In whatever he has written he has affected something which has been intended to strike his readers as uncommon and therefore grand. Because he has been bright and a man of genius, he has carried his object as regards the young. He has struck them with astonishment and aroused in their imagination ideas of a world more glorious, more rich, more witty, more enterprising, than their own. But the glory has been the glory of pasteboard, and the wealth has been a wealth of tinsel. The wit has been the wit of hairdressers, and the enterprise has been the enterprise of mountebanks.

In death he remains as he was in life. All show with no substance.

The downfall of Beaconfieldism is like the vanishing of some vast magnificent castle in an Italian romance.

Here's to the man who rode the race, who took the time, who kept the time, and who did the trick.

The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better i…

I regard criticism as an art, and if in this country and in this age it is practiced with honesty, it is no more remunerative than the work of an avant-garde f…

Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.