Each number should contain a character sketch of some public figure, and I should not object if it were malicious. It is a sign of vulgarity, I am told, to feel curious about the routine of other people’s lives. A number of critics dealt very harshly with Mrs Watts-Dunton’s little book on Swinburne. He was a poet, they said, a great poet. His work remains. That is all that matters. What purpose is served by this trivial gossip about boots and comforters and garters. Personally I found her book admirably entertaining. I felt, after reading it, that I knew Swinburne better than I had before. Routine is, after all, the framework of a man’s life; and it is interesting for a writer to learn how others work; at what time they write; how many words they write a day; whether they work steadily throughout the year, or in short bursts of intense concentration. It may dispel the illusion to watch a play from the wings of a theatre instead of from the stalls. But there are some things about the showman that can be only learnt behind the scenes. At any rate, that is the sort of stuff that I would like to read in my paper.” The fire had begun to burn merrily in the grate; the warm light fell caressingly in a glowing haze on books and chairs and pictures; and I turned towards it from the book-shelves that had become to me inhospitable, wondering why one’s interests should be kept separate in literature if they are not so kept in life; why one book should be devoted exclusively to fiction, another to criticism, another to reminiscence, and another to sport. Would it not be for a change amusing to find unity of theme and subject abandoned for a unity of tone. And suddenly I knew in what words I should reply to Grant Richards in the morning. “My dear Richards,” I should write, “I am afraid that I have no news for you about my novel. But I shall be sending you quite soon, I think, a book that you will, I hope, like a very great deal better. It will not be fiction, though there will be short stories in it, nor a sporting book, though there will be there both football and cricket: there will be much talk of books, but it will not be literary criticism. Indeed, I do not know to what shelf the librarian at the _Times_ Book Club will consign it.” It would be a sort of cousin to my dream paper; one feature only would be omitted. There would be no malicious personalities. There are some things that one may like to read, but does not care to write. For the sake of a few pennies and a few paragraphs, I would not run the risk of injuring a friendship.