forward and point out with wise finger that life is not all black.  I once resided near a young noodle of a Methodist pastor who had the pious habit of reading novels aloud to his father and mother.  He began to read one of mine to them, but half-way through decided that something of Charlotte M. Yonge would be less unsuitable for the parental ear.  He then called and lectured me.  Among other aphorisms of his which I have treasured up was this:  “Life, my dear friend, is like an April day—­sunshine and shadow chasing each other over the plain.”  That he is not dead is a great tribute to my singular self-control.  I suspect him to be the Edinburgh Reviewer.  At any rate, the article moves on the plane of his plain.

* * * * *

The Reviewer has the strange effrontery to select Mr. Joseph Conrad’s “Secret Agent” as an example of modern ugliness in fiction:  a novel that is simply steeped in the finest beauty from end to end.  I do not suppose that the Edinburgh Review has any moulding influence upon the evolution of the art of fiction in this country.  But such nonsense may, after all, do harm by confusing the minds of people who really are anxious to encourage what is best, strongest, and most sane.  The Reviewer in this instance, for example, classes, as serious, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, and John Galsworthy, who are genuine creative forces, with mere dignified unimportant sentimentalizers like Mr. W.B.  Maxwell.  While he was on the business of sifting the serious from the unserious I wonder he didn’t include the authors of “Three Weeks” and “The Heart of a Child” among the serious!  Perhaps because the latter wrote “Pigs in Clover” and the former was condemned by the booksellers!  Nobody could have a lower opinion of “Three Weeks” than I have.  But I have never been able to understand why the poor little feeble story was singled out as an awful example of female licentiousness, and condemned by a hundred newspapers that had not the courage to name it.  The thing was merely infantile and absurd.  Moreover, I violently object to booksellers sitting in judgment on novels.

LETTERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA

[16 May ’08]

The result of Murray v. The Times is very amusing.  I don’t know why the fact that the Times is called upon to pay L7500 to Mr. John Murray should make me laugh joyously; but it does.  Certainly the reason is not that I sympathize with the libelled Mr. Murray.  The action was a great and a wonderful action, full of enigmas for a mere man of letters like myself.  For example, Mr. Murray said that his agreement with the “authors” (I cannot imagine how Lord Esher and Mr. A.C.  Benson came to be the “authors” of the late Queen’s correspondence) stipulated that two-thirds of the profits should go to the “authors” and one-third to Mr. Murray.  Secondly, Mr. Murray said that he paid the authors L5592 14s. 2d.  Thirdly,