Jewdwine considered that what Maddox had qualified as Rickman's
colossal cheek was simply his colossal ignorance; not to say his
insanely perverted view of the value of salaried appointments.
"Oh," said he, "I shall want you as a contributor, too. I don't know
how you'll work in with the rest, but we shall see. I won't have any
but picked men. The review has always stood high; but I want it to
stand higher. It isn't a commercial speculation. There's no question
of making it pay. It must keep up its independence whether it can
afford it or not. We've been almost living on Vaughan's
advertisements. All the same, I mean to slaughter those new men he's
got hold of."
Rickman admired this reckless policy. It did not occur to him at the
moment that Jewdwine was reader to a rival publisher.
"What," he said, "all of them at once?"
"No--We shall work them off weekly, one at a time."
Rickman laughed. "One at a time? Then you allow them the merit of
individuality?"
"It isn't a merit; it's a vice, _the_ vice of the age. It shrieks; it
ramps. Individuality means slow disease in ethics and politics, but
it's sudden death to art. When will you young men learn that art is
self-restraint, not self-expansion?"
"Self expansion--it seems an innocent impulse."
"If it were an impulse--but it isn't. It's a pose. A cold, conscious,
systematic pose. So deadly artificial; and so futile, if they did but
know. After all, the individual is born, not made.
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