“That’s too hard on you,” said he gravely. “Get some of the others of the staff to help you. You mustn’t neglect your reading for the sake of reviewing.”
I didn’t.
Upon another occasion the son of this gentleman left a message for me that he had taken a three-volume novel, the name of which he had forgotten, from a parcel of books that had arrived the previous day, but that he would like a review of it to appear the next morning, as his wife said it was a capital story.
He was quite annoyed when the review did not appear.
But there are, I have reason to know, many people who have got no more modern ideas respecting that branch of journalism known as reviewing.
“Are you reading that book for pleasure or to criticise it?” I was asked not so long ago by a young woman who ought to have known better. “Oh, I forgot,” she added, before I could think of anything sharp to say by way of reply—“I forgot: if you meant to review it you wouldn’t read it.”
I thought of the sharp reply two days later.
So it is, I say, that some of the people who read what we write from day to day, have still got only the vaguest notions of how our work is turned out.
Long ago I used to wish that the reviewers would only read the books I wrote before criticising them; but now my dearest wish is that they will review them (favourably) without reading them.