A member of the firm which has the honour of publishing Meredith’s novels was interviewed by the Daily Mail on the day after his death.  The gentleman interviewed gave vent to the usual insolence about our own times.  “He belonged,” said the gentleman, “to a very different age from the modern writer—­an age before the literary agent; and with Mr. Meredith the feeling of intimacy as between author and publisher—­the feeling that gave to publishing as it was its charm—­was always existent.”  Charm—­yes, for the publisher.  The secret history of the publishing of Meredith’s earlier books (long before Constables had ever dreamed of publishing him) is more than curious.  I have heard some details of it.  My only wonder is that human ingenuity did not invent literary agents forty years ago.  Then the person interviewed went grandly on:  “In his manner of writing the great novelist was very different from the modern fashion.  He wrote with such care that judged by modern standards he would be considered a trifle slow.”  Tut-tut!  It may interest the gentleman interviewed to learn that no modern writer would dare to produce work at the rate at which Scott, Dickens, Trollope, and Thackeray produced it when their prices were at their highest.  The rate of production has most decidedly declined, and upon the whole novels are written with more care now than ever they were.  I should doubt if any novel was written at greater speed than the greatest realistic novel in the world, Richardson’s “Clarissa,” which is eight or ten times the length of an average novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward.  “Mademoiselle de Maupin” was done in six weeks.  Scott’s careless dash is notorious.  And both Dickens and Thackeray were in such a hurry that they would often begin to print before they had finished writing.  Publishers who pride themselves on the old charming personal relations with great authors ought not to be so ignorant of literary history as the gentleman who unpacked his heart to a sympathetic Daily Mail.

ST. JOHN HANKIN

[1 July ’09]

I was discussing last week the insufficiency of the supply of intelligent playwrights for the presumable demand of the two new repertory theatres; and, almost as I spoke, St. John Hankin drowned himself.  The loss is sensible.  I do not consider St. John Hankin to have been a great dramatist; I should scarcely care to say that he was a distinguished dramatist, though, of course, the least of his works is infinitely more important in the development of the English theatre than the biggest of the creaking contrivances for which Sir Arthur Wing Pinero has recently received honour from a grateful and cultured Government.  But he was a curious, honest, and original dramatist, with a considerable equipment of wit and of skill.  The unconsciously grotesque condescension which he received in the criticisms of Mr. William Archer, and