_Broadly speaking, then, non-Victorianity and defective Suburbanity seem to be responsible for my slump in conformity. And, though I have to go to America for distinct proofs of it, I am obliged to recognise suggestions of the same critical decision nearer home. The first three of the following American reviews appeared at intervals in the same journal, showing how deeply the writer had taken my delinquency to heart:_ "_Probably written years ago, and found in an old desk._" "_A totally uncharacteristic and thoroughly disappointing 'historical romance._'" "'_A perfectly good cat,' that I have found in the literary ash-pan .... differs from everything that has come to us previously from the author's pen, as lifeless clay differs from living spirit._" "_Wherein lies the superiority of fiction that can give us nothing better than this?_" "_It is not, in itself, worth reading ... being an unpleasant, unexciting, and unoriginal experiment in historical romance ... leaving us disappointed of what we hoped for, and unedified by what we get._" "_The ghosts of 'David Copperfield' and 'Joseph Vance,' 'Alice-for-Short,' and the 'Little Marchioness,' may together weep pale spirit tears, or nobly repress them, in the hope that 'It Never can Happen Again._'" "_We can but hope for a return from this invented matter and artificial style to an unabashed Victorianism, from which it should appear the author is trying to escape._" _There is something spirited in a selection of quotations which begins and ends with such different conjectures as to the genesis of their subject. There can be no doubt about the earnestness of the hope expressed in the last one, for it is confirmed in the same words by more than one American journal_.[#] [#] The force of the unanimity of two or three American papers grows less when their reader perceives the verbal identity of the article throughout--and that their writers are not only unanimous, but unicorporeal. Numbers are impressive, but when they play fast and loose with plurality in this way, all their edge is taken off. _Another accusation against me is that I have given up nice people, and only write about nasty ones. Is this true? I myself thought Lucinda a nice enough girl, particularly when she was fishing in the sea for the phosphorescence. All the same, the following seemed to me quite a just comment, and very well worded: "There must have been something of Phaedra in Lucinda for her to act as she did, unless we are to revert to the belief in a baneful Aphrodite no human will can resist." Something of Phaedra--but still, I submit, not much, for Sir Oliver was passionately urgent; while Hippolytus--to borrow a phrase from Mrs. Steptoe, a quarter where I have unlimited credit--didn't want to any such a thing._