[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR. "] kia,—Miss Sinclair's letter in
your last issue expresses so exactly and so admirably what I have felt in regard to your attack on the English Review that I should be glad if you would allow me to endorse it. I have disliked, hated with all my heart, some things that have appeared in the Review. But, apart from these, it has done excellent service to litera- ture, it has features that have been looked for in vain else. where, and it has the splendid virtue of never being dull. The trouble is that its editor has the happy misfortune to be young as well as courageous. This accounts for a few mistakes. Is the Review to be wholly condemned for them? As well hang the editor if he has sown a few wild oats in another sense. The owner of the Review gives him an absolutely free hand; it is not surprising that he has rioted a little in his freedom. May I add that my daughter has con- tributed several times to the Review and I myself wrote one of the longest short stories that have appeared in it ? Are we " garbage " ?—for you made no exception save Markino.—I am, [Mrs. Clifford is entirely mistaken. We clearly admitted that there were plenty of articles in the English Review to which no exception could be taken. Has not Lord Courtney of Penwith himself been a contributor? Our actual words were as follows : "Perhaps it will be said that, though we have a perfect right to condemn a single article as bad, it is unfair and unjust to attack a whole magazine—to visit the sins of Mr. Frank Harris upon, say, a person who writes so charm- ingly as Yoshio Markin, the Japanese painter."—ED. Spec- tator.]
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