f
'Mavis Clare,' Miss Corelli is at war with the reviewers. So is 'Mavis
Clare,' Miss Corelli's books circulate by the thousand. So do 'Mavis
Clare's.' 'Mavis Clare' is utterly indifferent to outside opinion. So is
Miss Corelli. In point of fact, if anybody thought Miss Corelli a woman
of astonishing genius, and wrote an honest account of her, he would
describe her precisely as Miss Corelli has described 'Mavis Clare.'

There is, in fact, a point up to which 'Mavis Clare' and Miss Corelli
are not to be separated. There are a score of things in any description
of the one which are indubitably true of the other. But when Miss
Corelli writes of 'Mavis Clare' in such terms as are now to be quoted we
begin to see that she is and must be indignant at the supposition that
she is still writing of herself: 'She is too popular to need
reviews. Besides, a large number of the critics--the "log-rollers"
especially--are mad against her for her success, and the public know it.
Clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction--all these
are hers, united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skill.
The potent, resistless, unpurchasable quality of Genius. She wrote what
she had to say with a gracious charm, freedom, and innate consciousness
of strength. She won fame without the aid of money, and was crowned so
brightly and visibly before the world that she was beyond criticism.'

But is it not just within the bounds of possibility that Miss Corelli
began with some idea of depicting herself, and, discarding that idea,
took too little care to obliterate resemblances? Even here she trenches
too closely upon the truth to escape the calumnious supposition that she
is writing of herself. She _is_ too popular to need reviews. She is at
war with the critics, and she has induced a very large portion of the
public to believe that 'a number of the critics--the "log-rollers"
especially--are mad against her for her success.'

Were I, the present writer, to invent a fictional character, to give him
for the initials of his name the letters D. C. M., to describe him
as awkward and burly, with an untidy head of grey hair, to make him a
novelist, a Bohemian and a wanderer, and then to paint him as a man of
genius and an astonishing fine fellow, I should expect to be told that
I had been guilty of a grave insolence. If I could honestly say that the
resemblances had never struck me, and that the egregious vanity of the
picture was a wh