ceased to think of his innocence or guilt-she began merely to feel for him. The passionate outbursts which still broke from his pleading tones no longer frightened her; she was moved by the faltering tenderness of hands strange to gentle uses, and was touched by the very intensity of his own self-pity. He spoke of his early life of her mother, her childhood, his home; and in contrast he drew the picture of his present friendlessness and loneliness, his inevitable warfare with the world. Then at last, drawing nearer to her, leaning forward and taking one hand in his, his hard face lit with that same smile of yearning tenderness, he made his supreme appeal.

The only love I can ever hope for is yours. Maggie, will you give it me? I am your father, though you know me to-night for the first time. Maggie, will you come with me? Will you be to me as daughter what your mother was as wife? Will you take her place? Think, Maggie; think of her now. She may be watching you at this moment.

wish you to give me.'

Think of the answer she would

Pale and motionless she listened to him. One idea had taken possession of her: her father had come for her, and she must go with him; that was all she knew. She never had to decide. The alternative of refusing to go with him did not present itself to her mind. From the first she had given herself up to him; and as a sense of the meaning of her choice, of its hopelessness, came home to her, it almost deprived her of consciousness.

Richard Leigh sat watching her, but the intensity of his own feelings prevented him from taking the measure of hers. 'Would she go with him?' was the question beating in his brain, and the suspense in which he awaited her answer strained the limit of his self-control. It was the supreme moment of his fate.

Maggie, will you come with me?' he gasped, almost inaudibly.

There was no answer in the pale blank face; no change in the staring eyes which remained fixed upon him. He repeated his question, a little louder than before.

'Maggie, speak, will you come with me?'

She heard this time. The lost look left her eyes, and in its place was a look of appeal which would have made any other man relent and change his purpose. But the eyes of Richard Leigh

were blind. His thought was centred in his daughter's answer, and her sufferings passed before him unnoticed. Again he repeated his question

'Maggie, Maggie, for God's sake, speak! say, will you come with me?'

She gave him the answer he was waiting for. 'Yes, I will go.'

He seized her, and took her in his arms.

"Thank God!' he

(To be continued.)

VOL. XXIII.-NO. 134, N.S.

7

་

GLEAMS OF MEMORY; WITH SOME

REFLECTIONS

BY JAMES PAYN.

CHAPTER II.

I HAD been 'devoted to literature' of a kind that is injuriously called 'light' from childhood, and had spoilt reams of good paper with juvenile compositions. There were probably few undergraduates who had written for so many periodicals (which is, however, a very different thing from writing in them) as I had; and I now published a volume of poems, which, if not a financial success, proved a great advantage to me. I may venture to think they had some merit, since they at once introduced me to some of the more genial College authorities, whose acquaintance as a non-reading man I could never have made. W. G. Clark, of whom I have already spoken, was one of them, whose knowledge of English literature was not inferior to the classical attainments for which he was so widely known. He was very literally a host in himself, and gave the brightest dinner parties in College. Of my obligations to him, both then and for years afterwards, I can never speak too highly. George Brimley the critic was another of those elder friends, whom it would be ungrateful indeed not to remember, for he gave me my first review-in the 'Spectator.' I have had hundreds of notices, at least as favourable as I deserved, since then, but none which gave me such ineffable pleasure. I will not say it was a turning point in my career,' as is the usual term for such things, because I don't suppose that anything could have turned me from the course I had marked out for myself, but it encouraged me in it exceedingly.

