Popular education has done it. Fifty years ago thinking and reading went together. But nowadays reading is the most familiar amusement of the thoughtless. Yet the sale of 'The Prude of Pimlico' exceeds the sale of the leading novel of De Quincey's day by at least five hundred per cent. It is like tight sleeves and loose sleeves.
People feel comfortable when they wear what everybody is wearing and read what everybody is reading.
The art of modern advertising is an appeal to the instinct of imitation. Our friend the Publisher has become a millionaire by discovering that the same law governs the sale of books and of dry-goods. There is a regular evolution in fiction. It looks to me as if there must be somebody always ready to read some kind of fiction, but his affections are weathercocky. I perused 'The Prisoner on a Bender' the other day without getting a single illustration for a sermon.