In his essay entitled ‘M. Zola on the Side of the Angels,’ Mr. George Moore is kind enough to ask me to awake and let M. Zola in. Myself and others, it seems, are asleep and unconscious that the distinguished Frenchman is ‘knocking at the door with the lamp of Romance.’ A reminiscence of a picture by Mr. Holman Hunt seems to be trotting in the critic's mind – rather an incongruous reminiscence. Speaking for oneself, one may observe that one has been awake all the time – awake enough to know what sort of lamps, new or old, M. Zola has to sell. If it is not a commonplace of criticism that M. Zola is occasionally a fantaisiste, if not essentially a Romanticiste, one does not know a common-place when one sees it. The passages in his earlier work in which he is nearly at his best are the early chapters of ‘La Fortune des Rougon’ and of ‘La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret.’ The former is as idyllic as M. Zola knew how to make it; the latter is as fantastically romantic as nature permits M. Zola to be. The conservatory in ‘La Curée’ is another example of M. Zola's romantic experiments. It is probable that he took greater pleasure in composing these pages than in the studies which remind Mr. Moore of Rabelais – Rabelais of all authors – and of Swift. There is a great deal of dirt in Rabelais, and more in Swift; but in both cases it is not separated from humour; and M. Zola has as much humour as Mr. Gladstone, with none of his sensitive delicacy. The question, however, is not so much about M. Zola, who has often been discovered ‘lone sitting by the shores of old Romance,’ lamp and all; but about what Romance is, and where it may be found. Mr. Moore seems to think that there exist people who have ‘finally decided that romance consists solely of digging holes in Africa and blowing up pirates on the Spanish Main.’ Nobody can tell what strange persons may exist on this globe; and some there may be who are capable of this kind of opinion. Mr. Moore, himself, gives a much better definition of Romance.