The general form of approval is a doubtful
"Ye-es!" with a whole tail of unspoken "buts" lying behind it.
Occasionally you catch the ecstatic note, "Oh! _Yes_; a _sweet_ book!" Or,
with masculine curtness: "Fine book, that!" (For example, "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 "unpleasant,"
that is to say, interesting. It has a genuine horror of the truth neat. It
quite honestly asks "to be taken out of itself," 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.
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