P.S.—Is the moon mineral?
THE GENERAL LITERARY REVIEW COMPANY, LIMITED.
Capital £100,000,000, in 20,000,000 Shares of £5 each.
This Company has been formed to acquire, combine into one, and carry on the various old-established businesses of literary reviewing hitherto carried on separately by Messrs. Andrew Lang (who will join the Board after allotment), Grant Allen, W. E. Gladstone, H. D. Traill, T. P. O'Connor, Walter Besant, Elkin Mathews, John Lane, Q., A.T.Q.C., Quiller Couch, Richard Le Gallienne, and others. All these gentlemen have consented to act as Directors. The advantages of the scheme are obvious. Hitherto critical opinion, as printed in the daily, weekly, and monthly press, has been so diversified as to make it impossible for the public to form a settled judgment on books. For instance, a work may be described in one place as "possessing in the highest degree the master qualities of brilliant humour and profound pathos"; while, in another notice, published on the same day, it may be condemned as "an essay in stupid buffoonery, which mistakes inversion for paradox, and makes a parade of sentiment as laughable as its efforts at humour are melancholy." It is the intention of the Directors to change all this. Frequent Board-Meetings will be held, at which all books sent for review will be carefully considered, with a view to deciding how they shall be treated. The decisions thus come to will be carried out in a series of articles extending with absolute uniformity over the whole field of contemporary literature.
Profits.
The profits of the business to be thus carried on must be gigantic. After a careful inspection of the books of all British newspapers the well-known accountants Messrs. Leger and Ballance have informed the Directors that the gains of these papers from reviewing and literary gossip alone amount to £10,632,009 12s. 7d. annually. As these papers will henceforth, on their literary side, be worked by the Directors with all the latest improvements, even larger gains may be looked for in the immediate future.
Booming.
This department will be managed by a paragraphist of unrivalled experience, who will have under his orders a large staff of skilled assistants thoroughly instructed in the use of the new patent mitrailleuse Boomerangs, ten of which will be fixed in the chief office of the Company at No. 1, Log Rolls Yard. Literary shareholders to the amount of £500 and upwards will be entitled to a preferential boom by way of bonus.