The Reviewer has the strange effrontery to select Mr. Joseph Conrad's
"Secret Agent" as an example of modern ugliness in fiction: a novel that
is simply steeped in the finest beauty from end to end. I do not suppose
that the _Edinburgh Review_ has any moulding influence upon the evolution
of the art of fiction in this country. But such nonsense may, after all,
do harm by confusing the minds of people who really are anxious to
encourage what is best, strongest, and most sane. The Reviewer in this
instance, for example, classes, as serious, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad,
and John Galsworthy, who are genuine creative forces, with mere dignified
unimportant sentimentalizers like Mr. W.B. Maxwell. While he was on the
business of sifting the serious from the unserious I wonder he didn't
include the authors of "Three Weeks" and "The Heart of a Child" among the
serious! Perhaps because the latter wrote "Pigs in Clover" and the former
was condemned by the booksellers! Nobody could have a lower opinion of
"Three Weeks" than I have. But I have never been able to understand why
the poor little feeble story was singled out as an awful example of female
licentiousness, and condemned by a hundred newspapers that had not the
courage to name it. The thing was merely infantile and absurd. Moreover, I
violently object to booksellers sitting in judgment on novels.




LETTERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA

[_16 May '08_]

The result of _Murray_ v. _The Times_ is very amusing. I don't know why
the fact that the _Times_ is called upon to pay £7500 to Mr. John Murray
should make me laugh joyously; but it does. Certainly the reason is not