What then, one asks, are the signs and marks of audacity in literature by which it can be recognised in this place or that. They are countless. The ramifications of this fantastic growth cannot be traced; it blossoms so wantonly, drops such strange fruit, that a man has already seen it everywhere, or almost everywhere, or is by nature blind to it, having perhaps been nourished upon it, and knowing nothing else. It comes out in so many different ways that only a few can be noticed here. When a writer shows undisguised contempt for his readers, as so many writers do, then audacity is degenerating into sheer impudence. This sort of contempt is usually shown in two ways: firstly, by supreme carelessness in matter, as if to suggest that the very dregs of our author’s mind are good enough for his particular audience, and perhaps better than the best of his fellow authors’ brains; secondly, by supreme carelessness in manner, as if one were to receive callers in a greasy dressing-gown. Persistently to attack the cherished illusions of the reading public or to run athwart the accepted morals of the time, are tricks that will bring their own rewards while audacity is in the ascendant; but they are not lasting. A modern dramatist who has made much capital out of these tricks must be puzzling his brains now to know what to do with a generation that has no illusions left. Again, one of our novelists who has played the naughty young man from Paris for some thirty-odd years, now finds himself regarded as a respectable elderly man-of-letters. To many, Bernard Shaw’s _Life-Force_ seems a sentimental crotchet, and George Moore’s earlier works seem more fatuous than disreputable. If, however, there are enough of the disillusioned to make an audience, a writer who knows the value of audacity will not hesitate to swing back the pendulum by defending the old prejudices with all the force at his command. This may be the clue to the audacity of G. K. Chesterton, who has spent his time declaiming against the only people who can understand and enjoy him. Again, the characteristic may take other unwelcome forms that bring it near to impudence, as for example in the work of men who gain the ear of the public in one capacity, and then insist upon acting in another, as when a good teller of tales turns without warning into a philosopher or prophet: it is as if M. Pachmann were to ignore the piano before him and treat his audience to a few fumbling conjuring tricks. Moreover, to pronounce judgment on matters about which one knows nothing is to carry audacity to doubtful lengths. Criticism offers, and has always offered, a good field for the audacious, but a great many of us now tend to abuse our freedom. Without knowing a word of Italian and Portuguese, a man will undertake to write twenty essays proving that Camoens was a better poet than Tasso. And of late it seems that audacity of the baser sort has invaded the realm of verse; every day, our poets are more startling, though not so startling as their friends and critics.