ea spread ere long that six or seven of
the leading bishops and judges had laid their heads together to produce a
volume, which should at once outbid "Essays and Reviews" and counteract
the influence of that then still famous work.

Reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves, and with them as with
everyone else _omne ignotum pro magnifico_. The book was really an able
one and abounded with humour, just satire, and good sense. It struck a
new note and the speculation which for some time was rife concerning its
authorship made many turn to it who would never have looked at it
otherwise. One of the most gushing weeklies had a fit over it, and
declared it to be the finest thing that had been done since the
"Provincial Letters" of Pascal. Once a month or so that weekly always
found some picture which was the finest that had been done since the old
masters, or some satire that was the finest that had appeared since Swift
or some something which was incomparably the finest that had appeared
since something else. If Ernest had put his name to the book, and the
writer had known that it was by a nobody, he would doubtless have written
in a very different strain. Reviewers like to think that for aught they
know they are patting a Duke or even a Prince of the blood upon the back,
and lay it on thick till they find they have been only praising Brown,
Jones or Robinson. Then they are disappointed, and as a general rule
will pay Brown, Jones or Robinson out.

Ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary world as I was,
and I am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up one morning
to find himself famous. He was Christina's son, and perhaps would not
have been able to do what he had done if he was not capable of occasional
undue elation. Ere long, however, he found out all about it, and settled
quietly down to write a series of books, in which he insisted on saying
things which no one else would say even if they could, or could even if
they would.

He has got himself a bad literary character. I said to him laughingly
one day that he was like the man in the last century of whom it was said
that nothing but such a character could keep down such parts.

He laughed and said he would rather be like that than like a modern
writer or two whom he could name, whose parts were so poor that they
could be kept up by nothing but by such a character.

I remember soon after one of these books was published I h