Nothing is more irritating to a critic than to have to chronicle the reckless flights of this young woman's unbridled and fantastic imagination. She tells us about heaven and hell as if she had been to them both, and had rather enjoyed her experiences. Valiant attempts to "quash" her have been made, but apparently in vain, and most of my brethren in the critical faculty consider her a positive infliction. Why does she not take the advice tendered her by the _World_, and other sensible journals, and retire altogether from literature? I am sure she would be much happier "picking geranium leaves" _à la_ Becky Sharp, with a husband and two thousand a-year. As it is, her very name is, to the men of the press, what a red rag is to a bull. They are down upon it instantly with a fury that is almost laughable in its violence. But I suppose she is like the rest of her sex--obstinate, and that she will hold on her wild career, regardless of censure. Only, as I say, I wish she would elect a "groove" to run in, for I, among many others, shall be relieved as well as delighted when we are all quite certain beyond a doubt as to what sort of book we are to expect from her. At present she is a mere vexation to any well-ordered mind. Poor Mrs. Henry Wood! What a wonderfully "groovy" woman _she_ was! always writing, as one of my brother-critics has aptly remarked, "in the style of an educated upper housemaid." And yet her books sell largely--partly because Bentley and Son advertise them perpetually, and partly because they "will not bring a blush to the cheek of the Young Person." This latter reason accounts for the popularity (in the pious provinces) of that astoundingly dull writer, Edna Lyall. Patience almost fails me when I think of that lady's closely-printed, bulky volumes, all about nothing. "Groove"? ye gods! I should think it _was_ a "groove"--a religious, goody-goody "groove," out of which there is never the smallest possibility of an escape. But perhaps one of the circumstances that surprises me most in the fate of all the mass of fiction produced weekly, is the curious placidity with which the public take it up, scan it, lay it aside, and forget it instantly. Scarce one out of all the writers writing, male and female, has a book remembered by Mudie's supporters after a year. If any novel is still thought of and talked of after that period, you may be sure it is not "groovy," but that it runs in a directly contrary current to all "grooves" of preconceived opinion--that it has something vaguely irritating about it as well as pleasing--hence its success. But on the whole I am not sure that I do not prefer "groovy" writers after all. There is a comfortable certainty in their literary manœuvres. They are not going to frighten you by exploding a big fiery bomb of Imagination or Truth (both these things are abhorrent to me) on the reader unawares. It is really quite a weird sensation to take up the latest book by