LITERARY HONOUR

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 20 February 1932, Page 9

LITERARY HONOUR

Assessment by Public

“HpiiAT small section whicn is called the reading public is the incalculable factor in estimating the prospects of a book/’ said Mr Basil Blackwell, the publisher, in the Dent memorial lecture.

“The reason is that, ultimately, the public is our salesman. How or why this capricious salesman sets to work we do not know; but so it is that from time to time tne author and the publisher blindly touch some spring which releases the genine of the best seller. Then, regardless of merit, an epidemic cxcitoinent sweeps through the homes of the bookless, and fabulous numbers arc sold. . This strange force it as mighty as rumour, as enduring and often as reasonable. Indeed it is, I believe, a manifestation of rumour thousand-tongued.

“But if the public Ls ultimately the salesman, ,so ultimately it is the critic —the critic whose opinion is formed without haste and without error. An author commonly is not without honour save in his own generation, but once honoured he is honoured for ever. This faculty of the public to assess justly the work of authors dead and gone—to select, grade, and preserve the best, and forget the unworthy—is to me the strangest fact in the natural history of the book world—the strangest and the most encouraging. Too often the author in life asks for bread and receives’ a stone —in the national cemetery—but his true monument is in the de-

light and grateful memory of generation after ** generation —and that is not a bad bargain for him. Later generations sift and garner w r ell; very little that is good is lost; almost might one say the very hairs of the head of genius are numbered. ”