faithful to the last, and of the heroic deaths of men? Is a boy, for instance, the worse for being taught that his hands were given him to defend his head; or, it need be, his cause and his country? I believe that there is more evil to be learned from what may be read in a week's issue of the daily papers than from all the books which deal with fighting and kindred adventures that are published in a generation. And while I hold this opinion I shall go on writing about such things, though sometimes I like to undertake an orthodox novel by way of a change. A man is not necessarily a sanguinary mind because he tells stories of how people killed each other in past ages, or in the land of fable."
Mr. Haggard claims to create every character in his novels, and he considers six months a fair time to complete an important work. He takes no share in the arrangements for the publication of his books, which are managed by Mr. Watt, the literary agent, and never reads a review of them, unless it chances to appear in some paper which he takes in, because he says that, if the notice be favourable, it is apt to give an author too good an idea of himself and, if the reverse, to worry and discourage him, and to disgust him with his work. Moreover, he is of opinion that the writer of a book knows a great deal more of its strong and weak points than any reviewer, however impartial, which all reviewers are not; and that Time is likely to be a better judge than either author or critics, all of whose individual opinions are, therefore, somewhat superfluous. He usually writes some three or four thousand words a day, sitting down at a great oaken writing table, with a liberal supply of foolscap paper, about half-past four, working on till dinner-time, and again resuming the thread of his story at night for an hour or two. In the morning the farm and his correspondence claim him. His favourite work, and the one he considers his best, is "Eric Brighteyes." "She" comes next. Amongst his own characters his love leans toward "Beatrice."
A Mexican idol.
