of literary men and women, which would include all capable writers, and
from which a sort of Academy could be elected, either by a general poll
or, I would suggest, by a Jury of Election or successive Juries
confirming one another. The New Republican would like to see such a
Guild not purely English, but Anglo-American, or in duplicate for the
two countries. With a very carefully chosen nucleus and some little
elaboration in the admission of new members--whose works might be
submitted to the report of a critical jury--such a Guild might be made
fairly representative of literary capacity. Election, one may suggest,
should be involuntary. There would be a number of literary men, one
fears--great men some of them--who would absolutely refuse to work with
any such body, and from the first the Guild would have to determine to
make such men unwilling members, members to whom all the honours and
privileges of the Guild would be open whenever they chose to abandon
their attitude of scorn or distrust. Such a Guild would furnish a
useful constituency, a useful jury-list. It could be used to recommend
writers for honours, to check the distribution of public pensions for
literary services, perhaps even to send a member or so to the Upper
Chamber. It is, at any rate, an experiment worth trying.

But such a Guild at best is only one of many possible expedients in
this matter. Another is for a few people of means to subsidize a
magazine for the exhaustive criticism of contemporary work for a few
years. Quite a small number of people, serious in this matter, a couple
of thousand or so, could float such a magazine by the simple expedient
of guaranteeing subscriptions. [Footnote: It may be suggested that
among other methods of putting the criticism of contemporary literature
upon a better footing is one that might conceivably be made to pay its
own expenses. There is so much room for endowments nowadays that where
one can get at the purse of the general public one should certainly