initial commit of ebook 17601HEADmain

1 files changed, 6537 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/17601.txt b/17601.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5465e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17601.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6537 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Masques & Phases, by Robert Ross
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Masques & Phases
+
+
+Author: Robert Ross
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2006  [eBook #17601]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASQUES & PHASES***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the December 1909 Arthur L. Humphreys edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+MASQUES & PHASES
+
+
+BY
+ROBERT ROSS
+
+LONDON:
+ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS
+187 PICCADILLY, W.
+1909
+
+The author wishes to express his indebtedness, to Messrs. Smith, Elder
+for leave to reproduce 'A Case at the Museum,' which appeared in the
+_Cornhill_ of October, 1900; to the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_,
+which first published the account of Simeon Solomon; and to the former
+proprietors of the Wilsford Press, for kindly allowing other articles to
+be here reissued.  'How we Lost the Book of Jasher' and 'The Brand of
+Isis' were contributed to two undergraduate publications, _The Spirit
+Lamp_ and _The Oxford Point of View_.
+
+_To_ HAROLD CHILD, ESQ.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEDICATION.
+
+
+MY DEAR CHILD,
+
+It is not often the privilege of a contributor to address his former
+editor in so fatherly a fashion; yet it is appropriate because you
+justified an old proverb in becoming, if I may say so, my literary
+parent.  Though I had enjoyed the hospitality, I dare not say the
+welcome, of more than one London editor, you were the first who took off
+the bearing-rein from my frivolity.  You allowed me that freedom, of
+manner and matter, which I have only experienced in undergraduate
+periodicals.  It is not any lack of gratitude to such distinguished
+editors as the late Mr. Henley; or Mr. Walter Pollock, who first accorded
+me the courtesies of print in a periodical not distinguished for its
+courtesy; or Professor C. J. Holmes, who has occasionally endured me with
+patience in the _Burlington Magazine_; or Mr. Edmund Gosse, to whom I am
+under special obligations; that I address myself particularly to you.  But
+I, who am not frightened of many things, have always been frightened of
+editors.  I am filled with awe when I think of the ultramarine pencil
+that is to delete my ultramontane views.  You were, as I have hinted, the
+first to abrogate its use in my favour.  When you, if not Consul, were at
+least Plancus, I think the only thing you ever rejected of mine was an
+essay entitled 'Editors, their Cause and Cure.'  It is not included, for
+obvious reasons, in the present volume, of which you will recognise most
+of the contents.  These may seem even to your indulgent eyes a trifle
+miscellaneous and disconnected.  Still there is a thread common to all,
+though I cannot claim for them uniformity.  There is no strict adherence
+to those artificial divisions of literature into fiction, essay,
+criticism, and poetry.  Count Tolstoy, however, has shown us that a novel
+may be an essay rather than a story.  No less a writer than Swift used
+the medium of fiction for his most brilliant criticism of life; his
+fables, apart from their satire, are often mere essays.  Plato, Sir
+Thomas More, William Morris, and Mr. H. G. Wells have not disdained to
+transmit their philosophy under the domino of romance or myth.  Some of
+the greatest poets--Ruskin and Pater for example--have chosen prose for
+their instrument of expression.  If that theory is true of literature--and
+I ask you to accept it as true--how much truer is it of journalism, at
+least such journalism as mine; though I see a great gulf between
+literature and journalism far greater than that between fiction and essay-
+writing.  The line, too, dividing the poetry of Keats from the prose of
+Sir Thomas Browne is far narrower, in my opinion, than the line dividing
+Pope from Tennyson.  And I say this mindful of Byron's scornful couplet
+and the recent animadversions of Lord Morley.
+
+There are essays in my book cast in the form of fiction; criticism cast
+in the form of parody; and a vein of high seriousness sufficiently
+obvious, I hope, behind the masques and phases of my jesting.  The
+psychological effects produced by works of art and archaeology, by drama
+and books, on men and situations--such are the themes of these passing
+observations.
+
+And though you find them like an old patchwork quilt I hope you will
+laugh, in token of your acceptance, if not of the book at least of my
+lasting regard and friendship for yourself.
+
+Ever yours,
+ROBERT ROSS.
+
+5 _Hertford Street_, _Mayfair_, _W_.
+
+
+
+
+A CASE AT THE MUSEUM.
