those who undertook this project for the habilitation of criticism
would necessarily co-operate and interlock.

It is upon this basis of an organized criticism and of a well-taught
and cherished language that the English literature of the Twentieth
Century, the literature of analysis and research, and the literature of
creative imagination, has to stand. Upon such a basis it becomes
possible to consider the practicability of the endowment of general
literature. For to that at last we come. I submit that it is only by
the payment of authors, and if necessary their endowment in a spacious
manner, and in particular by the entire separation of the rewards of
writing from the accidents of the book market, that the function of
literature can be adequately discharged in the modern state. The laws
of supply and demand break down altogether in this case. We have to
devise some means of sustaining those who discharge this necessary
public function in the progressive state.

There are several general propositions in this matter that it may be
worth while to state at this point. The first is that both scientific
generalization and literature proper have been and are and must
continue to be the product of a quite exceptionally heterogeneous
aggregation of persons. They are persons of the most various
temperaments, of the most varied lop-sidedness, of the most various
special gifts, and the most various social origins, having only this in
common, the ability to add to the current of the world's thought. They
are not to be dealt with as though they were a class of persons all of
exceptional general intelligence, of exceptional strength of character,
or of exceptional sanity. To do that, would be to hand over literature
from the man of genius to the man of talent. A single method of
selection, help, honour, and payment, measurement by one general