The most patient of investigators in strange regions will make slips sometimes. Mr. Moore, for instance, investigating the racing stable, treats us to a view of a horse whose legs are tightly bandaged from his knees to his forelocks, and his vulgarest peasants and servants say ‘that is he,’ or ‘if it be.’ One characteristic of the common speech of our country he has caught with accuracy, though it can scarcely be said that it needed much observation to secure it. The very objectionable word ‘bloody,’ as it is used by the vulgar, is Mr. Moore’s ‘standby’ in ‘Esther Waters,’ It is very likely that it takes a sort of daring to introduce the word freely into a work of fiction, but the courage does not seem very much more respectable than the word. VIII.--MR. S. R. CROCKETT--IAN MACLAREN When I undertook the writing of this series, Mr. S. R. Crockett, except for his ‘Mad Sir Uchtred of the Hills,’ was unknown to me by actual reading. My opinion of that story was not a high one. I thought it, and on a second reading still think it, feebly pretentious. But for some reason or another Mr. Crockett’s name has been buzzed about in such a prodigality of praise that it came natural to believe and hope that later work from his pen had shown a quality which the first little _brochure_ had not revealed, and that the world had found in him a genuine addition to its regiment of literary workmen. The curiosity with which a section of the newspaper press has been inspired as to Mr. Crockett’s personal whereabouts, as to his comings and goings, his engagements for the future, and his prices ‘per thousand words,’ would have seemed to indicate that in him we had discovered a person of considerably more than the average height. The result of a completer perusal of his writings is not merely destructive of this hope. It is positively stunning and bewildering. Mr. Crockett is not only not a great man, but a rather futile very small one. The unblushing effrontery of those gentlemen of the press who have set _him_ on a level with Sir Walter is the most mournful and most contemptible thing in association with the poorer sort of criticism which has been encountered of late years.