AR MR. LE GALLIENNE,--I have received some time ago, through our
friend Miss Taylor, a book of yours. But that was by no means my first
introduction to your name. The same book had stood already on my
shelves; I had read articles of yours in the Academy; and by a piece of
constructive criticism (which I trust was sound) had arrived at the
conclusion that you were "Log-roller." Since then I have seen your
beautiful verses to your wife. You are to conceive me, then, as only
too ready to make the acquaintance of a man who loved good literature
and could make it. I had to thank you, besides, for a triumphant
exposure of a paradox of my own: the literary-prostitute disappeared
from view at a phrase of yours--"The essence is not in the pleasure but
the sale." True you are right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore
but the libertine; and yet I shall let the passage stand. It is an
error, but it illustrated the truth for which I was contending, that
literature--painting--all art , are no other than pleasures, which we
turn into trades.

And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the intimate
loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome you give to what
is good--for the courtly tenderness with which you touch on my defects.
I begin to grow old; I have given my top note, I fancy;--and I have
written too many books. The world begins to be weary of the old booth;
and if not weary, familiar with the familiarity that breeds contempt. I
do not know that I am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am
sensitive indeed, when it is friendly; and when I read such criticism as
yours, I am emboldened to go on and praise God.

You are still young, and you may live to do much. The little artificial
popularity of style in England tends, I think, to die out; the British
pig returns to his true love, the love of the styleless, of the
shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly. There is trouble coming,
I think; and you may have to hold the fort for us in evil days.

Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting on you
(_bien a contre-coeur_) by my bad writing. I was once the best of
writers; landladies, puzzled as to my "trade," used to have their honest
bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript.--"Ah," they would
say, "no wonder they pay you for that";--and when I sent it in to the
printers, it was given to the boys! I was about thirty-nine, I think,
when I had a turn of sc