The appearance of _David Grieve_ in February, 1892, four years after _Robert Elsmere_, was to me the occasion of very mixed feelings. The public took warmly to the novel from the beginning; in its English circulation and its length of life it has, I think, very nearly equaled _Robert Elsmere_; only after twenty-five years has it now fallen behind its predecessor. It has brought me correspondence from all parts and all classes, more intimate and striking, perhaps, than in the case of any other of my books. But of hostile reviewing at the moment of its appearance there was certainly no lack! It was violently attacked in the _Scots Observer_, then the organ of a group of Scotch Conservatives and literary men, with W.E. Henley at their head, and received unfriendly notice from Mrs. Oliphant in _Blackwood_. The two _Quarterlies_ opened fire upon it, and many lesser guns. A letter from Mr. Meredith Townsend, the very able, outspoken, and wholly independent colleague of Mr. Hutton in the editorship of the _Spectator_, gave me some comfort under these onslaughts! I have read every word of _David Grieve_. Owing to the unusual and unaccountable imbecility of the reviewing--(the _Athenaeum_ man, for example, does not even comprehend that he is reading a biography!)--it may be three months or so before the public fully takes hold, but I have no doubt of the ultimate verdict.... The consistency of the leading characters is wonderful, and there is not one of the twenty-five, except possibly Dora--who is not human enough--that is not the perfection of lifelikeness.... Louie is a vivisection. I have the misfortune to know her well ... and I am startled page after page by the accuracy of the drawing. Walter Pater wrote, "It seems to me to have all the forces of its predecessor at work in it, with perhaps a mellower kind of art." Henry James reviewed it--so generously!--so subtly!--in the _English Illustrated_. Stopford Brooke and Bishop Creighton wrote to me with a warmth and emphasis that soon healed the wounds of the _Scots Observer_; and that the public was with them, and not with my castigators, was quickly visible from the wide success of the book.