persist and animate other worlds. His attitude is one of tolerance; he prays that we may not drift too far from the pride of body which is the pride of soul. Mystic athleticism; that seems to be Mr. Forster's message; and as it is essential that the man of to-morrow should be a man of ideas as well as a man of perceptions, it is quite certain that, if Mr. Forster chooses to return to the field, he will establish his claim.

One word as to women. The time has gone when we discriminated between the work of women and of men; to-day, "Lucas Malet ". Miss May Sinclair, Mrs. Sedgwick, Miss Edith Wharton, Miss Violet Hunt, Miss Ethel Sidgwick, Mrs. Belloc-Lowndes, Mrs. Dudeney must take their chance in the rough and tumble of literary criticism, and I do not suggest a comparison between them and the leading men. For this there is a very good reason; the young women of to-day are promising work of an entirely new kind. They have less style than their precursors and more ideas; such women writers as Miss Amber Reeves,1 Miss Sheila 1 See special chapter.

Kaye-Smith,1 Miss Viola Meynell, Miss Tennyson Jesse, Miss Clemence Dave, Miss E. M. Delafield, Miss Dorothy Richardson, Miss Bridget Maclagan have produced, so far, very little; they can be indicated as candidates, but much more faintly than their masculine rivals. They write less, and less easily; they are younger at their trade, more erratic. It is enough to mention them, and to say that, so far as women are showing indications of approximating to men in literary quality, these are the women who are likely soon to bear the standards of their sex.

To sum up, I would suggest that the rough classification I have made among the seven young men must not be taken as fixed. Some are autobiographic rather than evocative; some are receptive rather than personally active, and yet others have not chosen between the two roads. Yet, taking them as a whole, with the reservation of possible dark horses, these are evidently the men among whom will be found the two or three who will "somehow", 1 See special chapter.

in another ten years, lead English letters. It will be an indefinable "somehow", a compound of intellectual dominance and emotional sway. We shall not have a Bennett for a Bennett, nor a Wells for a Wells, but equivalents of power and equivalents of significance, who will be intimately in tune with their time and better than any will express it.

III

THREE YOUNG NOVELISTS

I

D. H. LAWRENCE

Ir is not a very long time since Professor Osler startled America and England by proclaiming that man was too old at forty. This is not generally held, though, I suppose, most of us will accept that one is too old to begin at forty. But that is not the end: very soon, in literature at least, it may be too late to begin at thirty, if we are to take into account the achievements of the young men, of whom Mr. D. H. Lawrence is one of the youngest. Mr. Lawrence is certainly one of the young men, not a member of a school, for they have no formal school, and can have none if they are of any value, but a partner in their tendencies and an exponent of their outlook. He has all

the unruliness of the small group that is rising up against the threatening State, its rules and its conventions, proclaiming the right of the individual to do much more than live - namely, to live splendidly.

It is this link makes Mr. Lawrence so interesting; this fact that, like them, he is so very much of his time so hot, controversial, uneasy; that, like them, he has the sudden fury of the bird that beats against the bars of its cage. But while the young men sneer at society, at the family, at every institution, Mr. Lawrence tends to accept these things: he has no plan of reform, no magic wand with which to transmute the world into fairyland: he claims only the right to develop his individuality, and to see others develop theirs, within a system which tortures him as another Cardinal La Balue.

This it is differentiates him from so many of his rivals. He has in his mind no organisations; he is mainly passionate aspiration and passionate protest. And that is not wonderful when we consider who he is. Surprising to