She does not make a spectacle of herself in illustrated interviews. Even
in agitating against votes for women she can maintain her dignity. (She
would be an ideal President of the Authors' Society.) But, then, similar
remarks apply, say, to Mr. W.E. Norris. Mr. W.E. Norris is as accomplished
an expert as Mrs. Humphry Ward. He is in possession of a much better
style. He has humour. He is much more true to life. He has never
compromised the dignity of his vocation. Nevertheless, the prospect of the
_Guardian_ reviewing Mr. W.E. Norris on its leader page is remote, for the
reason that though he pleases respectable and correct persons, he does not
please nearly so many respectable and correct persons as does Mrs. Humphry
Ward. If anybody has a right to the leader page of our unique daily, Mrs.
Humphry Ward is that body. My objection to the phenomenon is that the
_Guardian_ falsified its item of news. It deliberately gave the impression
that a serious work of art had appeared in "Diana Mallory." It ought to
have known better. It did know better. If our unique daily is to yield to
the snobbishness which ranks Mrs. Humphry Ward among genuine artists,
where among dailies are we to look for the shadow of a great rock?

* * * * *

Mrs. Humphry Ward's novels are praise-worthy as being sincerely and
skilfully done, but they are not works of art. They are possibly the best
stuff now being swallowed by the uneducated public; and they deal with the
governing classes; and when you have said that you have said all. Nothing
truly serious can happen in them. It is all make-believe. No real danger
of the truth about life!... I should think not, indeed! The fearful
quandary in which the editor of _Harper's_ found himself with "Jude the
Obscure" was a lesson to all Anglo-Saxon editors for ever more! Mrs.
Humphry Ward has never got nearer to life than, for instance, "Rita" has
got--nor so near! Gladstone, a thoroughly bad judge of literature, made