Q. What do you think of His Own Enemy?
A. Fancy the title somehow must refer to the Author. Clerical sketches full of unconscious humour. Two volumes but very big ones. Quite a relief to get to A False Start,—by Hawley Smart, which is most entertaining. But in this case the name of the Author is a safe guarantee for something worth reading.
Q. What do you think of A Modern Circe?
A. I fancy it is not quite so good as Molly Brown, by the same Author.
Q. What do you know of Molly Brown?
A. Nothing—I have not read it.
Q. What have you to say about Scamp?
A. That it is by the Author of The Silent Shadow, which I fancy must be the sequel of another novel called The Garrulous Ghost. In the first chapter the heroine Scamp, (a young lady) is discovered up a tree from which coign of vantage she throws a yellow-paper-covered novel at the gardener's head.
Q. The first chapter then must be vastly entertaining?
A. Vastly. I am absolutely dying to read the chapters that follow it, and will—some day.