+
+
+It is a common error to confuse the archaeologist with the mere collector
+of ignoble trifles, equally pleased with an unusual postage stamp or a
+scarce example of an Italian primitive.  Nor should the impertinent
+curiosity of local antiquaries, which sees in every disused chalk-pit
+traces of Roman civilisation, be compared with the rare predilection
+requisite for a nobler pursuit.  The archaeologist preserves for us those
+objects which time has forgotten and passing fashion rejected; in the
+museums he buries our ancient eikons, where they become impervious to
+neglect, praise, or criticism; while the collector--a malicious atavist
+unless he possess accidental perceptions--merely rescues the mistakes of
+his forefathers, to crowd public galleries with an inconsequent lumber
+which a better taste has taught as to despise.
+
+In the magic of escaped conventions surely none is more powerful than the
+Greek, and even now, though we yawn over the enthusiasm of the
+Renaissance mirrored in our more cadenced prose, there are some who can
+still catch the delightful contagion which seized the princes and
+philosophers of Europe in that Martin's Summer of Middle Age.
+
+Of the New Learning already become old, Professor Lachsyrma is reputed a
+master.  Scarcely any one in England holds a like position.  He is sixty,
+and, though his youth is said to have been eventful, he hardly looks his
+age.  He speaks English with a delightful accent, and there always hangs
+about his presence a melancholy halo of mystery and Italy.  His quiet
+unassumed familiarity with every museum and library on the Continent
+astonishes even the most erudite Teuton.  Among archaeologists he is
+thought a pre-eminent palaeographer, among palaeographers a great
+archaeologist.  I have heard him called the Furtwangler of Britain.  His
+facsimiles and collated texts of the classics are familiar throughout the
+world.  He has independent means, and from time to time entertains
+English and foreign _cognoscenti_ with elegant simplicity at his
+wonderful house in Kensington.  His conversation is more informing than
+brilliant.  Yet you may detect an unaccountable melancholy in his voice
+and manner, attributed by the irreverent to his constant visits to the
+Museum.  Religious people, of course, refer to his loss of faith at
+Oxford; for I regret to say the Professor has been an habitual
+freethinker these many years.
+
+However it may be, Professor Lachsyrma is sad, and has not yet issued his
+edition of the newly discovered poems of Sappho unearthed in Egypt some
+time since--an edition awaited so impatiently by poets and scholars.
+
+Some years ago, on retiring from his official appointment, Professor
+Lachsyrma, being a married man, searched for some apartment remote from
+his home, where he might work undisturbed at labours long since become
+important pleasures.  You cannot grapple with uncials, cursives, and the
+like in a domestic environment.  The preparation of facsimiles,
+transcripts, and palaeographical observations, reports of excavations and
+catalogues, demands isolation and complete immunity from the trivialities
+of social existence.
+
+In a large Bloomsbury studio he found a retreat suitable to his
+requirements.  The uninviting entrance, up a stone staircase leading
+immediately from the street, was open till nightfall, the rest of the
+house being used for storage by second-hand dealers in Portland Street.
+No one slept on the premises, but a caretaker came at stated intervals to
+light fires and close the front door; for which, however, the Professor
+owned a pass-key, each room having, as in modern flats, an independent
+door that might be locked at pleasure.  The general gloom of the building
+never tempted casual callers.  The Professor purposely abstained from the
+decoration or even ordinary furnishing of his chamber.  The whitewashed
+walls were covered with dust-bitten maps, casts of bas-reliefs,
+engravings of ruins.  Behind the door were stacked huge packing-cases
+containing the harvest of a recent journey to the eastern shores of the
+Mediterranean.  Along one wall mutilated statues and torsos were
+promiscuously mounted on trestles or temporary pedestals made of inverted
+wooden boxes.  Above them a large series of shelves bulging with folios,
+manuscript notebooks, pamphlets, and catalogues ran up to the window,
+which faced north-east, admitting a strong top-light through panes of
+ground glass; the lower sash was hidden by permanent blinds in order to
+shut out all view of the opposite houses and the street below.  A long
+narrow table occupied the centre of the room.  It was always strewn with
+magnifying-glasses, proofs, printers' slips, negatives--the litter of a
+palaeographic student.  There were three or four wooden chairs for the
+benefit of scholarly friends, and an armchair upholstered in green rep
+near the stove.  In a corner stood the most striking, perhaps the only
+striking, object in the room--a huge mummy from the Fayyum.  The canopic
+jars and outer coffins belonging to it were still unpacked in the freight
+cases.  It had been purchased from a bankrupt Armenian dealer in Cairo
+along with a number of Graeco-Egyptian antiquities and papyri, of far
+greater interest to the Professor than the mummy itself.  As soon as the
+interior was examined it was to be presented to the Museum; but more
+entertaining and important studies delayed its removal.  For many months,
+with a curious grave smile, the face on the shell seemed to look down
+with amused and permanent interest on Professor Lachsyrma struggling with
+the orthography of some forgotten scribe, and arguing with a friend on
+mutilated or corrupt passages in a Greek palimpsest.
