"3. Is the lying coward who tells and does not kiss, has never been allowed the chance of kissing, who has a snub to avenge, or who blackmails for money; who forge their own love-letters, and read them not only to their friends, but at cafés and clubs. "The two last classes were more or less unknown in England till the introduction of so much foreign blood and foreign contact. It never would have occurred to the pure-blooded Englishman. Unfortunately, when men debase themselves by asking ladies for money (there is always something generous in a woman to a man--not to her own sex), they pity them, and are kind to them, and give it to them, instead of doing what they ought to do--ringing the bell and having the man turned out of the house. I have seen more innocent women lose a spotless reputation by those acts of kindness, than others by an illicit love with an English gentleman. When I see a man trying to prove that a woman drinks, or that she is out of her mind, or hysterical, or a liar, if he tells it to me once I may forget it, but if he tells it to me twice I know that that man has got something serious to hide, and that that woman knows his secret. If the man is effeminate, or deformed, or vain, morbid, or craving for notice and sympathy, be sure it is his own state he describes, and not the woman he runs down, who has snubbed him and knows what he wants to hide." Of critics and reviewers he wrote as follows:-- "They no longer review books; when they are incompetent they review the author, and if the author's politics and religion do not happen to agree with the office of that paper, it admits scurrilous and personal paragraphs on the authors themselves, bringing up a sort of _dossier_ of the author, which would be considered even disgraceful in a trial in a criminal court. Thirty years ago this would never have been allowed. This may amuse the writer, it may excite the reader, but I protest against it. Nothing can be less profitable to an author or a reader than a long tirade of peevish, petulant, personal comment, and unanswerable sneer. This is only used by people who can shelter themselves under an anonymous signature, or a _Critique manqué_, and is quite the mark of a pretender in literature and critical art, and which seldom disfigures the style of a true or able critic." Much as he disliked unjust or coarse criticism, he delighted in playful bits of chaff like the following from the writer of the _feuilleton_ in the _Queen_, the lady's newspaper and Court chronicle. He had simply written to the _Morning Post_ a little chaff, telling truly what he had seen at a private Davenport _séance_. "Oh, R. F. B.! Oh, R. F. B.! How can you such a ninny be? Why peril a good name and fame By playing into tricksters' game? Why, when all other dodges fail, Apply your aid to prop a tale Not half so true as 'Gammer Gurton,' With such a name as R. F. Burton?"