Candidates of this stamp frequently
advertise in the newspapers for cheap tuition, or answer
advertisements which are intended to appeal to them; they pay
from sixpence to half-a-crown an hour--rarely as much as the
latter sum. Occasionally it happened that Harold Biffen had three
or four such pupils in hand, and extraordinary stories he could
draw from his large experience in this sphere.
Then as to his authorship.--But shortly after the discussion of
Greek metres he fell upon the subject of his literary projects,
and, by no means for the first time, developed the theory on
which he worked.
'I have thought of a new way of putting it. What I really aim at
is an absolute realism in the sphere of the ignobly decent. The
field, as I understand it, is a new one; I don't know any writer
who has treated ordinary vulgar life with fidelity and
seriousness. Zola writes deliberate tragedies; his vilest figures
become heroic from the place they fill in a strongly imagined
drama. I want to deal with the essentially unheroic, with the
day-to-day life of that vast majority of people who are at the
mercy of paltry circumstance.
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