However this be, the escapists make a brave show on
our shelves; From the author of the Iliad to the author of Hamlet, from Defoe to pumas, from Anthony Hope to. Agatha Christie, they have all taken us out of our Own' experience into strange worlds. We can lose ourselves in Strelsau as in Elsinore, in Troy as on a desert island ; fascinated we can watch the little grey cells at work of Belgian and of Dane. There is no need to be ashamed of the " thriller " which is so exciting that " it is impossible to put it down once you have taken it up," merely to be smug about the four-generation chronicle which it is impossible to take up once you have put it down. Sometimes I think wistfully of a world in which the con- ventional literary values are transposed ; a world in which romance is rated above realism, and comedy above tragedy ; a world, to give an example, in which critics -would not qualify so loftily Mr. Calverley's 'little book of light verse, but rather lay stress en the pantechnicon of heavy verse by a Mr. Milton.
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