n on the Cotswolds.'

'Which do you think is REALLY the best--"Ariel" or "A Faun"?' Ladies
were always asking one that question. 'Oh, well, you know, the two are
so different. It's really very hard to compare them.' One was always
giving that answer. One was not very brilliant perhaps.

The vogue of the two novels lasted throughout the summer. As both were
'firstlings,' and Great Britain had therefore nothing else of Braxton's
or Maltby's to fall back on, the horizon was much scanned for what
Maltby, and what Braxton, would give us next. In the autumn Braxton
gave us his secondling. It was an instantaneous failure. No more was he
compared with Maltby. In the spring of '96 came Maltby's secondling.
Its failure was instantaneous. Maltby might once more have been compared
with Braxton. But Braxton was now forgotten. So was Maltby.

This was not kind. This was not just. Maltby's first novel, and
Braxton's, had brought delight into many thousands of homes. People
should have paused to say of Braxton "Perhaps his third novel will be
better than his second," and to say as much for Maltby. I blame people
for having given no sign of wanting a third from either; and I blame
them with the more zest because neither 'A Faun on the Cotswolds' nor
'Ariel in Mayfair' was a merely popular book: each, I maintain, was a
good book. I don't go so far as to say that the one had 'more of natural
magic, more of British woodland glamour, more of the sheer joy of life
in it than anything since "As You Like It,"' though Higsby went so far
as this in the Daily Chronicle; nor can I allow the claim made for the
other by Grigsby in the Globe that 'for pungency of satire there has
been nothing like it since Swift laid down his pen, and for sheer
sweetness and tenderness of feeling--ex forti dulcedo--nothing to be
mentioned in the same breath with it since the lute fell from the tired
hand of Theocritus.' These were foolish exaggerations. But one must not
condemn a thing because it has been over-praised. Maltby's 'Ariel' was
a delicate, brilliant work; and Braxton's 'Faun,' crude though it was
in many ways, had yet a genuine power and beauty. This is not a mere
impression remembered from early youth. It is the reasoned and seasoned
judgment of middle age. Both books have been out of print for many
years; but I secured a second-hand copy of each not long ago, and found
them well worth reading again.

From the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the outbre