human
Ye-es! with a whole tail of unspoken
gpt
lying behind it. Occasionally you catch the ecstatic note,
human
Oh! _Yes_; a _sweet_ book! Or, with masculine curtness:
gpt
Fine book, that! (For example,
human
The Hill, by Horace Annesley Vachell!) It is in the light of such infrequent exclamations that you may judge the tepid reluctance of other praise. The reason of all this is twofold; partly in the book, and partly in the reader. The backbone dislikes the raising of any question which it deems to have been decided: a peculiarity which at once puts it in opposition to all fine work, and to nearly all passable second-rate work. It also dislikes being confronted with anything that it considers
gpt
that is to say, interesting. It has a genuine horror of the truth neat. It quite honestly asks
human
unaware that to be taken out of itself is the very last thing it really desires. What it wants is to be confirmed in itself. Its religion is the _status quo_. The difficulties of the enterprise of not offending it either in subject or treatment are, perhaps, already sufficiently apparent. But incomparably the greatest obstacle to pleasing it lies in the positive fact that it prefers not to be pleased. It undoubtedly objects to the very sensations which an artist aims to give. If I have heard once, I have heard fifty times resentful remarks similar to:
gpt
I'm not going to read any more bosh by _him_! Why, I simply couldn't put the thing down!