Of course we endeavour to get people whose judgments we can trust, and if, as in this case, it should unfortunately happen that the judgment of our critic should be hostile to the literary pretensions of a personal friend of my own, I can only lament the accident, and trust that my friend may have spirit enough to divide me as an individual from that Mr. Alf who has the misfortune to edit a newspaper."

Of course we endeavour to get critics whose judgments we can trust, and if, as in this case, our critic's judgment is unfortunately hostile to a friend's book, I can only lament the accident, and trust that my friend may have spirit enough to divide me as an individual from Mr. Alf the editor."
