Charles Reade wrote one of the greatest novels produced in the Victorian era—I refer, of course, to “The Cloister and the Hearth”—and he was probably one of the greatest personalities of his own time. I knew him fairly well. Like Robert Buchanan, he was ready to rush into newspaper correspondence on the slightest provocation, and, having once commenced operations, he hit out in a way that was perfectly wonderful; yet—again like poor Buchanan—he was a man with a soft heart and a generous nature. He would roar through a whole column, hurling at his opponent the most weird and lurid denunciations, but he bore no malice. He was afflicted now and then with righteous indignation, but once the steam was let off, he cooed like a sucking-dove. In the height of his argument he would coin the most wonderful phrases, for Reade never raged as the heathen rage. Tom Purnell “had at” the old gentleman in the _Athenæum_, and Reade was out after his scalp in rather less than no time. His philippic on this occasion incidentally enriched the English language by the addition of a word. “Pseudonymuncule” was the epithet which he forged for the confusion of his opponent. Reade was a big burly man, with a grey beard, short clipped. Henry Byron once described him as “Great Briton,” and the phrase was apt enough. A tumultuous, overwhelming personage was Reade. His advertisements to “Thief Takers,” offering rewards to those who caught unscrupulous persons pirating his works, were surely the “maddest, merriest” things ever set up in type; yet they were quite seriously meant by their author. On the subject of piracy he was always in deadly earnest. One of his last contributions to the Press was a series of articles in the _Daily Telegraph_ on “Ambidextrous Man.” On this subject he waxed as emphatic, insistent, and eloquent as if the world were arrayed in one great stupid conspiracy against his contention. As a matter of fact, the world did not care a farthing about it one way or the other. Perhaps his most dramatic exhibition of violent indignation was afforded when the authorities wanted to acquire his house at Albert Gate. Among other devices to which he resorted in order to bring his persecutors to their senses was a very characteristic one. He had a huge board affixed to the forefront of his dwelling, and painted thereon, for all the world to see, was the legend “NABOTH’S VINEYARD.” One would have imagined that this would have stricken his enemies with a sense of shame. In that direction, however, I regret to say, it failed.