+
+Here, late one afternoon, Professor Lachsyrma was deciphering some yellow
+leaves of papyrus.  The dusk was falling, and he laid down the pen with
+which he was delicately transcribing uncials on sheets of foolscap, in
+order to light a lamp on the table.  It was 6.30 by an irritating little
+American clock recently presented him by one of his children, noisy
+symbol and only indication that he held commune with a modern life he so
+heartily despised.  As the housekeeper entered with some tea he took up a
+copy of a morning paper (a violent transition from uncials), and glanced
+at the first lines of the leader:
+
+   The Trustees of the British Museum announce one of the most
+   sensational literary discoveries in recent years, a discovery which
+   must startle the world of scholars, and even the apathetic public at
+   large.  This is none other than the recovery of the long-lost poems of
+   Sappho, manuscripts of which were last heard of in the tenth century,
+   when they were burnt at Rome and Byzantium.  We shall have to go back
+   to the fifteenth century, to the Fall of Constantinople, to the
+   Revival of Learning, ere we can find a fitting parallel to match the
+   importance of this recent find.  Not since the spade of the excavator
+   uncovered from its shroud of earth the flawless beauty of the Olympian
+   Hermes has such a delightful acquisition been made to our knowledge of
+   Greek literature.  The name of Professor Lachsyrma has long been one
+   to conjure with, and all of us should experience pleasure (where
+   surprise in his case is out of the question) on learning that his
+   recent tour to Egypt, besides greatly benefiting his health, was the
+   means of restoring to eager posterity one of the most precious
+   monuments of Hellenic culture.
+
+'Dear me, I had no idea the press could be so entertaining,' thought the
+Professor, as a smile of satisfaction spread over his well-chiselled
+face.  Archaeologists are not above reading personal paragraphs and
+leaders about themselves, though current events do not interest them.  So
+absorbing is their pursuit of antiquity that they are obliged to affect a
+plausible indifference and a refined ignorance about modern affairs.  Nor
+are they very generous members of the community.  Perhaps dealing in dead
+gods, perpetually handling precious objects which have ceased to have any
+relation to life, or quarrelling about languages no one ever uses, blunts
+their sensibilities.  At all events, they have none of that loyalty
+distinguishing members of other learned professions.  The canker of
+jealousy eats perpetually at their hearts.
+
+Professor Lachsyrma was too well endowed by fortune to grudge his former
+colleagues their little incomes or inadequate salaries at the Museum.
+Still, his recent discovery would not only enhance his fame in the
+learned world and his reputed _flair_ for manuscripts--it would irritate
+those rivals in England and Germany who, in the more solemn reviews,
+resisted some of his conclusions, canvassed his facts, and occasionally
+found glaring errors in his texts.  How jealous the discovery would make
+young Fairleigh, for all his unholy knowledge of Greek vases, his
+handsome profile, and his predilection for going too frequently into
+society!--a taste not approved by other officials.  How it would anger
+old Gully!  Professor Lachsyrma drank some more tea with further
+satisfaction.  Sappho herself could not have felt more elated on the
+completion of one of her odes; we know she was poignant and sensitive.
+Thus for a whole hour he idled with his thoughts--rare occupation for so
+industrious a man.  He was startled from the reverie by a slight knock at
+his door.
+
+'Come in,' he said coldly.  There was a touch of annoyance in his tone.
+Visitors, frequent enough in the morning, rarely disturbed him in the
+afternoon.
+
+'To whom have I the--duty of speaking?'  He raised his well-preserved
+spare form to its full height.  The long loose alpaca coat, velvet skull-
+cap, and pointed beard gave him the appearance of an eminent
+ecclesiastic.
+
+The subdued light in the room presented only a dim figure on the
+threshold, and the piercing eyes of the Professor could only see a
+blurred white face against the black frame of the open door.  A strange
+voice replied:
+
+'I am sorry to disturb you, Professor Lachsyrma.  I shall not detain you
+for more than--an hour.'
