It is, I believe, an historical fact that authors seldom attend the funeral of a publisher's reader. They approve the sepulture, but do not, save sometimes in a spirit of ferocious humour, lend to the procession the dignity of their massive figures. Nevertheless, the publisher's reader is the most benevolent person on earth. He is so perforce. He may begin his labours in the slaughterous vein of the "Saturday Review"; but time and the extraordinary level mediocrity of manuscripts soon cure him of any such tendency. He comes to refuse but remains to accept. He must accept something--or where is the justification of his existence? Often, after a prolonged run of bad manuscripts, I have said to myself: "If I don't get a chance to recommend something soon I shall be asked to resign." I long to look on a manuscript and say that it is good, or that there are golden sovereigns between the lines. Instead of searching for faults I search for hidden excellences. No author ever had a more lenient audience than I. If the author would only believe it, I want, I actually desire, to be favourably impressed by his work. When I open the parcel of typescript I beam on it with kindly eyes, and I think: "Perhaps there is something really good here"; and in that state of mind I commence the perusal. But there never is anything really good there. In an experience not vast, but extending over some years, only one book with even a touch of genius has passed through my hands; that book was so faulty and so wilfully wild, that I could not unreservedly advise its publication and my firm declined it; I do not think that the book has been issued elsewhere. I have "discovered" only two authors of talent; one of these is very slowly achieving a reputation; of the other I have heard nothing since his first book, which resulted in a financial loss. Time and increasing knowledge of the two facts have dissipated for me the melancholy and affecting legend of literary talent going a-begging because of the indifference of publishers. O young author of talent, would that I could find you and make you understand how the publisher yearns for you as the lover for his love! _Qua_ publisher's reader, I am a sad man, a man confirmed in disappointment, a man in whom the phenomenon of continued hope is almost irrational. When I look back along the frightful vista of dull manuscripts that I have refused or accepted, I tremble for the future of English literature (or should tremble, did I not infallibly know that the future of English literature is perfectly safe after all)! And yet I have by no means drunk the worst of the cup of mediocrity. The watery milk of the manuscripts sent to my employer has always been skimmed for me by others; I have had only the cream to savour. I am asked sometimes why publishers publish so many bad books; and my reply is: "Because they can't get better." And this is a profound truth solemnly enunciated.