1889-09-27 to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette

Printed letter signed, Pall Mall Gazette (27 September 1889, page 3), 244 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

[Friday, 27 September 1889]

Sir,

Not to differentiate between popularity and talent, and talent and genius, seems to me so prejudicial to the truest interests of art, that, at the risk of appearing ungracious, I will venture to dissent from Mr. Harry Quilter’s estimate of the value of Mr. Collins’s literary labour, —  labour, indeed, and brightened with no faintest ray of genius; an inventor of dry, mechanical stories, no page of which will be remembered ten years hence.

This is my opinion, and I give utterance to it because I believe that to raise a monument to Mr. Collins in Westminster Abbey will merely result in stupefying the public mind to a point of not being able for a time to distinguish between the very different excellences of David Copperfield and the Woman in White.

The rest of Mr. Quilter’s letter stands in need of explanation. Why he of all men should deprecate self-advertisement seems a little puzzling. Why he goes out of his way to grossly attack the Savile Club while calling upon men of letters to subscribe to a scheme which he has undertaken to promote seems equally inexplicable. Lastly, why he should dub the works of men who write in his Review as ’’synthesized lust” is an enigma which many will not attempt to solve.

I am, Sir, yours very obediently,

GEORGE MOORE