thinks and feels
about the matter? No! he has been told he has been dull of late. He
feels he must write a spicy review. He has a cold in his head, he is
savage accordingly. A friend of his tells him he knows the author, or he
recognizes the name of a college friend--he will be lenient. The book is
on a subject which he meant to take up himself; and, without knowing it,
he is jealous. I need not multiply further these suggestions which will
occur to anyone. We all remember the dinner in Paternoster Row given by
Mrs. Bungay, the publisher's wife. Bungay and Bacon are at daggers
drawn; each married the sister of the other, and they were for some time
the closest friends and partners. Since they have separated it is a
furious war between the two publishers, and no sooner does one bring out
a book of travels or poems, but the rival is in the field with something
similar. We all remember the delight of Mrs. Bungay when the Hon. Percy
Popjoy drives up in a private hansom with an enormous grey cab horse and
a tiger behind, and Mrs. Bacon is looking out grimly from the window on
the opposite side of the street. "In the name of commonsense, Mr.
Pendennis," Shandon asked, "what have you been doing--praising one of Mr.
Bacon's books? Bungay has been with me in a fury this morning at seeing
a laudatory article upon one of the works of the odious firm over the
way." Pen's eyes opened wide with astonishment. "Do you mean to say,"
he asked, "that we are to praise no books that Bacon publishes; or that
if the books are good we are to say that they are bad?" Pen says, "I
would rather starve, by Jove, and never earn another penny by my pen,
than strike an opponent an unfair blow, or if called upon to place him,
rank him below his honest desert."

There was a trial in London in December, 1878, which illustrates the
subject I am upon. It was an action for libel by the well-known artist,
Mr. Whistler, against Mr. Ruskin, the most distinguished art critic of
the age. The passage in the writing of Mr. Ruskin, of which Mr. Whistler
complained, contains, I think, almost every fault which, according to my
divisions, a criticism can contain. The passage is as follows:--"For Mr.
Whistler's own sake no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir
Coutts Lindsey ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which
the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of
wilful imposture. I have seen an