The collected essays included in this volume were contributed by Mr. Runciman to the pages of The Family Herald.  In the superfine circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread.  For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light.  The same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best work and thought into each, but if he sends one to The Saturday Review and the other to The Family Herald, those who relish and admire his writing in-the former would regard it as little less than a betise to suggest that the companion article in The Family Herald could be anything but miserable commonplace, which no one with any reputation to lose in “literary circles” would venture to read.  The same arrogance of ignorance is observable in the supercilious way in which many men speak of the articles appearing in other penny miscellanies of popular literature.  They richly deserve the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us Sir Walter Scott inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising Coleridge’s poetry in Coleridge’s presence.  “One gentleman had been extravagantly extolling Coleridge, until many present felt a little uncomfortable.  Scott said, ’Well, I have lately read in a provincial paper some verses which I think better than most of their sort.’  He then recited the lines ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’ which are now so famous.  The eulogist of Coleridge refused to allow the verses any merit.  To Scott he addressed a series of questions—­’Surely you must own that this is bad?’ ‘Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?’ At length Coleridge quietly broke in, ’For Heaven’s sake, leave Mr. Scott alone!  I wrote the poem’” (p. 39).

Such lessons are more needed now than ever.  Only by stripes can the vulgar pseudo-cultured be taught their folly.

The post of father-confessor and general director to the readers of The Family Herald which Mr. Runciman filled in succession to Mr. Grant Allen is one which any student of human nature might envy.  There is no dissecting-room of the soul like the Confessional, where the priest is quite impalpable and impersonal and the penitent secure in the privacy of an anonymous communication.  The ordinary man and woman have just as much of the stuff of tragedy and comedy in their lives as the Lord Tomnoddy or Lady Fitzboodle, and as there are many more of them—­thank Heaven!—­than the lords and ladies, the masses afford a far more fertile field for the psychological student of life and character than the classes.  They are, besides, much less artificial.  There are fewer apes and more men and women among people who don’t pay income tax than among those who do.  As Director-General of the Answers to Correspondents column of The Family Herald Mr. Runciman was brought into more vitalising touch with the broad and solid realities of the average life of the average human being, with all its wretched pettiness and its pathetic anxieties, its carking cares and its wild, irrational aspirations, than he would have been if he had spent his nights in dining out in Mayfair and lounged all day in the clubs of Pall Mall.