ltimate
fate of a book--the immediate fate they may both influence. The book
must do that for itself. If it is right, it lives; if it is wrong, it
dies. And the critic who re-establishes a neglected poet is merely
articulating the growing sense. There have always been a few good
critics, thank God ... but the finest critic is the untutored
sentiment of the public, not of to-day or to-morrow or the next day,
but of all days together--a sentiment which tells if a thing is right
or wrong by holding on to it or letting it drop."

Of course, I agree that a book must ultimately depend for its fate
upon its own qualities. But when Mr. Hall Caine talks of "a growing
sense," I ask, In whom does this sense first grow? And I answer, In
the cultured few who enforce it upon the many--as in this very case of
Wordsworth. And I hold the credit of the result (apart from the
author's share) belongs rather to those few persistent advocates than
to those judges who are only "ultimate" in the sense that they are the
last to be convinced.

[B] If the reader object that I am using the Great Heart and Great
Brain of the Public as interchangeable terms, I would refer him to Mr.
Du Maurier's famous Comic Alphabet, letter Z:--

"Z is a Zoophyte, whose heart's in his head,
And whose head's in his turn--rudimentary Z!"

[C] _Questions at Issue_; by Edmund Gosse. London: William Heinemann.

A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP

March 16, 1895. The "Woman Who Did," and Mr. Eason who wouldn't.

"In the romantic little town of 'Ighbury,
My father kept a Succulating Libary...."

--and, I regret to say, gave himself airs on the strength of it.

The persons in my instructive little story are--

H.H. Prince Francis of Teck.

Mr. Grant Allen, author of _The Woman Who Did_.

Mr. W.T. Stead, Editor of _The Review of Reviews_.

Messrs. Eason & Son, booksellers and newsvendors, possessing on
the railways of Ireland a monopoly similar to that enjoyed by
Messrs. W.H. Smith & Son on the railways of Great Britain.

Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin.

A Clerk.

Now, on the appearance of Mr. Grant Allen's _The Woman Who Did_, Mr.
Stead conceived the desire of criticising it as the "Book of the
Month" in _The Review of Reviews_ for February, 1895. He strongly
dissents from the doctrine of _The Woman Who Did_, and he also
believes that the book indicts, and goes far to destroy,