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tious trial of the habit he found smoking detestable. Walking was a joy to him. I suppose we must have covered hundreds of miles of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire together. He was years ahead of me in setting that rapturous first proprietorial foot on the pavement of Fleet-street.

For the owners of the Nottingham Journal economized on him, and bought their leaders from an agency at three shillings and sixpence a column, all complete, in type. Three years later, God have mercy on them, they economized on me!

The London Express. Henry George Hibbert.

HOW SOME GREAT WRITERS HAVE CRITICISED OTHERS.

Why is it that great writers have been so prone to criticise other great writers ir all ages?

Plato speaks slightingly of Homer. Lewes pronounces Plato a dull, uninteresting writer. Tom Moore declared Chaucer unreadable. Samuel Rogers, whose "Pleasures of Memory" are unremembered, thought Shakspere as a literary genius was greatly overrated. Lord Byron said to Tom Moore: "Tom, don't you think that Shakspere was something of a humbug?" Even rare Ben Jonson, who to-day is looked upon merely as a literary landmark, speaking of Shakspere, said: "Would that he had blotted out a thousand lines."

Charles Lamb, who was a merciless critic at times, declared that he could not read Hume, Robertson, or Gibbon. Lord Chesterfield said that it was impossible for him to read Milton's "Paradise Lost" a fact which he desired to be kept a secret from the public. Voltaire affirmed that Dante's reputation was growing greater because "no one reads him." On one occasion, Sir Walter Scott and a party of friends were discussing Voltaire's Henriade." The question was asked if any of the company had ever read it. They all replied in the negative, except Sir Walter. "I have read it through," said he, "and still live."

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The world acknowledges Virgil to be a poet of rare, original genius, yet Pliny accuses him of being a literary imitator. Quintilian says that Seneca was of little con

sequence as a writer. Plutarch and Cicero assert that Aristotle's works are inferior, while Hemeppus flays Demosthenes. Doctor Johnson denounced Fielding as “a blockhead and barren rascal," and said that to read the odes of Akenside was enough to make one sick.

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In our o own time we hear the erratic Bernard Shaw declaring that he can write a better play than Shakspere. We have heard Tolstoy assert that the immortal author of "Hamlet" did not possess the ability of an ordinary writer. We hear Henry James declaring that the writings of Charles Dickens are inferior, while Arnold Bennett damns the works of George Eliot, Dickens, and Thackeray. We hear Alfred Noyes telling the world that the poems of both Tennyson and Browning must go to the scrap heap." And finally we hear W. D. Howells declaring that "Chaucer, but for a few poems, is impossible; Spenser is duller than the Presidents' messages before Roosevelt's time; Milton is a trial to the spirit in threefourths of his verse; Wordsworth is only not so bad as Byron, who thought him so much worse; Shakspere, himself, when he is reverently supposed not to be Shakspere, is reading for martyrs; Dante's science and politics outweight his poetry a thousandfold, and so on through the whole catalogue."

What is the explanation?
LYNN, Mass.

Arthur W. Atkinson.

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8. With the waning of a long, cramping,

9. With her little white teeth snarled tight, 10. Without any warning,

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11. With a little gasp of rage the girl,. . . 12. Without stopping even to say, ... 13. With the little steamer so close, 14. With a smile as maddeningly irresistible, 15. Then, with all the air of a young royal tyrant, 16. With a visible effort of self-control,

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The author who has sold a manuscript should consider before endorsing a check sent in payment for it on which is a printed form transferring to the purchaser all rights in the manuscript. In the case of a story sold to a magazine, for instance, besides the

