To return and to conclude this chapter. I feel convinced--nay, I know--that on the whole novelists get a little more than justice at the hands of their critics. I can recall many instances in which my praise has, in the light of further consideration, exceeded the deserts of a book; but very, very few in which I have cast a slur on genuine merit. Critics usually display a tendency towards a too generous kindness, particularly Scottish reviewers; it is almost a rule of the vocation. Most authors, I think, recognize this pleasing fact. It is only the minority, rabid for everlasting laudation, who carp; and, carping, demand the scalps of multiple-reviewers as a terrible example and warning to the smaller fry. [Footnote 2: 1900.] XII Serial fiction is sold and bought just like any other fancy goods. It has its wholesale houses, its commercial travellers--even its trusts and "corners." An editor may for some reason desire the work of a particular author; he may dangle gold before that author or that author's agent; but if a corner has been established he will be met by polite regrets and the information that Mr. So-and-So, or the Such-and-Such Syndicate, is the proper quarter to apply to; then the editor is aware that he will get what he wants solely by one method of payment--through the nose. A considerable part of the fiction business is in the hand of a few large syndicates--syndicates in name only, and middlemen in fact. They perform a useful function. They will sell to the editor the entire rights of a serial, or they will sell him the rights for a particular district--the London district, the Manchester district, the John-o'-Groats district--the price varying in direct ratio with the size of the district. Many London papers are content to buy the London rights only of a serial, or to buy the English rights as distinct from the Scottish rights, or to buy the entire rights minus the rights of one or two large provincial districts. Thus a serial may make its original appearance in London only; or it may appear simultaneously in London and Manchester only, or in London only in England and throughout Scotland, or in fifty places at once in England and Scotland. And after a serial has appeared for the first time and run its course, the weeklies of small and obscure towns, the proud organs of all the little Pedlingtons, buy for a trifle the right to reprint it. The serials of some authors survive in this manner for years in the remote provinces; pick up the local sheet in a country inn, and you may perhaps shudder again over the excitations of a serial that you read in book form in the far-off nineties. So, all editorial purses are suited, the syndicates reap much profit, and they are in a position to pay their authors, both tame and wild, a just emolument; upon occasion they can even be generous to the verge of an imprudence.