at last. Through the favouring
influence of Mr. Marriott he obtained a temporary job on the London
Standard as a critic of fiction. It lasted three weeks. Then he got a
regular situation on the same paper, a situation which I think he kept for
several years. _The Wooden Horse_ was published by a historic firm.
Statistics are interesting and valuable--_The Wooden Horse_ sold seven
hundred copies. The author's profits therefrom were less than the cost of
typewriting the novel. History is constantly repeating itself.

"Mr. Walpole was quite incurable, and he kept on writing novels. _Maradick
at Forty_ was the next one. It sold eleven hundred copies, but with no
greater net monetary profit to the author than the first one. He made,
however, a more shining profit of glory. _Maradick at Forty_--as the
phrase runs--'attracted attention.' I myself, though in a foreign country,
heard of it, and registered the name of Hugh Walpole as one whose progress
must be watched."

=iv=

Not so long ago there was published in England, in a series of
pocket-sized books called the _Kings Treasuries of Literature_ (under the
general editorship of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch), a small volume called _A
Hugh Walpole Anthology_. This consisted of selections from Mr. Walpole's
novels up to and including _The Captives_. The selection was made by Mr.
Walpole himself.

I think that the six divisions into which the selections fell are
interesting as giving, in a few words, a prospectus of Walpole's work. The
titles of the sections were "Some Children," "Men and Women," "Some
Incidents," "London," "Country Places," and "Russia." The excerpts under
the heading "Some Children" are all from _Jeremy_ and _The Golden
Scarecrow_. The "Men and Women" are Mr. Perrin and Mrs. Comber, from _The
Gods and Mr. Perrin_; Mr. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie, from _The Green
Mirror_; and Mr. Crashaw, from _The Captives_. The "Incidents" are chosen
with an equal felicity--we have the theft of an umbrella from _The Gods
and Mr. Perrin_ and, out of the same book, the whole passage in which Mr.
Perrin sees double. There is also a scene from _Fortitude_, "After Defeat."
After two episodes from _The Green Mirror_, this portion of the anthology
is closed with the tragic passage from _The Captives_ in which Maggie
finds her uncle.

Among the London places pictured by Mr. Walpole in his novels and in this
pleasant anthology are Fleet Street, Chelsea, Portland Place, The Strand,
and M