writers give us merely define the mental limitations of these writers. The Bible, The Thousand and One Nights, and Don Quixote certainly were not psychological novels. . . . As for Ulysses . . . Works like Ulysses are always out of date. At first too modern, they soon grow old-fashioned. The very group that is most enthusiastic about Ulysses today will be the first to spurn it tomorrow.
She lit another cigarette, reflecting on the words of Clive Bell, who had said that in the best work of Nicolas Poussin the human figure is treated as a shape cut out of coloured paper to be pinned on as the composition directs. That was the right way to treat the human figure; the mistake lay in making these shapes retain the characteristic gestures of classical rhetoric. She glanced towards the pile of books again. There were, she noted with a new regret, if no surprise, no books by Ouida in the pile, and she suddenly became aware of the fact that only a book by Ouida would satisfy her present mood. Ouida, who had not written for posterity, realizing, no doubt, that the public of fifty years hence would be no keener intellectually than her coeval public. Ouida was entertaining. Her approach was satisfactorily unpretentious. She wrote about high life, the very rich—and who wanted to read about any other kind of life? Certainly not the rich, or the middle classes, or the poor . . . Neither the rich nor the poor were interested in reading about the poor except in the form of the Cinderella legend
