It's a delightful world for that sort of thing!--so truly 'Christian,' pleasant and charitable! But the consequence of all these mean and petty 'personal' views of life is, that sound, unbiased, honest literary criticism is a dead art.

You can't get it anywhere.

And yet if you could, there's nothing that would be so helpful, or so strengthening to a man's work.
It would make him put his best foot foremost.

I should like to think that my book when it comes out, would be 'reviewed' by a man who had no prejudices, no 'party' politics, no personal feeling for or against me,--but who simply and solely considered it from an impartial, thoughtful, just and generous point of view--taking it as a piece of work done honestly and from a deep sense of conviction.

Criticism from fellows who just turn over the pages of a book to find fault casually wherever they can--( I've seen them at it in newspaper offices!) or to quote unfairly mere scraps of sentences without context,--or to fly off into a whirlwind of personal and scurrilous calumnies against an author whom they don't know, and perhaps never will know,--that sort of thing is quite useless to me.