e
an author and his work to so many people incapable of judging for
themselves. No man or woman could tell him anything in the way of praise
or blame which he did not already know quite well; commendation was
pleasant, but it so often aimed amiss, and censure was for the most part
so unintelligent. In the case of this latest novel he dreaded the
sight of a review as he would have done a gash from a rusty knife.
The judgments could not but be damnatory, and their expression in
journalistic phrase would disturb his mind with evil rancour. No one
would have insight enough to appreciate the nature and cause of his
book's demerits; every comment would be wide of the mark; sneer,
ridicule, trite objection, would but madden him with a sense of
injustice.

His position was illogical--one result of the moral weakness which was
allied with his aesthetic sensibility. Putting aside the worthlessness
of current reviewing, the critic of an isolated book has of course
nothing to do with its author's state of mind and body any more than
with the condition of his purse. Reardon would have granted this, but he
could not command his emotions. He was in passionate revolt against
the base necessities which compelled him to put forth work in no way
representing his healthy powers, his artistic criterion. Not he had
written this book, but his accursed poverty. To assail him as the author
was, in his feeling, to be guilty of brutal insult. When by ill-hap a
notice in one of the daily papers came under his eyes, it made his blood
boil with a fierceness of hatred only possible to him in a profoundly
morbid condition; he could not steady his hand for half an hour after.
Yet this particular critic only said what was quite true--that the novel
contained not a single striking scene and not one living character;
Reardon had expressed himself about it in almost identical terms. But
he saw himself in the position of one sickly and all but destitute man
against a relentless world, and every blow directed against him appeared
dastardly. He could have cried 'Coward!' to the writer who wounded him.

The would-be sensational story which was now in Mr Jedwood's hands had
perhaps more merit than 'Margaret Home'; its brevity, and the fact that
nothing more was aimed at than a concatenation of brisk events, made it
not unreadable. But Reardon thought of it with humiliation. If it
were published as his next work it would afford final proof to such
sympathetic