This is a point sometimes questioned.  It seems to me that it is a good thing for the reviewer to have his work signed, particularly for the young reviewer, whose yet ardent spirit craves a place in the sun.  It contributes to his pleasant conception of reviewing as a fine thing to do.  It makes him more alive than the anonymous thing.  He meets people who brighten at the recollection of having read his name.  I know a man who was a very witty reviewer (when he was young); that fellow used to get love letters from ladies he had never seen, just like a baseball pitcher, or a tenor; there was a rich man who ate meals at the Century Club had him there to dinner, because he thought him funny; he got a note from a Literary Adviser asking him for a book manuscript; and two persons wrote him from San Francisco.  I myself have had courteous letters thanking me from authors here and in England.  That fellow of whom I just spoke undoubtedly was on the threshold of a brilliant career; he was full of courage and laughter, though very poor.  Then a great man offered him a Position as a literary editor.  His name ceased to be seen; I heard of him after a year, and it was said of him that he was dreadfully bald and had a long beard, I mean of course metaphorically speaking.

Whether signed reviewers are conducive to honesty I am not sure.  There was a man (I know him well) wrote a book on Alaska or some such place, claimed he had been there.  There was another man, his friend, who was a reviewer.  Now the Alaskaian said to the critic:  “Why don’t you get my book from the paper?  I’ll write the review—­I know more about the book than anybody else, anyway; and you sign it and get the money.”  And this was done; and it was an excellent review; and the paper (which you read every day) was no wiser.

The literary editor who signed my reviews for me was a youth of an independent turn of mind.  He encouraged the expression in reviews of exactly what one thought; he liked an individual note in them; he had an enthusiasm for books of literary quality, somewhat to the neglect of other branches of the publishing business; he gathered about him a group of writers of a spirit kindred to his own; and he was rapidly moulding his department of his paper into a thing, perhaps a plaything, of life and colour.

But he lacked commercial tact.  He wanted to make something like the English lighter literary journals.  He offended the powers behind the man higher up.  I saw him last on a Wednesday; he outlined his plans for the future.  On Friday, I know he “made up” his paper.  Saturday I looked for him, but he had gone from that place.  There was in it a dried man of much hard experience of newspapers, who reigned in that youth’s stead.  The wrath of authority grinds with exceeding quickness.

This which I have written is history, as many excellent of mind know, and should be put into a book:  for it reveals how close we came to having in this country a Literary Doings that could be read for pleasure.  I continued to learn the business.