This is a novel preoccupation for them and one which is, we believe,
symptomatic of a general hesitancy and expectation. In the world of
letters everything is a little up in the air, volatile and
uncrystallised. It is a world of rejections and velleities; in spite of
outward similarities, a strangely different world from that of half a
dozen years ago. Then one had a tolerable certainty that the new star,
if the new star was to appear, would burst upon our vision in the shape
of a novel. To-day we feel it might be anything. The cloud no bigger
than a man's hand might even be, like Trigorin's in 'The Sea-gull,' like
a piano; it has no predetermined form.
This sense of incalculability, which has been aroused by the prodigious
literary efflorescence of late years, reacts upon its cause; and the
reaction tends by many different paths to express itself finally in the
ventilation of problems that hinge about criticism. There is a general
feeling that the growth of the young plant has been too luxuriant; a
desire to have it vigorously pruned by a capable gardener, in order that
its strength may be gathered together to produce a more perfect fruit.
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