Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/179

 by its light, when out it went. Again and again this occurred. And thus he for ever went halting and stumbling through his studies and plunging through his quagmires after a glim.

A book, Campaspe considered, should have the swiftness of melodrama, the lightness of farce, to be a real contribution to thought. Every time, had said the Rabbi Moses Maimonides, you find in our books a tale, the reality of which seems impossible, a story which is repugnant both to reason and common sense, then be sure that tale contains a profound allegory, veiling a deeply mysterious truth; and the greater the absurdity of the letter the deeper the wisdom of the spirit. How could anything serious be hidden more successfully than in a book which pretended to be light and gay? Plot was certainly unimportant in the novel; character drawing a silly device. Anybody could do it. It was like character acting: give a man a beard and a few trick phrases and gestures and you have created a masterpiece. How easy it would be, for example, to put the Duke in a book: his stuttering, his neglected finger nails, and the man would rise before the reader's eyes. Justification? Preparation? In life we never know anything about the families and early lives of the people we meet; why should we have to learn all about them in books? Growth of character in a novel was nonsense. People never change. Psychology: the supreme imbecility. The long and complicated analyses that serious