The supposition that the world is ever in league to put a man down is childish. Hardly less childish is it for an author to lay the blame on reviewers. A good sturdy author is a match for a hundred reviewers. He, I grant, knows nothing of either literature or science who does not know that a _mot d’ordre_ given by a few wire-pullers can, for a time, make or mar any man’s success. People neither know what it is they like nor do they want to find out, all they care about is the being supposed to derive their likings from the best West-end magazines, so they look to the shop with the largest plate-glass windows and take what the shop-man gives them. But no amount of plate-glass can carry off more than a certain amount of false pretences, and there is no _mot d’ordre_ that can keep a man permanently down if he is as intent on winning lasting good name as I have been. If I had played for immediate popularity I think I could have won it. Having played for lasting credit I doubt not that it will in the end be given me. A man should not be held to be ill-used for not getting what he has not played for. I am not saying that it is better or more honourable to play for lasting than for immediate success. I know which I myself find pleasanter, but that has nothing to do with it. It is a nice question whether the light or the heavy armed soldier of literature and art is the more useful. I joined the plodders and have aimed at permanent good name rather than brilliancy. I have no doubt I did this because instinct told me (for I never thought about it) that this would be the easier and less thorny path. I have more of perseverance than of those, perhaps, even more valuable gifts—facility and readiness of resource. I hate being hurried. Moreover I am too fond of independence to get on with the leaders of literature and science. Independence is essential for permanent but fatal to immediate success. Besides, luck enters much more into ephemeral than into permanent success and I have always distrusted luck. Those who play a waiting game have matters more in their own hands, time gives them double chances; whereas if success does not come at once to the ephemerid he misses it altogether. I know that the ordinary reviewer who either snarls at my work or misrepresents it or ignores it or, again, who pats it sub-contemptuously on the back is as honourably and usefully employed as I am. In the kingdom of literature (as I have just been saying in the _Universal Review_ about Science) there are many mansions and what is intolerable in one is common form in another. It is a case of the division of labour and a man will gravitate towards one class of workers or another according as he is built. There is neither higher nor lower about it. I should like to put it on record that I understand it and am not inclined to regret the arrangements that have made me possible. My Birthright