Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/147

Rh case a writer cannot afford to be ignorant of what is being done to-day in his own field. Such neglect is only a few degrees worse than for a lawyer to refuse to recognise the authority of a case decided later than 1850, or for a physician to ignore modern methods of treating disease, lest he should lose the originality of his own methods. The comparison is not quite so far-fetched as perhaps at first sight it may seem. The fact that there were some brilliant surgeons half a century ago in no way minimises the importance of the antiseptic methods of to-day; and the inclusion of Tom Jones and Roderick Random and Tristram Shandy among the English classics does not alter the fact that there exists to-day a technique of fiction such as was not remotely dreamed of by Sterne or Smollett or Fielding. One of the first things for a beginner to learn, if he would master the Rh