Fifield's edition of Samuel Butler's works gives us an occasion to
consider more calmly the merits and the failings of that entertaining
story. Like all unique works of authors who stand, even to the most
obvious apprehension, aside from the general path, it has been
overwhelmed with superlatives. The case is familiar enough and the
explanation is simple and brutal. It is hardly worth while to give it.
The truth is that although there is no inherent reason why the isolated
novel of an author who devotes himself to other forms should not be 'one
of the great novels of the world,' the probabilities tell heavily
against it. On the other hand, an isolated novel makes a good stick to
beat the age. It is fairly certain to have something sufficiently unique
about it to be useful for the purpose. Even its blemishes have a knack
of being _sui generis_. To elevate it is, therefore, bound to imply the
diminution of its contemporaries.

[Footnote 10: _The Way of all Flesh_. By Samuel Butler, 11th
impression of 2nd edition. (Fifield.)]

Yet, apart from the general argument, there are particular reasons why
the praise of _The Way of all Flesh_ should be circumspect. Samuel
Butler knew extraordinarily well what he was about. His novel was
written intermittently between 1872 and 1884 when he abandoned it. In
the twenty remaining years of his life he did nothing to it, and we have
Mr Streatfeild's word for it that 'he professed himself dissatisfied
with it as a whole, and always intended to rewrite, or at any rate, to
revise it.' We could have deduced as much from his refusal to publish
the book. The certainty of commercial failure never deterred Butler from
publication; he was in the happy situation of being able to publish at
his own expense a book of whose merit he was himself satisfied. His only
reason for abandoning _The Way of all Flesh_ was his own dissatisfaction