_Q._ Which do you prefer to criticize, a book that has already been reviewed or one that is perfectly fresh? _A._ Oh, one that has been reviewed, and the oftener the better. I thus gain some idea of the trend of critical opinion and shape my review accordingly. _Q._ Do you ever run counter to the general sentiment? _A._ Yes; if I find that a book has been damned with faint praise, I sometimes laud it to the skies and thus gain a reputation for independence that is very useful to me. Or if a book has been heralded by the best critics of both countries as “the book of the year,” I sometimes pick it to pieces, taking its grammar as a basis, or some other point that I think I can attack without injury to my reputation for discernment, and again I score a victory for my independence. _Q._ Why don’t you like to be the first to review a new book? _A._ For the same reason that most critics hate to--unless, indeed, they are just out of college and are cock-sure of everything. I fear that its author may be one of the numerous coming men. I may be entirely at sea about the book. I prefer to get some idea of what the consensus of the best opinion is. [Illustration] _Q._ Then you do not consider your own the best opinion? _A._ No; no one critic’s opinion is worth much. _Q._ Can you tell an author by his style? _A._ Always, if I know who he is before I begin to read. But it is hazardous work to say such-and-such a work is by such-and-such a man unless there are internal evidences aside from the style. Once a book was sent to me for criticism. Before I opened it I lent it to a waggish friend of mine, and he returned it next day. I looked at the title-page, saw that it was by an absolutely unknown man and that the scene was laid in India, and, of course, I felt safe in giving it fits on the principle that Rudyard Kipling is not likely to be equaled in this generation as a depicter of Indian life. Well, I said that it was painfully crude and amateurish; that it might do for the “Servants’ Own,” but was not a book for ladies and gentlemen; that it had absolutely no style or local coloring; that the scene might as well have been laid in Kamchatka; and that it was marked by but one thing, audacity, for the author had borrowed some of Kipling’s characters--to the extent of the names only. In short, I had fun with that book, for I knew that my fellow-critics would with one accord turn and rend it. By mere chance I didn’t sign it. _Q._ And who had written the book? _A._ Why, Kipling. My friend had cut another name out of a book and had pasted it so neatly over Kipling’s wherever his occurred that I was, of course, taken unawares. You can’t bank on style. Look how positive people were Mark Twain had not written “Jeanne d’Arc.”