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H. Percival Allen, who had a poem, Gettysburg." in Lippincott's for July, lives in Philadelphia, and says that although he is a business man he finds his greatest pleasure in the study and writing of poetry, and finds poetry his most natural means of selfexpression. As a boy he had access to the best in English literature, but it was not until he was several years past his majority that he took any real interest in poetry. Then what was at first a hobby became a serious occupation, until all his time after business hours was given to reading and to the endeavor to strengthen and improve what talent he possessed. The first of Mr. Allen's poems to appear in a magazine was "Night's Awakening," which the New England Magazine printed about eight years ago. For some time he made no further effort to have his verse printed, but later, feeling that he had progressed and might compete with current writers, he submitted his work to the magazines, and he has since had poems accepted by the American Magazine, the Book News Monthly, the Outlook, and Lippincott's. "Gettysburg," in the July Lippincott's, was suggested by reading the series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly, called "The Sunset of the Confederacy." The verses were written for a friend with

whom Mr. Allen had been discussing the battle and a recent trip he had taken to the battlefield. Mr. Allen belongs to the Philadelphia Browning Society, and is a member of the Executive Board. He has been successful in the competitions of the society. He has numerous unpublished poems, including a series of sonnets.

Helen Ward Banks, whose story, "When Polly Pretended," was printed in the Youth's Companion for July 10, belongs to the Burr family who helped settle Connecticut in 1630. One of her great-great-grandfathers was a brother of Aaron Burr. She is therefore a New Englander by inheritance, although she was born in Brooklyn, N. Y.. and brought up in Englewood, N. J. "The Passing of the Library," printed in Home Progress for last March, gives a picture of her childish days. Eight years ago she and her sisters, one of whom also writes, came into possession of the quaint old Burr house in Green's Farms - now called The Burrow, after the Burr name which has been handed down in the family through successive generations. Here she lives, dividing her working hours between the farm, her flower garden, and her desk. She is a college woman, and has been an omnivorous reader and a teller of stories from childhood. She has written for publi- . cation for some time in a desultory way, but it is only within the last three years that she has settled down to writing as her main interest. Although she has written for various magazines, her work is largely for young people and has appeared in St. Nicholas, the Youth's Companion, and Little Folks, as well as in all the Sunday-school papers. Miss Banks has a story, illustrated by Peter Newell, to appear in the September number of To-Day's Magazine.

Shirley Cookman Hayes, who has a story, "The Cast Line," in the Popular Magazine for July 15, is a Californian by birth, and at present lives in San Francisco, where she received her education, later studying literary construction under W. C. Morrow, the

novelist and short-story writer. For the last seven years her home has been on Lombard street, the main highway to the military reservation of the Presidio. This neighborhood is perhaps the richest in varied humanity of any in that cosmopolitan city. Past her doors, she says, travels every type of man, from the fat colonel encased in carriage-glass to the itinerant old curlybearded negro astrologer who practises corn-doctoring when the stars frown. "Harbor View," mentioned in "The Cast Line," is a tree-grown settlement across lots from her back windows a small town of Italian crab-catchers, with a sprinkling of Swedish, Danish, German, and Irish. Miss Hayes knows them very well, for most of her playtime and some of her working hours have been spent among them at the water's edge.

W. Kee Maxwell, who wrote the story, "The Yellow Peril," which the American Magazine printed in its July number, has been in newspaper work since he was fifteen years old, having now been in the "harness" for about eighteen years. Mr. Maxwell has established various country weeklies, and in 1911 he took an editorial position with the Peoria (Ill.) Herald-Transcript. Upon the resignation of George Fitch, author of the "Siwash" stories, as editor of the Herald-Transcript, Mr. Maxwell became the editor. For the past two years he has conducted a column of verse and humor called "Transcripts," and he has also supplied a half-page personality or idealism editorial as a Sunday feature of the Herald-Transcript. Mr. Maxwell has frequently contributed to the minor magazines and has been a more or less regular contributor to Judge. He is a member of the American Press Humorists' Association.

Vingie E. Roe, author of the story, "King of the Unsurveyed," in the Popular Magazine for June 1, is a daughter of Maurice P. Roe, a distant connection of the novelist, E. P. Roe. She was born in Oxford, Kansas, but was taken to Oklahoma

