A CROWNED QUEEN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR...] Sin,—May I be permitted to say a few words in extenuation of the charge of wholesale plagiarism brought against me in the Spectator of September 24th, which is likely to do me serious injury ? My first novel dealing with affairs in Thracia, "An Uncrowned King," which was suggested by a well- known passage in a letter of Lord Beaconsfield's respecting the offer of the crown of Greece to Lord Stanley, was planned before the publication of "The Prisoner of Zenda," but, unfortunately, appeared after it. In consequence, I was greeted on every side with the remark, " This book would not have been written but for the success of The Prisoner of Zenda,'" although my MS. had been in Messrs. Blackwood's hands for three months when I first read Mr. Hope's romance, The case is even harder with respect to the book at present under discussion, "A Crowned Queen," of which the complete MS. was forwarded to Messrs. Blackwood six months before "Rupert of Hentzau" began to appear in serial form. It is true that it concerns the vicissitudes of a foreign Queen and of an Englishman on foreign soil (I think this will be found to be the whole extent of the resemblance to which your reviewer refers so scathingly), but it would have required prophetic powers to avoid this at the time the book was written, when Mr. Hope's sequel was not even announced. The concluding story of the aeries, on which I am at present engaged, deals with a subject which has not, so far as I am aware, been touched upon in English fiction, but I am quite prepared to hear before long that Mr. Hope is treating it in a. novel which will appear just a month before mine. I have no wish to complain of these coincidences, entirely accidental and unavoidable as they are, but if your well-known courtesy should allow my letter to remain on record, it may save me from similar charges in your columns in the future.—I am, Sir, &c., [We publish Mr. Grier's letter, as he requests, though we are unable to reproach ourselves in the matter. Reviewers can only take books as they find them.—ED. Spectator.]
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