for instance, when the whole essence of an ordinary person’s nature lies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this person ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine . i think such an individual really does become a type of his own a type of commonplaceness which will not for the world, if it can help it, be contented, but strains and yearns to be something original and independent, without the slightest possibility of being so. to this class of commonplace people belong several characters in this novel; characters which i admit i have not drawn very vividly up to now for my reader’s benefit.