when a child. She always had a passionate love for poetry, and hearing her mother read a poem from some paper, she early associated the swing and rhythm of poetry with the look of the printed page, and until she was able to read for herself she cut out all poems and hoarded them in a little Easter egg of woven straw, and badgered every one to read them to her over and over until the little folded slips were all but worn out. She remembers that she had in this collection "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," "The Blue and the Grey," and several classics. She early distinguished the real article and learned to love "Thanatopsis " and other poems like it. So it was natural that she should try her hand at the beloved art, and she began to write poems which attracted the attention of Victor Murdock, the Kansas congressman, who has since been her staunch supporter in the literary line. The limitations of poetry began to cramp her, and she turned to short stories, realizing enough from them from the very first sale to support herself. For four years she had a short story published nearly every three weeks, in Munsey's Magazine and the lesser Munsey publications, in Town Topics, and in other periodicals. Then that field, too, seemed narrow and she tried book-writing. Last year Dodd, Mead, & Company published her first novel, "The Maid of the Whispering Hills," with illustrations by George Gibbs. In May of this year the same firm published her second book, "The Heart of Night Wind," a story of the Oregon big timber country, and she is now at work on a third book, which she hopes to finish the coming fall.

Ella Morrow Sollenberger, one of whose poems, entitled " Sympathy," was published in Lippincott's for July, is a young wife and mother living in Catonsville, one of Baltimore's attractive suburbs, near where her ancestors have lived since the early colonization of Maryland. Her poems had many warm admirers among people of established literary reputation before any of them had

appeared in print and it was this appreciation which gave her courage to submit them to a larger public. They have been compared to those of Emily Dickinson in the strongly penetrating human quality which they possess.

John H. Walsh, whose story, "Dr. Punt's Patient," appeared in Harper's Magazine for July, is an officer of the United States Navy, and is at present in charge of the famous floating dry-dock at Olongapo in the Philippines. Mr. Walsh's home is in the State of Washington, and he knows the West coast well from Puget Sound to Panama. All his vacations are spent out of doors, camping, motor-boating, or mountainclimbing. He has climbed Mt. Rainier in Washington and the Taal volcano in Luzon. Mr. Walsh has been in the Philippines for two years, and is now writing stories of the island. In the last three years many of his stories have appeared in Scribner's, the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, and various other magazines.

PERSONAL GOSSIP ABOUT AUTHORS.

Allen. "Inspiration is only being in a good working mood," and this depends largely on physical condition, according to James Lane Allen, who is spending the summer in Boston, writing a volume of short stories. He says at the beginning he can always tell the story of his whole book in one sentence. He writes three hours every forenoon, dictating from rough notes and writing at the most only three thousand words. His output averages one book a year, though he says he always has two or three books on his mind at once. -Boston Post.

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four nights, and most of Byron's poems were impromptus.

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Dumas. — Félix Duquesnel, in an article in the Paris Temps, says that Alexander Dumas, the younger, once told him how "La Dame aux Camélias' came to be written. Dumas had no notion of trying literature. He had been living in luxury with his father, and without thought for the future. denly, however, Dumas, senior, got into financial difficulties, and the son found himself at Marseilles reduced to a humble lodging and an uncertainty about getting meals. He sat down with paper and pen in front of him, and "La Dame aux Camélias" was the result.

Barr. Extracts from the diary of Mrs. Amelia E. Barr, written in 1883, when her reputation was made, will be a revelation to the silken authors of to-day who find a morning's work exhausting:

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April 1. Wrote on "April Wedding," and worked on Cluny,"

April 2. Still sick, but on "Cluny," and wrote "The Reconciliation."

April 3. All day on Cluny "; in the evening wrote "Lending a Hand." April 4. All day on "Cluny." April 5. All day on Cluny."

April 6 Al day on "Cluny," but am feeling tired.

April 7. On “ Cluny" very tired. April 8. On "Cluny," and wrote a poem called "O Mollie, How I Love You."

April 9. On my novel nine hours.
April 10. On my novel eight hours.
April 11. On my novel eight hours.
April 12. On my novel eight hours, and
wrote "Two Ships."

April 13. On my novel nine hours.
April 14. On my novel eight hours.
April 15, 16, 17. Nine hours each.
April 18. Very sick.

April 19. Wrote "My Pretty Canary" and "The Little Evangel."

April 20. Wrote nine hours on "Cluny."

This was before the day of the typewriter and the dictaphone. - New York Evening Post.

Harraden. “Yes, I write every day," said Beatrice Harraden. "I have so much

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