The British Barbarians | Page 5

sense,
a series. I shall add the name, as a Trade Mark, to any story, by
whomsoever published, which I have written as the expression of my
own individuality. Nor will they necessarily appear in the first instance
in volume form. If ever I should be lucky enough to find an editor
sufficiently bold and sufficiently righteous to venture upon running a
Hill-top Novel as a serial through his columns, I will gladly embrace
that mode of publication. But while editors remain as pusillanimous
and as careless of moral progress as they are at present, I have little
hope that I shall persuade any one of them to accept a work written
with a single eye to the enlightenment and bettering of humanity.
Whenever, therefore, in future, the words "A Hill-top Novel" appear
upon the title-page of a book by me, the reader who cares for truth and

righteousness may take it for granted that the book represents my own
original thinking, whether good or bad, on some important point in
human society or human evolution.
Not, again, that any one of these novels will deliberately attempt to
PROVE anything. I have been amused at the allegations brought by
certain critics against The Woman who Did that it "failed to prove" the
practicability of unions such as Herminia's and Alan's. The famous
Scotsman, in the same spirit, objected to Paradise Lost that it "proved
naething": but his criticism has not been generally endorsed as valid.
To say the truth, it is absurd to suppose a work of imagination can
prove or disprove anything. The author holds the strings of all his
puppets, and can pull them as he likes, for good or evil: he can make
his experiments turn out well or ill: he can contrive that his unions
should end happily or miserably: how, then, can his story be said to
PROVE anything? A novel is not a proposition in Euclid. I give due
notice beforehand to reviewers in general, that if any principle at all is
"proved" by any of my Hill-top Novels, it will be simply this: "Act as I
think right, for the highest good of human kind, and you will infallibly
and inevitably come to a bad end for it."
Not to prove anything, but to suggest ideas, to arouse emotions, is, I
take it, the true function of fiction. One wishes to make one's readers
THINK about problems they have never considered, FEEL with
sentiments they have disliked or hated. The novelist as prophet has his
duty defined for him in those divine words of Shelley's:
"Singing songs unbidden Till the world is wrought To sympathy with
hopes and fears it heeded not."
That, too, is the reason that impels me to embody such views as these
in romantic fiction, not in deliberate treatises. "Why sow your ideas
broadcast," many honest critics say, "in novels where mere boys and
girls can read them? Why not formulate them in serious and
argumentative books, where wise men alone will come across them?"
The answer is, because wise men are wise already: it is the boys and
girls of a community who stand most in need of suggestion and
instruction. Women, in particular, are the chief readers of fiction; and it

is women whom one mainly desires to arouse to interest in profound
problems by the aid of this vehicle. Especially should one arouse them
to such living interest while they are still young and plastic, before they
have crystallised and hardened into the conventional marionettes of
polite society. Make them think while they are young: make them feel
while they are sensitive: it is then alone that they will think and feel, if
ever. I will venture, indeed, to enforce my views on this subject by a
little apologue which I have somewhere read, or heard,--or invented.
A Revolutionist desired to issue an Election Address to the Working
Men of Bermondsey. The Rector of the Parish saw it at the printer's,
and came to him, much perturbed. "Why write it in English?" he asked.
"It will only inflame the minds of the lower orders. Why not allow me
to translate it into Ciceronian Latin? It would then be comprehensible
to all University men; your logic would be duly and deliberately
weighed: and the tanners and tinkers, who are so very impressionable,
would not be poisoned by it." "My friend," said the Revolutionist, "it is
the tanners and tinkers I want to get at. My object is, to win this
election; University graduates will not help me to win it."
The business of the preacher is above all things to preach; but in order
to preach, he must first reach his audience. The audience in this case
consists in large part of women and girls, who are most simply