ABSTRACT
W. Robertson Nicoll I have got a very fair list, I think, for the Bookman prospectus, and I could have got more if I had tried, but I only wanted those I like. Among them are Dowden, Pater, and Minto,1 who will all be in the first or second number. Though I have had one or two sharp disappointments, I hope to make a fair first number. One of the features will be a map of Hardy’s ‘Wessex’, with his and the real names of places.2 This he has supplied. I have seen a good deal of Hardy lately and am much taken by him. He is certainly the most winning literary man I have ever met – shy and silent in company, but in private remarkably communicative and interesting. He used to be a fiery Evangelical – now he thinks Christianity utterly dead, save for surviving moral fragments. He is bitter upon Drummond,3 whom he takes to be as great an unbeliever as himself. His literary tastes are curious. He is a great reader of J.A. Symonds.4 Like myself, he much admires George Gissing (p. 99).
