“The sketch of Semiramis is at any rate spirited, though I had to twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra, of course, I have taken from Shakespeare: what a wench she was! I could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible to pass over so piquant a character. * * * Marie Antoinette I have not quite acquitted. It would be uninteresting,--perhaps untrue. I have accused her lovingly, and have kissed when I have scourged. I trust the British public will not be angry because I do not whitewash Caroline, especially as I go along with them altogether in abusing her husband.” To Mr. Booker, of _The Literary Chronicle_, she is gently menacing, reminding him that she has engaged to review his _New Tale of a Tub_ for _The Morning Breakfast Table_;[403] “Indeed, I am about it now, and am taking great pains with it. If there is anything you wish to have specially said as to your view of the Protestantism of the time, let me know. I should like you to say a word as to the accuracy of my historical details, which I know you can safely do.” To Mr. Alf, of _The Evening Pulpit_, of whom she has reason to be afraid, her candor assumes a more impersonal and business-like air. She alludes to a recent caustic criticism in the _Pulpit_ of some poor poetic wretch who well deserved it: “I have no patience with the pretensions of would-be poets who contrive by toadying and underground influences to get their volumes placed on every drawing-room table. * * * Is it not singular how some men contrive to obtain the reputation of popular authorship without adding a word to the literature of their country worthy of note? It is accomplished by unflagging assiduity in the system of puffing. To puff and to get one’s self puffed have become different branches of a new profession. Alas, me! I wish I might find a class open in which lessons could be taken by such a poor tyro as myself.” As for herself, she expects ruthless severity, but trusts that her work has some merits. In any case, no amount of editorial flagellating can discount her personal admiration for this particular editor. Truly, she is all things to all men,--a policy, however, for which she might claim a certain Scriptural precedent of high authority. PART IV CONCLUSIONS CHAPTER I RELATIONSHIPS To call a man a satirist or a satirical writer is to say something about him, certainly. It is, however, a piece of information which can be nothing more than a curiosity of literature so long as it remains an isolated fact. Although we are for the time being interested in a group of novelists primarily as satirists, we cannot even understand them as such, much less come to any fuller comprehension, unless we also view the satirists as novelists, as artists, as human beings.