But is this the real issue between Messrs Smith and Son and Mr. George Moore? Those great booksellers do not speak. They let judgment go by default. But it they were to enter the lists with the author, they would probably say that they do not challenge his moral purpose, or the alleged morality of the novel, but they deal with the book as one which treats familiarly of subjects which are not openly talked about among the people generally for whom the bookseller supplies fiction." The point is put to the test in a articular way in the fight over this book. The author has been just a little more reserved than in some of his former books, in the few scenes which have given a certain reputation to his work. It is easily done. Ican exemplify it by a fact with respect to certain editions of the novels of Zola sold in England, in' the form of English translation. Oar law excludes literal translations of some of the most famous of Zola's novels. Yet there are editions, sold in London—usually printed and published in Now York. And if you examine one of these editions you will find a few Tines—sometimes only a sentence or two—omitted in three or four scenes. That is all the difference, and the books can circulate, and only the reader familiar with the author's edition would notice it. Now one might imagine Evelyn Innes t" have been treated very much in this way, as compared, say, with A Mummer's Wife, of Esther Waters. But the whole tenour of the book is all the while open to the comment, that it deals with tabooed aspects of social and domestic life, and treats of tabood relations between' hero and heroine very much as other writers deal with a different order of relation
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.