Reviewers like to think that for aught they know they are patting a
duke or even a prince of the blood upon the back, and lay it on
thick till they find they have been only praising Brown, Jones, or
Robinson. Then they are disappointed, and as a general rule will pay
Brown, Jones, or Robinson out.
Ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary world as I
was, and I am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up
one morning to find himself famous. He was Christina's son, and
perhaps would not have been able to do what he had done if he were not
capable of occasional undue elation. Ere long, however, he found out
all about it, and settled quietly down to write a series of books,
in which he insisted on saying things which no one else would say even
if they could, or could even if they would.
He has got himself a bad literary character. I said to him
laughingly one day that he was like the man in the last century of
whom it was said that nothing but such a character could keep down
such parts.
He laughed and said he would rather be like that than like a
modern writer or two whom he could name, whose parts were so poor that
they could be kept up by nothing but by such a character.
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