" AINSLIE GORE ": FACT OR FICTION P
pro ens EDITOR or Tor ••Srver■voo.-1 SIR, —The reviewer of the above book in the Spectator of January 30th seems to assume that it is a genuine biography of a real person. Surely it is not so. I was doubtful on the point for a time ; but the somewhat affected style of the book, a certain air of unreality which hangs over it, and the presence of verbatim reports of conversations alleged to have taken place many years ago, have led me to the conclusion that it is a work of fiction, carefully dressed up to look like fact. In' such cases one of two things happens. Either the reader is taken in, or, if uncertainty arises in hie mind as to the troth. of the narrative, his sympathetic interest is nipped in the bud- by an uneasy and half-resentful suspicion that his feelings'. are being trifled with. As a matter of literary ethics, are books of this equivocal type, even if intended for edification,
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