Aristotle's normal man.

made for the proportion of women. That 25 per cent. of the Committee were connected with literature may demand excuse. I can only plead that, say what you will, an expert opinion is not markedly inferior to a lay. It would have been a pity if no creative artist had been nominated to a committee judging fiction, and a pity if no one professionally interested in the sale of books had been asked to speculate on potential popularity.

Each member of the Committee 5 was advised, with the original list before him, to put a cross against any name which in his judgment belonged to an author who would in the conditions described be abjured. He was also asked to add any name in his opinion improperly omitted. The Arbiter afterwards struck from the list any name which had been awarded three or more crosses. To names which had received one or two crosses he believed himself required to give a more prolonged attention. After all, he was Arbiter as well as compiler. Some names must convey little to anyone who is not a very close student of contemporary fiction, and a cross against such names would mean more than a cross against names of largely famous writers; for no one might seek to excise an author whose works he had not read. And, again, human nature being what it is, the names of the second-rate were bound to invite more criticism than the names of the third-rate. Miss Blank makes herself unpopular by attempting something just a little beyond her talents; Mr. Dash, an altogether inferior writer, lives well within his intellectual income. Should the name of Blank be excised while the name of Dash is immortalised? The Arbiter, taking a wide view, thought not.

Queer things happened. One lady confessed a quite unexpected passion for Whitaker, and her pen teemed with crosses, until it became dubious whether any author whose novels she had read would stay unstigmatised. One gentleman found himself too gentle for his task. He behaved as if, remaining the humane and widely affectionate creature he is, he were asked to sentence his fellows to immediate execution. After hours' study he denounced two persons, and one of those crosses he erased. Nevertheless, differences in opinion were few. Several names received five to seven crosses, and few received only one. Therefore the list may be taken as being, in the lack of laboratory experiments, fairly authoritative.

The Arbiter's original list included 267 names; 117 have been omitted and five added. It is a pity that the names of persons like Miss Boyle and Mrs. Lowndes have been excluded by the fact that novels, however generous, if they are primarily

Names of members, as a minority of the Committee urgently requested, have been withheld from publication.