' . . . is obviously a first attempt. It evinces some power in
passages, but the characters lack distinction and are limited by
ordinary conventional rules. I cannot recommend it to you for its
own sake, and there is no prospect in it of anything better. The
author might be capable of short stories for a religious magazine.
It is singular that Miss C.'s Mariana, which you also sent me,
should be on somewhat the same lines, but Mariana, his first love,
is seduced by the man who forsakes her and, in the end, marries her
as his second wife. During his first marriage his intimacy with
Mariana continues and Miss C. thereby has an opportunity, which she
used with much power, for realistic scenes, that I believe will
prove attractive. I had no hesitation therefore in advising you to
purchase Mariana, although the plot is crude.' I could not take the
publisher's hint. I put my papers back into my box and obtained
another situation. In about a twelvemonth, notwithstanding my
disappointment, I was unable to restrain myself from trying again.
I fancied that I might be able to project myself into actual history
and appropriate it. I had been much attracted to Mary Tudor, and I
had studied everything about her on which I could lay my hands. I
did not love her, but I pitied her profoundly, and the Holbein
portrait of her seemed to me to indicate a terrible and pathetic
secret. I cannot, however, give a complete explanation of her
fascination for me. It is impossible to account for the resistless
magnetism with which one human being draws another. The elements
are too various and are compounded with too much subtlety. Bitter
Roman Catholic as Mary was, I wished I could have been one of the
ladies of her court, that I might have offered my heart to her and
might have wept with her in her sorrow. But my intense feeling for
a picture of the Queen was no qualification to paint the original,
and although I strove to keep close to facts she insensibly became