The Westminster Gazette was quite eloquent the other day on
the indifference of the weekly journals to serving up their reviews of Mrs. Hamphry Ward's new novel hot and hot on the first practicable occasion, and contrasted this apathy with the diligence of the daily papers in performing that service. For our own parte, we do not believe that criticism on the gallop is good criticism, or even criticism that can rely on not misleading its readers. For instance, on Monday, two evening contemporaries served up a hot-and-hot criti- cism of Mr. E. F. Benson's " Rubicon." One of them describes the heroine (Lady Hayes) as "usually very silent ; " the other describes her as " speaking with that fine irrelevancy and rapid incoherence which characterised the heroine of the magnum opus ("Dodo ")." The one declares that she ter- minates her life by taking strychnine; the other, that she ends it by a dose of prussic acid. Clearly these hot-and- hot critics cannot both of them represent their author accurately. Would it not have been better for one of them, at least, to have waited till the Tuesday, or even Wednesday, before publishing its review, and to have got his facts right before attempting a criticism ?
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