hurting herself have helped her to make a successful use of her great gift. She is not afraid of anything. She “insists on herself,” and is unique,’ It is to be noted that all this is said by Miss Corelli of ‘Mavis Clare,’ Miss Corelli is at war with the reviewers. So is ‘Mavis Clare,’ Miss Corelli’s books circulate by the thousand. So do ‘Mavis Clare’s.’ ‘Mavis Clare’ is utterly indifferent to outside opinion. So is Miss Corelli. In point of fact, if anybody thought Miss Corelli a woman of astonishing genius, and wrote an honest account of her, he would describe her precisely as Miss Corelli has described ‘Mavis Clare.’ There is, in fact, a point up to which ‘Mavis Clare’ and Miss Corelli are not to be separated. There are a score of things in any description of the one which are indubitably true of the other. But when Miss Corelli writes of ‘Mavis Clare’ in such terms as are now to be quoted we begin to see that she is and must be indignant at the supposition that she is still writing of herself: ‘She is too popular to need reviews. Besides, a large number of the critics--the “log-rollers” especially--are mad against her for her success, and the public know it. Clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction--all these are hers, united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skill. The potent, resistless, unpurchasable quality of Genius. She wrote what she had to say with a gracious charm, freedom, and innate consciousness of strength. She won fame without the aid of money, and was crowned so brightly and visibly before the world that she was beyond criticism.’ But is it not just within the bounds of possibility that Miss Corelli began with some idea of depicting herself, and, discarding that idea, took too little care to obliterate resemblances? Even here she trenches too closely upon the truth to escape the calumnious supposition that she is writing of herself. She _is_ too popular to need reviews. She is at war with the critics, and she has induced a very large portion of the public to believe that ‘a number of the critics--the “log-rollers” especially--are mad against her for her success.’ Were I, the present writer, to invent a fictional character, to give him for the initials of his name the letters D. C. M., to describe him as awkward and burly, with an untidy head of grey hair, to make him a novelist, a Bohemian and a wanderer, and then to paint him as a man of genius and an astonishing fine fellow, I should expect to be told that I had been guilty of a grave insolence. If I could honestly say that the resemblances had never struck me, and that the egregious vanity of the picture was a wholly imaginary thing, I should, of course, desire to be believed, and I should, of course, deserve to be believed. But I should encounter doubt, and I should not be disposed to wonder at it. If I were annoyed with anybody I should be annoyed with myself for having given such a handle to the world’s ill-nature.