I said, just now, in speaking of the ‘We are Seven,’ that Mr. James Tobin--‘dear brother Jem’--was a bad critic. He showed himself so in this wise. When _Lyrical Ballads_ was going through the press, it was Cottle, I suppose, who gave a sight of it to dear brother Jem. He went to Wordsworth upon that, as one charged with a mission, and who would not be denied. There was one poem, brother Jem said, in the volume about to be published, which Wordsworth must cancel. ‘If published, it will make you everlastingly ridiculous.’ And Wordsworth begged to know which was the unfortunate piece. He answered, ‘It is called, “We are Seven.”’--‘Nay,’ said Wordsworth, ‘that shall take its chance, however.’ For he knew his strength. And another generation has reversed the judgment which Tobin’s approved. (_Gentleman’s Magazine_, May 1882.) BALZAC Through the ‘usual channels of information’--I mean, of course, the daily papers--many readers have become aware of the recent publication, in the _Revue de Paris_, of a series of Balzac’s letters. But few have understood their importance. Their interest for the student is great, for in a revelation of their author, that is impressive and almost final, they confirm to the full the view of Balzac which those of us have taken (I took it myself in my little _Life_ of him in the ‘Great Writers’ Series) who have perceived that by his temperament and inclination, as well as by his power, he is divided widely from those more sordid and limited realists at whose head it was erewhile the fashion to place him. Romance, it has been claimed--often by friend and foe alike--Romance was Victor Hugo’s, Materialism was Balzac’s. And now Balzac is found--and one has a right to be surprised, not of course at the kind, but only at the degree of the manifestation--he is found in mature years to be in his own conduct more simply and absolutely romantic than the most visionary or most warm-hearted schoolgirl. He works himself into a genuine and indescribably enthusiastic, but always respectful, attachment to a young married woman whom he has never seen, who inquires of him about his stories, who sends him _Thomas à Kempis_ (which he translates later into the _Médecin de Campagne_: ‘c’est l’Evangile en action’), who writes to him confidentially for a year or two before she meets him, who later receives him as her guest in Russian Poland, and whom he marries at last, in 1850, only several years after the death of her husband.