This sudden display of nervousness on the part of authors is perhaps partly due to their unreasonable confusion of the Reviewers with the Readers. The great mass of criticism is, delivered _vivâ voce_, and never appears in print at all. This spoken criticism is of far greater importance than printed criticism. It is repeated again and again, in all sorts of places, on hundreds of occasions, and cannot fail to make dints in people’s minds, whereas the current printed criticism of the week runs lightly off the surface. ‘Press notices,’ as they are called, have no longer ‘boodle’ in them, if I may use a word the genius of Mr. Stevenson has already consecrated for all delightful use. The pen may, in peaceful times, be mightier than the sword, but in this matter of criticism of our contemporaries the tongue is mightier than the pen. Authors should remember this. The volume of unprinted criticism is immense, and its force amazing. Lunching last year at a chophouse, I was startled to hear a really important oath emerge from the lips of a clerkly-looking man who sat opposite me, and before whom the hurried waiter had placed a chump-chop. ‘Take the thing away,’ cried the man with the oath aforesaid, ‘and bring me a loin chop.’ Then, observing the surprise I could not conceal that an occurrence so trifling should have evoked an expression so forcible, the man muttered half to himself and half to me: ‘There is nothing I hate so much in the wide world as a chump-chop, unless indeed it be’ (speaking slowly and thoughtfully) ‘the poetry of Mr. ----,’ and here the fellow, unabashed, named right out the name of a living poet who, in the horrid phrase of the second-hand booksellers, is ‘much esteemed’ by himself, and some others. After this explosion of feeling the conversation between us became frankly literary, but I contrived to learn in the course of it that this chump-chop-hater was a clerk in an insurance office, and had never printed a line in his life. He was, as sufficiently appears, a whimsical fellow, full of strange oaths and stranger prejudice, but for criticism of contemporary authors--keen, searching, detached, genuine--it would be impossible to find his equal in the Press. The man is living yet--he was lately seen in Cheapside, elbowing his way through the crowd with a masterful air, and so long as he lives he criticises, and what is more, permeates his circle--for he must live somewhere--with his opinions. These are your gods, O Authors! It is these voices which swell the real chorus of praise or blame. These judges are untainted by hatreds, strangers to jealousy; your vanity, your egotism, your necktie, your anecdotes, do not prevent _them_ from enjoying your books or revelling in your humour, be it new or old, for they do not know you by sight; but neither will the praise of the _Athenæum_, or of any newspaper, or the conventional respect of other authors save your productions, your poem,