+
+'If you will kindly write and state the nature of your business, I can
+give you an appointment to-morrow or the day after.  At the present
+moment, you will observe, I am busy.  I never see visitors except by
+appointment.'
+
+'I am sorry to inconvenience you.  Necessity compels me to choose my own
+hours for interviewing any one.'
+
+The Professor then suddenly removed the green cardboard shade from the
+lamp.  The discourteous intruder was now visible for his inspection.
+
+He was a fair man of uncertain age, but could not be more than twenty-
+eight.  He wore his flaxen hair rather long and ill-kempt; his face might
+have been handsome, but the flesh was white and flaccid; the features,
+though regular, devoid of character; the blue eyes had so little
+expression that a professed physiognomist would have found difficulty in
+'placing' their possessor.  His black clothes were shiny with age; his
+gait was shuffling and awkward.
+
+'My name, though it will not convey very much to you, is Frank Carrel.  I
+am a scholar, an archaeologist, a palaeographer, and--other things
+besides.'
+
+'A beggar and a British Museum reader,' was the mental observation of the
+Professor.  The other seemed to read his thoughts.
+
+'You think I want pecuniary assistance; well, I do.'
+
+'I fear you have come to the wrong person, at the wrong time, and if I
+may say so, in the wrong way.  I do not like to be disturbed at this
+hour.  Will you kindly leave me this instant?'
+
+Carrel's manner changed and became more deferential.
+
+'If you will allow me to show you something on which I want your opinion,
+something I can leave with you, I will go away at once and come back to-
+morrow at any time you name.'
+
+'Very well,' said the Professor, wearily, ready to compromise the matter
+for the moment.
+
+From a small bag he was carrying Carrel produced a roll of papyrus.  The
+Professor's eyes gleamed; he held out his hands greedily to receive it,
+fixing a searching, suspicious glance on Carrel.
+
+'Where did you get this, may I ask?'
+
+'I want your opinion first, and then I will tell you.'
+
+The Professor moved towards the lamp, replaced the cardboard green shade,
+sat down, and with a strong magnifying-glass examined the papyrus with
+evident interest.  Carrel, appreciating the interest he was exciting,
+talked on in rapid jerky sentences.
+
+'Yes.  I think you will be able to help me.  I am sure you will do so.
+Like yourself, I am a scholar, and might have occupied a position in
+Europe similar to your own.'
+
+The Professor smiled grimly, but did not look up from the table as Carrel
+continued:
+
+'Mine has been a strange career.  I was educated abroad.  I became a
+scholar at Cambridge.  There was no prize I did not carry off.  I knew
+more Greek than both Universities put together.  Then I was cursed not
+only with inclination for vices, but with capacity and courage to
+practise them--liquor, extravagance, gambling--amusements for rich
+people; but I was poor.'
+
+'It is a very sad and a very common story,' said the Professor
+sententiously, but without looking up from the table.  'I myself was an
+Oxford man.  Your name is quite unfamiliar to me.'
+
+'I fancy if you asked them at Cambridge they would certainly remember
+me.'
+
+'I shall make a point of doing so,' said the professor drily.  He
+affected to be giving only partial attention to the narrative; but though
+he seemed to be sedulous in his examination of the papyrus, he was
+listening intently.
+
+'I was a great disappointment to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short
+laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger of an undergraduate.
+
+'And to your parents?' queried Lachsyrma.
+
+'My mother was dead.  I don't exactly know who my father was.  I fear
+these details bore you, however.  To-morrow--' he added satirically.
+
+'A very romantic story, no doubt,' said the Professor, rising from his
+chair, 'and it interests me--moderately; but before we go on any further,
+I will be candid with you.  That papyrus is a forgery--a very clever
+forgery, too.  I wonder why the writer tried Euripides; we have almost
+enough of him.'
+
+'So do I sometimes,' returned Carrel cheerfully.  The Professor arched
+his eyebrows in surprise.
+
+He removed the green cardboard lampshade to keep his equivocal visitor
+under strict observation.
+
+'If you knew it was a forgery, why did you waste my time and your own in
+bringing it here?  In order to tell me a long story about yourself, which
+if true is extraordinarily dull?'
+
+It is almost an established convention for experts to be rude when they
+have given an adverse opinion on anything submitted to them.  It gives
+weight to their statements.  In the present case, however, the Professor
+was really annoyed.
