rick in the book, the idioms of another tongue; but the latter theory
was too false on its face to be tenable, and then people left off
caring about it. It is perhaps an idle infirmity, this request for the
personality of authors; yet it is indeed a response to the fact that
there never was one who did not prefer to be esteemed for himself rather
than for his writing,--and, ascending, may we love the works of God and
not the Lord himself? However, none were a whit the wiser for knowing
Miss Sheppard's name. It came to be accepted that we were to have
the books,--whence was no matter; they were so new, so strange, so
puzzling,--the beautiful, the quaint, and the faulty were so interwoven,
that nobody cared to separate these elements, to take the trouble to
criticize or to thank; and thus, though we all gladly enough received,
we kept our miserly voices to ourselves, and she never met with any
adequate recognition. After her first book, England quietly ignored
her,--they could not afford to be so startled; as Sir Leicester Dedlock
said, "It was really--really--"; she did very well for the circulating
libraries; and because Mr. Mudie insists on his three volumes or none
at all, she was forced to extend her rich webs to thinness. It is this
alone that injures "Counterparts" for many;--not that they would not
gladly accept the clippings in a little supplementary pamphlet, but
dissertations, they say, delay the action. In this case, though, that
is not true; for, besides the incompleteness of the book without the
objectionable dissertation, (that long conversation between Miss
Dudleigh and Sarona,) it answers the purpose of very necessary by-play
on the stage during preparation for the last and greatest scene. But had
this been a fault, it was not so much hers as the publishers'. Subject
to the whims of those in London, and receiving no reply to the
communication of her wishes from those in Edinburgh, she must have
experienced much injustice at the hands of her booksellers, and her
title-pages show them to have been perpetually changed. She herself
accepts with delight propositions from another quarter of the globe; the
prospect of writing for those across the water was very enticing to her;
and in one of her letters she says,--"It is my greatest ambition to
publish in America,--to have no more to do personally with English
publishers"; and finding it, after serious illness, impossible to
fulfil this engagement in season, the a