etamorphosis
in their characters; and as, moreover, the two men re-assumed their
original _roles_ for one night only with infinitely complex effects,
many readers, otherwise unimpeachable, reached the end without any
suspicion of the actual plot--and yet (on their own confession) enjoyed
the book!

[Illustration: 'WE SENT IT ROUND']

In contrast to all this elephantine waggery the half-dozen chapters near
the commencement, in which my collaborator sketched the first adventures
of the Radical working man in Downing Street, were light and sparkling,
and I feel sure the shilling skit he originally meditated would have
been a great success. We christened the book. 'The Premier and the
Painter,' ourselves J. Freeman Bell, had it type-written, and sent it
round to the publishers in two enormous quarto volumes. I had been
working at it for more than a year every evening after the hellish
torture of the day's teaching, and all day every holiday, but now I had
a good rest while it was playing its boomerang prank of returning to me
once a month. The only gleam of hope came from Bentleys, who wrote to
say that they could not make up their minds to reject it; but they
prevailed upon themselves to part with it at last, though not without
asking to see Mr. Bell's next book. At last it was accepted by Spencer
Blackett, and, though it had been refused by all the best houses, it
failed. Failed in a material sense, that is; for there was plenty of
praise in the papers, though at too long intervals to do us any good.
The _Athenaeum_ has never spoken so well of anything I have done since.
The late James Runciman (I learnt after his death that it was he) raved
about it in various uninfluential organs. It even called forth a leader
in the _Family Herald_(!), and there are odd people here and there, who
know the secret of J. Freeman Bell, who declare that I. Zangwill will
never do anything so good. There was a cheaper edition, but it did not
sell much then, though now it is in its third edition, issued uniformly
with my other books by Heinemann, and absolutely unrevised. But not only
did 'The Premier and the Painter fail with the great public at first, it
did not even help either of us one step up the ladder; never got us a
letter of encouragement nor a stroke of work. I had to begin journalism
at the very bottom and entirely unassisted, narrowly escaping canvassing
for advertisements, for I had by this time thrown up my scholastic
position