OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
"Respected ANDREW LANG," writes the Baron's Assistant Reader, "I have read your criticism in Longman's Magazine upon Mr. BARRY PAIN's In a Canadian Canoe. It's an ugly piece of bludgeon work, I admit, but not convincing to anyone who has read the book of which you speak. You tear away a line or two from the context, and ask your readers to say if that is wit or humour. How your admirers would have protested had any sacrilegious critic ventured to treat one of your own immortal works in this manner. Essays in Little, a book which, by the way, appeared in the same series for which Mr. BARRY PAIN wrote, is a pleasant and inoffensive compilation, but even Essays in Little would have presented a sorry appearance if, let us say, ANDREW LANG had reviewed it in this perfunctory and extractory and arbitrary fashion. I remember that in that case the critics were respectfully enthusiastic. Even Mr. BLUDYER would have doffed his cap, I fancy, to one
Who rhymes, researches and reviews,
Who sometimes writes like Genesis,
And sometimes in the Daily News.
For, after all, you stand high in the journalistic world. Your opinion passes current in many a select circle. Not even your vagaries seem to have power to offend the worshippers to whom your word has long been a law, whether you spoke of golf, of salmon, of folk-lore or of books. The censure of a BLUDYER (I wonder what has brought that formidable name to my mind) can do little to discourage you. But Mr. BARRY PAIN is a young writer. And yet some one remarked that In a Canadian Canoe was better even than Essays in Little, and the audacious words were actually printed in a journal to which ANDREW LANG is an occasional contributor. I myself have never dared to go so far. There is something sacred about an established reputation. And I can honestly say that I like the elegant airy trifles which your little Muse has bestowed upon us, though I confess to a weariness when the talk is too much of golf-clubs and salmon rods. And I admire your appreciation of the original work of other men. In the present case you and I disagree upon a question of taste. That is all. Tant pis pour moi, I hasten to add. But I disagree in good company, for I note with some amusement, that the PAYN whom you rightly praise, has a kind and encouraging word for the PAIN whom you so vehemently disparage. And in this case I will stake my all upon the eulogy of JAMES PAYN as against the censure of ANDREW LANG. As you did me the honour to refer to something I had written, I thought myself bound in politeness to reply, and am
Your obedient servant,
AN A.R. IN THE B. DE B.-W.'s OFFICE."