ABSTRACT

Critics cannot in general be too punctilious in their respect for an incognito. If an author intended us to know his name, he would put it on his title page. If he does not choose to do that, we have no more right to pry into his secret than we do to discuss his family affairs or open his letters. But every rule has its exceptional cases; and the book which stands first upon our list is surely such. All the world, somehow or other, knows the author. His name has been mentioned unhesitatingly in some reviews already, whether from private information, or from the certainty which every well-read person must feel, that there is but one man in England possessed at once of poetic talent and artistic experience sufficient for so noble a creation. We hope, therefore, that we shall not be considered impertinent if we ignore an incognito which all England has ignored before us, and attribute In Memoriam to the pen of the author of The Princess.1