Jasper in the main is rightthere is only a precarious place for any creative litterateur between the genius and the swarm of ephemera or journalists.

He spoke to me of an eminent French litterateur who at the outset of the agitation on behalf of Dreyfus had immediately promised his help, and had even prepared articles and appeals on behalf of the prisoner of Devil's Island.

The sting of Howard's Preface lies, it will be seen, in his affecting the air of a person to whom as a statesman and public man the points in dispute are mere trifles, hardly worth consideration, and in the patronising condescension with which he descends to a discussion with one to whom as a mere litterateur such trifles are of importance.