Criticism, among us all, has come to the pass of being shy of difficult cases, and no one, for that matter, practised it more in the hit-or-miss fashion and on happy-go-lucky lines than Mrs. Oliphant herself. She practised it, as she practised everything, on such an inordinate scale that her biographer, if there is to be one, will have no small task in the mere drafting of lists of her contributions to magazines and journals in general and to “Blackwood” in particular. She wrought in “Blackwood” for years, anonymously and profusely; no writer of the day found a _porte-voix_ nearer to hand or used it with an easier personal latitude and comfort. I should almost suppose in fact that no woman had ever, for half a century, had her personal “say” so publicly and irresponsibly. Her facilities of course were of her own making, but the wonder was that once made they could be so applied. The explanation of her extraordinary fecundity was a rare original equipment, an imperturbability of courage, health and brain, to which was added the fortune or the merit of her having had to tune her instrument at the earliest age. That instrument was essentially a Scotch one; her stream flowed long and full without losing its primary colour. To say that she was organised highly for literature would be to make too light of too many hazards and conditions; but few writers of our time have been so organised for liberal, for—one may almost put it—heroic production. One of the interesting things in big persons is that they leave us plenty of questions, if only about themselves; and precisely one of those that Mrs. Oliphant suggests is the wonder and mystery of a love of letters that could be so great without ever, on a single occasion even, being greater. It was of course not a matter of mere love; it was a part of her volume and abundance that she understood life itself in a fine freehanded manner and, I imagine, seldom refused to risk a push at a subject, however it might have given pause, that would help to turn her wide wheel. She worked largely from obligation—to meet the necessities and charges and pleasures and sorrows of which she had a plentiful share. She showed in it all a sort of sedentary dash—an acceptance of the day’s task and an abstention from the plaintive note from which I confess I could never withhold my admiration.