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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN>I have
just found a substantial passage omitted in error from “Modern Novels” (1919) in
<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Essays</I>, Vol. 3, last line of p. 32,
between “justify” and “this,”. The passage is almost the same as that in “Modern
Fiction”, <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Essays</I>, Vol. 4, pp. 159-60.
I have checked the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">TLS</I>, 10 April
1919, p. 189, for the former, and the first edition of<I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> The Common Reader</I> (1925), pp. 187-8,
for the latter.</SPAN></P>
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style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN>The
central section below is the missing passage. What is added in ‘Modern Fiction”
is in square brackets.</SPAN></P>
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style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN></SPAN> </P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman">We have to admit that we are
exacting, and, further, that we find it difficult to justify </FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman">our discontent by explaining
what it is that we exact. We frame our question differently at different times.
But it reappears most persistently as we drop the finished novel on the crest of
a sigh—Is it worth while? What is the point of it all? Can it be that[,] owing
to one of those little deviations which the human spirit seems to make from time
to time[,] Mr. Bennett has come down with his magnificent apparatus for catching
life just an inch or two on the wrong side? Life escapes; and perhaps without
life nothing else is worth while. It is a confession of vagueness to have to
make use of such a figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by
speaking[,] as critics are prone to do[,] of reality. Admitting the vagueness
[which afflicts all criticism of novels], let us hazard the opinion that for us
at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than secures
the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality,
</FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "><FONT face="Times New Roman">this, the essential thing,
has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting
vestments as we provide. </FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN></SPAN> </P>
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style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN>Stuart</SPAN></P>
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