Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/239



"I said it; I wrote it; I meant it, every word of it. 'Press cuttings' be blowed!

"Yours, ."

One writer in the Sunday Sun observed that as Burnand had fallen so low as to praise a work of Marie Corelli's, he had "no other remedy but to take a bag of stones and break Mr. Punch's windows!" He added that "he had not read 'Boy' and didn't intend to." Again, comment would be superfluous. The facts speak for themselves and show our contention to be correct, i. e., that condemnatory criticisms of Marie Corelli's books are written at times by those who do not even read them.

One of the critics who does read what he comments upon in the way of books, but who, though a deep thinker, is sometimes trivial, superficial, and even frivolous in his treatment of a subject, is Mr. W. T. Stead. He is as amazing to others as others very often are to him. He must, we think, have been smiling pretty broadly when he wrote: "If any one wants to know what 'The Master Christian' is like, without reading its six hundred and thirty pages, he will not have much difficulty if he takes Sheldon's 'In His Steps,' Zola's 'Rome,' and