Dec. 9, 1893. Scott’s Letters. “All Balzac’s novels occupy one shelf. The new edition fifty volumes long” –says Bishop Blougram. But for Scott the student will soon have to hire a room. The novels and poems alone stretch away into just sixty volumes in Cadell’s edition; and this is only the beginning. At this very […]

March 10, 1894. “The Cloister and the Hearth.” There is a venerable proposition–I never heard who invented it–that an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. […]

May 4, 1895. Hazlitt. “Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes with keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of […]

Nov. 18, 1893. Story and Anecdote. I suppose I am no more favored than most people who write stories in receiving from unknown correspondents a variety of suggestions, outlines of plots, sketches of situations, characters, and so forth. One cannot but feel grateful for all this spontaneous beneficence. The mischief is that in ninety-nine cases […]

April 15, 1893. The “Island Nights’ Entertainments.” I wish Mr. Stevenson had given this book another title. It covers but two out of the three stories in the volume; and, even so, it has the ill-luck to be completely spoilt by its predecessor, the New Arabian Nights. The New Arabian Nights was in many respects […]

Sept. 23, 1892. La Déb�cle. To what different issues two men will work the same notion! Imagine this world to be a flat board accurately parcelled out into squares, and you have the basis at once of Alice through the Looking-Glass and of Les Rougon-Macquart. But for the mere fluke that the Englishman happened to […]

Sept. 29, 1894. The “Great Heart” of the Public. I observe that our hoary friend, the Great Heart of the Public, has been taking his annual outing in September. Thanks to the German Emperor and the new head of the House of Orleans, he has had the opportunity of a stroll through the public press […]

March 16, 1895. The “Woman Who Did,” and Mr. Eason who wouldn’t. “In the romantic little town of ‘Ighbury,My father kept a Succulating Libary….” –and, I regret to say, gave himself airs on the strength of it. The persons in my instructive little story are– H.H. Prince Francis of Teck. Mr. Grant Allen, author of […]

Oct. 5, 1895. Our “Crusaders.” The poor little Penny Dreadful has been catching it once more. Oncemore the British Press has stripped to its massive waist and solemnlysquared up to this hardened young offender. It calls this remarkableperformance a “Crusade.” I like these Crusades. They remind one of that merry passage inPickwick (p. 254 in […]

Nov. 5, 1892. An Itinerary. Besides the glorious exclusiveness of it, there is a solid advantage just now, in not being an aspirant for the Laureateship. You can go out into the wilderness for a week without troubling to leave an address. A week or so back I found with some difficulty a friend who […]

June 24, 1893. March 4, 1804. In what respect Remarkable. What seems to me chiefly remarkable in the popular conception of a Poet is its unlikeness to the truth. Misconception in this case has been flattered, I fear, by the poets themselves:– “The poet in a golden Clime was born,With golden stars above;Dowered with the […]

May 11, 1895. A Prelude to Poetry. “To those who love the poets most, who care most for their ideals, this little book ought to be the one indispensable book of devotion, the credo of the poetic faith.” “This little book” is the volume with which Mr. Ernest Rhys prefaces the pretty series of Lyrical […]

April 29, 1893. Hazlitt’s Stipulation.“Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present ask–the Ultima Thule of my wandering desires. Do you not then wish for– a friend in your retreatWhom you may whisper, ‘Solitude is sweet’? Expected, well enough: gone, still better. Such attractions are strengthened by distance.” So Hazlitt wrote […]

April 7, 1894. His Plays. For some weeks now I have been meaning to write about Mr. John Davidson’s “Plays” (Elkin Mathews and John Lane), and always shirking the task at the last moment. The book is an exceedingly difficult one to write about, and I am not at all sure that after a few […]

May 5, 1894. Aloofness of Mr. Swinburne’s Muse. There was a time–let us say, in the early seventies–when many young men tried to write like Mr. Swinburne. Remarkably small success waited on their efforts. Still their numbers and their youth and (for a while also) their persistency seemed to promise a new school of poesy, […]

Oct. 27, 1894. “The God in the Car” and “The Indiscretion of the Duchess.” As I set down the titles of these two new stories by Mr. Anthony Hope, it occurs to me that combined they would make an excellent title for a third story yet to be written. For Mr. Hope’s duchess, if by […]

Sept. 14, 1895. Hypnotic Fiction. A number of people–and I am one–cannot “abide” hypnotism in fiction. In my own case the dislike has been merely instinctive, and I have never yet found time to examine the instinct and discover whether or not it is just and reasonable. The appearance of a one-volume edition of Trilby–undoubtedly […]

Oct. 7, 1892. A Masterpiece. “Peer Gynt takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet consciously intended. Is not this one of the characteristics of the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In the material world (though Nature […]

Nov. 28, 1891. “Esther Vanhomrigh.” Among considerable novelists who have handled historical subjects–that is to say, who have brought into their story men and women who really lived and events which have really taken place–you will find one rule strictly observed, and no single infringement of it that has been followed by success. This rule […]

August 11, 1894. “The Manxman.” Mr. Hall Caine’s new novel The Manxman (London: William Heinemann) is a big piece of work altogether. But, on finishing the tale, I turned back to the beginning and read the first 125 pages over again, and then came to a stop. I wish that portion of the book could […]