'After a stormy passage I find myself once more at Alexandria and Sheyk Obeyd. During the voyage I read Frederick [sic] Harrison's novel which he has just published, a strange mixture of historic fact of the most interesting kind, and melodrama of the most conventional. The romantic episodes will not, I think, redound to Harrison's philosophic fame, for it is naively unreal, but these take up but a few pages, and might as well have been omitted altogether, while the historic background is vigorous and well told, only, as in every historical novel, the parts that are true ought to be printed in sober type, the parts untrue in red.'