" LAZARRE."
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.";
Srn,—Believe me, I am not at all conscious of having "planted out quite a little shrubbery round Lazarre: " I purposely abstained from giving it any considerable advertisement beforehand because the reviewer of your novels seemed to object to advertisement (thereby, it seemed to me. confusing the functions of critic of literature with those of an arbiter of commercial procedure). It is true that I did write to you a personal letter proclaiming my faith in the book, but that letter was in no sense a public one, and could hardly be construed as the " planting of a shrubbery." Since, however, your reviewer has chosen to refer to that letter—it seems to me that the reference can be to nothing else—I should really like to ask you whether you think it fair in reviews of a book to deal with matters outside the covers of the book itself ? As I have said, your reviewer has quarrelled with my advertisements. Now, I, am not at the moment concerned to defend the manner of those advertisements, but I am prepared to say that if he, or any one else, wishes to criticise them, the place for such criticism is not in the notice of the wares advertised. To mix in this way cabbages and baskets is not fair to the author, who, it is as likely as not, had nothing whatever to do with the offending advertise- ments. As another example of the kind of review against which I protest, and protest strongly, I should like to refer you to the review of Mr. E. W. Hornung's " Peccavi " that was published in your issue of November 10th, 1900.—I am,
'The chief point of our reviewer's objection was that it was not fair to the author thus to encumber the book with necessarily partial eulogy. A beautiful bouquet may to some extent have its beauty compromised by being placed in a pretentious and garish gilt basket. We have, of course, no sort of objection to advertisement. It would be supremely ridiculous if we had. The letter, unless we are mistaken, was not marked private, and our reviewer naturally con- cluded it had been sent out with all the review copies of the book—En. Spectator.'
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