ridiculous. Still, the facts were "as stated," and could not be
altogether denied.

Looking back at the lucky accident which brought the right book, the
right reviewer, and the properly-tuned editors together, I am bound to
say that I think that the editors were right and that I had produced
good copy. At any rate, their view being what it was, I have no sort of
doubt that they were quite right to express it as plainly and as
generously as they did to me. To have followed the conventional rule of
not puffing up a young man with praise and to have guarded their true
opinion as a kind of guilty secret would have been distinctly unfair to
me, nay, prejudicial. There are, I suppose, a certain number of young
people to whom it would be unsafe to give a full measure of eulogy. But
these are a small minority. The ordinary young man or young woman is
much more likely to be encouraged or sometimes even alarmed by unstinted
praise. Generous encouragement is the necessary mental nourishment of
youth, and those who withhold it from them are not only foolish but
cruel. They are keeping food from the hungry.

If my editors had told me that they thought the review rather a poor
piece of work, I should, by "the law of reversed effort," have been
almost certain to have taken up a combative line and have convinced
myself that it was epoch-making. When a man thinks himself overpraised,
if he has anything in him at all, he begins to get anxious about his
next step. He is put very much on his mettle not to lose what he has
gained.

It may amuse my readers, if I quote a few sentences from the article,
and allow them to see whether their judgment coincides with that of my
chiefs at _The Spectator_ on a matter which was for me fraught with