Religious literature is particularly offensive in this respect, but I will give special consideration to it later. Our press-criticism of books is a very imperfect system of checking the vagaries and prejudices of authors. The criticisms are very frequently marked by ignorance of the subject and by personal or doctrinal hostility to the author, while the more learned and conscientious journals often show the most ludicrous pedantry. I once published a novel, pseudonymously, and was amused to read in a London weekly, which takes great pride in the smartness of its reviews, that the author had neither an elementary knowledge of the art of writing nor an elementary acquaintance with the subject on which he wrote. I had already at that time written about twenty volumes, and I had had twelve years’ intimate experience of the monastic life with which the book was concerned. Mr. Clement Shorter, not knowing the author, had generously described the book as “a brilliant novel.” On another occasion an historical work of mine was gravely censured, though no specific errors were noted in it, by our leading literary organ, on the ground that I was not an expert on the period. I looked up the same journal’s critique of a work written on the same historical period by an academic authority, and published by his university, and I found that, though there were dozens of errors in the work, it had passed the censor with full honours. I add with pleasure that some of the most generous notices of my works have appeared in papers (such as The
