That _The Rubicon_ is the worst-written, falsest and emptiest of the decade, it would be, perhaps, too much to say. In these days of elastic publishing standards and moneyed amateurs, many queer things are done, and Mr. Benson’s work is a shade better than the poorest of the stuff which would-be novelists pay for the privilege of seeing in print.... A certain interest attaches, no doubt, to the demonstration which it affords that a young gentleman of university training can meet the female amateurs on their own ground, and be every whit as maudlin and absurd as they know how to be. But the sisterhood have an advantage over him in the fact that they can spell.... There are a score of glaring grammatical errors, to say nothing of the clumsiness and incompetency which mark three sentences out of five throughout the book. Bad workmanship might be put aside as the fault of inexperience, if the young man had an actual story to tell ... but there is nothing of that sort here.... The heroine is from time to time led over to as near [_sic_] the danger line of decency as the libraries will permit. She is made to utter several suggestive speeches, and once or twice quite skirts the frontier of the salacious....” (5) _The World._ (Length unknown: I cannot find the second half of it.) “But, alas! Eva Hayes in _The Rubicon_ is quite as vulgar, quite as blatant in the bad taste she is pleased to exhibit on every occasion, as her predecessor _Dodo_, and is dull beyond description into the bargain. From beginning to end of the two volumes there is not one spark or gleam of humour, or sign of true observation and knowledge of humanity.” (6) The (late) _St. James’s Budget_. (Six columns.) “ANOTHER UNBIRCHED HEROINE. It might have been supposed that the son of an Archbishop was hardly the sort of person to shine in this kind of literature, but Mr. Benson has taught us better than that. Yet our thanks are due to him for one thing: his book consists of only two volumes; it might have been in three.... How they Mate in the ‘Hupper Suckles.’ ... Languour, Cigarettes and Blasphemies....