erary, involves the giving of pain to your opponents, and warfare is a necessary factor in the evolution of the race. An otherwise entirely amiable lady assured the Reviewer that Mr. Howells is the only person in the world to whom she would like to do a personal injury. He had only attacked her idols, but he must have inflicted much pain to raise such bitterness in so gentle a bosom. And still again, modern criticism cannot be content with disliking, it must make faces and call names. But Mr. Howells does not hesitate to stigmatize those who disagree with his estimate of Henry James as "critical groundlings," nor to speak disrespectfully not only of Rider Haggard, but of those who read his romances, "The world," he says, "often likes to forget itself, and he brings on his heroes. his goblins, his feats, his hair-breadth escapes, his imminent deadly breaches, and the poor, foolish, childish old world renews the excitements of its nonage." This looks like a neat method of making faces not only at Mr. Haggard, but at Andrew Lang, R. H. Hutton, and all his coterie of admirers.
To be quite candid, the Reviewer himself, much as he prefers the novel of incident and emotion to that of photographic "realism," has found himself yawning over "Allan Quatermain" (Harper & Brothers). Perhaps this is because it is inferior to "King Solomon's Mines" or "She." And yet, and yet—there is the same direct, vivid narration, the same passion, the same affluence of imagination, the same brilliant color just verging upon gaudiness. "Allan Quatermain" carries on the fortunes of the band of adventurers who discovered King Solomon's Mines. Somehow one gets weary of these tremendous Englishmen, who, with a dozen men or so, attack a camp of two hundred and fifty Maori and suffer not a savage to escape; who are sucked in by underground rivers, who are nearly killed by magnificent flaming jets of natural gas, who are attacked by monstrous crabs of almost human intelligence, who discover a strange and wondrous land inhabited by a semi-civilized white race, who excite love and jealousy in the two beautiful queens, and introduce strife and a tremendous civil war into the mysterious country,—until at last the curtain falls upon the leader of the enterprise, Sir Henry Curtis, calmly seated with his bride, Queen Nyleptha, upon the throne of a once more united Zu-Vendi-land. An old Zulu chief, Umslopogaas, who accompanies these heroes, is quite the most striking figure. He is drawn with all the careless vigor and generous, rollicking extravagance of the warriors in mediæval romance, and is as thoroughly delightful as any paladin of them all. In the caricature of the little Frenchman, Alphonse, Mr. Haggard has been tempted to display his humor. Now, Mr. Haggard has no humor.
To the end of "Allan Quatermain" Mr. Haggard has appended, under the heading of "Authorities," a list of the persons and the books that have been of any assistance to him in the preparation of his novel. This is done to ward off the attacks of the literary detective, but it will probably he fruitless; and in any event the literary detective is too small an animalcule to be deferred to in this way. What should be the main object of a writer?—a selfish desire to tickle his own vanity, or an altruistic pleasure in giving pleasure to his reader? If the latter, and if he succeeds, why should the reader inquire too curiously into the sources of his pleasure? In enjoying a dish you don't care to know where its constituent elements came from. The Reviewer confesses that it is difficult for him to summon up any indignation over the most flagrant instances of plagiarism. He is rejoiced that Shakespeare and Mollière had so little literary con-
