Nothing can keep Brieux's plays alive; they are
bound to go precisely where the plays of Dumas _fils_ have gone, because
they are false to life. I do not expect to kill the oncoming craze, but I
will give it no quarter.
C.E. MONTAGUE
[_10 Mar. '10_]
I have read Mr. C.E. Montague's "A Hind Let Loose" (Methuen, 6s.), and I
am not going to advise any one to follow my example. I do not desire to
prejudice his circulation, but I have my conscience to consider. This is
not a book for the intelligent masses; it would be folly to recommend it
to them. It is for the secretly arrogant few, those who really do "know
that they are august" within, whatever garment of diffident and mild
modesty they may offer to the world. Only those few can understand it. All
admiration other than theirs will be either ignorant or dog-like--or both.
Everybody on the Press will say that "A Hind Let Loose" is a novel about
journalism. It is not. Journalism is merely the cloak hanging windily
about it, as her cloak hung about Mrs. Colum Fay. It is a novel about the
pride of the Ego. It is the fearful and yet haughty cry of originality
against the vast tendency of the age, which tendency is that people should
live in the age as in an intellectual barracks.
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