There is a great deal of bad feeling among authors in respect to criticism, which mainly arises, I think, from an exaggerated estimate of its power for good or evil; whereas it can do little good to a bad book and little harm to a good one. The complaints seem to come chiefly from the writers of fiction, and it is quite true that reviewers of that class of literature are not often of a high class. The latest joined of the staff are put on for that 1 Copyright, 1894, in the United States.

duty; the young dogs are 'blooded' on the novels. Their contributions to criticism would hardly be of much importance save for the belief many people attach to whatever appears in print. Strange to say there are no more superstitious folks as regards this matter than journalists themselves. They have been through the mill,' they know all the ropes that move her ladyship the Press, but they retain a mysterious respect for 'pretty Fanny's ways' that is quite touching in its simplicity. Used as they are to type they never get 'case' hardened. I have known a journalist speak quite gravely of an essay upon some great genius about whom everybody has made up their minds, though he knew it was written by some one who knew nothing about the subject, simply because it appeared in a periodical of good standing. Nothing can be more ridiculous than this fetish, but if it influences the journalist how much more must it affect the novelist!

It is not to be disputed that a favourable review may assist a young author in bringing him on' (like early asparagus), and there are critics who have the intelligence to recognise merit and the courage to express their opinions; but the ordinary reviewer, who is also more bent upon doing himself justice than his author, is 'funky' of bestowing praise where it has not yet been given, and finds detraction much more easy work. This is the real casus belli which the young author has with the reviewer. As for the old and established author, it may still heighten his pulses to be praised, but it makes no difference to his literary circulation. Those who like him read him, however he is depreciated by the critics, and those who do not like him will not be induced to read him by the most eulogistic recommendations. Upon the whole, therefore, I do not think the authors' grievance is a very grave one, and if a writer is so sensitive as to be made miserable for more than twelve hours by an unfavourable review, it seems to me that he has mistaken his profession. An author of eminence once told me that his wretchedness arising from this source endured with him precisely for a week, until the next issue of the peccant periodical, when it pitched into somebody else.

Another matter which is much debated in connection with literary affairs is whether a writer is ever justified in bringing out a book at his own expense. Of course the publisher is the proper person to take the risks if you can find one; but suppose the book is a volume of poems? If Milton, junior, should bring the MS. of a new 'Paradise Lost' in his pocket, and nothing else, to Pater

noster Row, in manuscript it would remain. No publisher, therefore, I need hardly say, defrayed the expenses of my little volume of verse, the production of which, however, I have never regretted: its social profits were very considerable, though its financial ones were nil. For intelligent society is just what a young man of character is most in need of and finds it most difficult to get. His usual difficulty is that he can find no one to sympathise with his ambition, or share his tastes; indolent and pleasure-loving, as are most of his class, he fritters his time away in amusements, which in future life he cannot easily dispense with, even if he does not become a confirmed idler; above all, he acquires no sense of comparison, and takes for wit what is merely flippancy, and for humour what is only the possession of high spirits. In later life he generally becomes a citizen of Bohemia, which he believes to be the greatest Republic in the world, though it is merely a metropolitan district.

6

From this fate, as I believe, the publication of my little. volume saved me, by introducing me to a higher sphere of companionship than was to be found in ordinary undergraduate life. The days when a College fellow meant a don have long departed, and even in my time there were many men-at all events at Trinity-whose tastes were not restricted to academic pursuits, but who were in closer touch with the modern world of letters than any I had yet met with. Indeed up to that date I had only met with one man in any way connected with literature, Thomas Noel, a very hermit as regarded any knowledge of his literary brethren, and who was so little known himself that his pathetic poem The Paupers' Drive' was for years attributed to Thomas Hood. He was a bookworm of the legitimate type, and a great student of Elizabethan literature. Boy as I was, I was the means of making him known to Miss Mitford, of whom he became a constant correspondent, and who introduced his poems to the public in her 'Recollections of a Literary Life.' A childless widower, he lived alone, in a picturesque but secluded residence, and though one of the gentlest and most affectionate of men was shunned by his neighbours, for the heinous offence, as I always understood, of having buried the only child with whom he had been blessed in his garden instead of the churchyard. In these days it would have been considered, at the worst, but an eccentric act of affection. Indeed, after a long life during which there have been many changes in public opinion, there is nothing, as it seems to me,