Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/157



the domain of what is loosely called Literature, each decade has its special samples of a noisy popular success, or of a half-success only less noisy. They come and go—these plagues of time, as blissfully unaware of their predecessors as of their followers, large and small, poorly clad and richly clad, of every size and description, crowding to their doom. The same shouts of enthusiastic welcome which greeted the appearance of the chartered mud-gods of yesterday greet those of to-day, and will greet those of to-morrow. Is there nobody to say that all this has happened again and again, and will yet happen again and again, just because the average readers who do not think, and the average readers who think a little, all require momentary mouthpieces for the brains or want of brains that is in them?

Take first the noisy popular successes of the day, beginning with a lady. Mrs. Humphry Ward started with Robert Elsmere, and she has proceeded with David Grieve. Since Daniel Deronda, has the