There is some girding and gibing, of course. Authors and critics cannot help nagging at one another. Some affect the grand air, ‘assume the god,’ and attempt to distinguish, as Mr. Matthews himself does in this little book of his, ‘between the authors who are not to be taken seriously, between the man of letters who is somebody and the scribbler who is merely, in the French phrase, _quelconque_, nobody in particular.’ Others, again, though leading quiet, decent lives, pass themselves off in literature as swaggering Bohemians, cut-and-thrust men. When these meet there must be blows--pen-and-ink blows, as bloodless as a French duel. All the time the stream of events flows gigantically along. But to the end of all things Man will require to be interested, to be taken out of himself, to be amused; and that interest, that zest, that amusement, he will find where he can--at home or abroad, with alien friends or alien enemies: what cares he? AUTHORS AND CRITICS. At the gracious Christmas season of the year we are reminded by nearly every post of our duty towards our neighbours, meaning thereby not merely those who live within what Wordsworth, with greater familiarity than precision, has defined as ‘an easy walk,’ but, with few exceptions, mainly of a party character, all mankind. The once wide boundaries of an Englishman’s sphere of hatred are sorely circumscribed. We are now expected not only to love all peoples, which in theory is easy enough, particularly if we are no great travellers, but to read their publications in translations unverified by affidavit, which in practice is very hard. Yet if we do not do it, we are Chauvinists, which has a horrid sound. Much is now expected of a man. Even in his leisure hours, when his feet are on the hob, he must be zealous in some cause, say Realism; serious, as he reflects upon the interests of literature and the position of authors; and, above all and hardest of all, he must be sympathetic. Irony he should eschew, and levity, but disquisitions on duty are never out of place. This disposition of mind, however praiseworthy, makes the aspect of things heavy, and yet this is the very moment selected by certain novelists, playwrights, and irresponsible persons of that kind, to whom we have been long accustomed to look for relaxation, to begin prating, not of their duty to please us, but of our duty to appreciate them. It appears that we owe a duty to our contemporaries who write, which is not merely passive, that is, to abstain from slandering them, but active, namely, to read and admire them. The authors who grumble and explain the merits of their own things are not the denizens of Grub Street, or those poor neglected souls to one of whom Mr. Alfred Austin lately addressed these consolatory words: ‘Friend, be not fretful if the voice of fame, Along the narrow way of hurrying men, Where unto echo echo shouts again, Be all day long not noisy with your name.’