.

A WARNING.
In the spring list of Mr Jedwood's publications, announcement was made of a new work by Alfred Yule.

It was called 'English Prose in the Nineteenth Century,' and consisted of a number of essays (several of which had already seen the light in periodicals) strung into continuity.
The final chapter dealt with contemporary writers, more especially those who served to illustrate the author's theme--that journalism is the destruction of prose style: on certain popular writers of the day there was an outpouring of gall which was not likely to be received as though it were sweet ointment.

The book met with rather severe treatment in critical columns; it could scarcely be ignored (the safest mode of attack when one's author has no expectant public), and only the most skilful could write of it in a hostile spirit without betraying that some of its strokes had told.

An evening newspaper which piqued itself on independence indulged in laughing appreciation of the polemical chapter, and the next day printed a scornful letter from a thinly-disguised correspondent who assailed both book and reviewer.