+
+'I wanted to know if you recognised the papyrus,' said Carrel, and he
+smiled disingenuously.  The Professor was startled.
+
+'Yes; it was offered to me in Cairo last winter by a German dealer in
+antiquities.  I recognised it at once.  May I felicitate the talented
+author?'
+
+'No.  You would have been taken in if I were the author.'
+
+Professor Lachsyrma waved a white hand, loaded with scarabs and gems, in
+a deprecatory, patronising manner towards Carrel.
+
+'I must apologise if I have wronged you.  I am hardened to these little
+amenities between brother palaeographers.  Envy, jealousy, call it what
+you will, attacks those in high places.  There may be unrecognised
+artists, mute inglorious Miltons, Chattertons, starving in garrets,
+Shakespeares in the workhouse, while dull modern productions are
+applauded on the silly English stage, and poetasters are crowned by the
+Academies; but believe me that in Archaeology, in the deciphering of
+manuscripts, the quack is detected immediately.  The science has been
+carried to such a state of perfection that, if our knowledge is still
+unhappily imperfect, our materials inadequate, the public recognition of
+our services quite out of proportion to our labours, there is now no
+permanent place for the charlatan or the forger.  The first would do
+better as an art critic for the daily papers; the other might turn his
+attention to the simple necessary cheque, or the safer and more enticing
+Bank of England note.  If you are an honest expert, there is a wide field
+for your talents; and if I do not believe you to be anything of the kind,
+you have yourself to blame for my scepticism.  You came here without an
+introduction, without any warning of your arrival.  You refuse to leave
+my room.  You inform me that you want money with a candour unusual among
+beggars.  You then ask me to inspect a forged manuscript which you either
+know or suspect me to have seen before.  Should you have no explanation
+to offer for this outrageous intrusion, may I ask you to leave the
+premises immediately?'
+
+As he finished this somewhat pompous harangue he pointed menacingly
+towards the door.  He was slightly nervous, for Carrel, who was sitting
+down, remained seated, his hands folded, gazing up with an insolent
+childish stare.  He might have been listening to an eloquent preacher
+whom he thoroughly despised.
+
+'Professor Lachsyrma,' Carrel said in a sweet winning voice, 'I will go
+away if you like now, but I have nearly finished my errand and we may as
+well dispatch an affair tiresome to both of us, this evening, instead of
+postponing it.  I want you to give me 1000_l_.'
+
+The Professor rubbed his eyes.  Was he dreaming?  Was this some elaborate
+practical joke?  Was it the confidence trick?  He seemed to lose his self-
+possession, gaped on Carrel for some seconds, then controlled himself.
+
+'And why should I give you 1000_l_.?'
+
+'I am a blackmailer.  I am a forger of manuscripts.  I have more Greek in
+my little finger than you have in your long body.  I began to tell you my
+history.  I thought it might interest you.  I do not propose to burden
+you with it any further.  To-night I ask you for 1000_l_., to-morrow I
+shall ask you for 2000_l_., and the day after--'
+
+'The Sibyl was scarcely so extortionate when she offered the Tarquin
+literary wares that no subsequent research with which I am acquainted has
+proved to be spurious.  And you, Mr. Carrel, offer me forgeries--merely
+forgeries.'
+
+Fear expressed itself in clumsy satire.  He was thoroughly alarmed.  He
+began rapidly to review his own antecedents, and to scrape his memory for
+discreditable incidents.  He could think of nothing he need feel ashamed
+of, nothing the world might not thoroughly investigate.  There were mean
+actions, but many generous ones to balance in the scale.
+
+His knowledge of life was really slight, as his intimacy with Archaeology
+(so he told himself) was profound.  One foolish incident, a midsummer
+madness, before he went to Oxford, was all he had to blush for.  This, he
+frequently confessed, not without certain pride, to his wife, the
+daughter of a respectable man of letters from Massachusetts.  He firmly
+and privately believed an omission in a catalogue a far greater sin than
+a breach of the Decalogue.  But ethics are of little consequence where
+conduct is above reproach.  When buying antiquities he would come across
+odd people from time to time, but never any one who openly avowed himself
+a blackmailer and a forger.  The novel experience was embarrassing and
+unpleasant, but there was really little to fear.  In all the delight of a
+clear conscience, since Carrel vouchsafed no reply to his sardonic
+Sibylline allusion, he said:
+
+'You have advanced no reason why I should hand you to-day or to-morrow
+these modest sums you demand.'
+
+'Then I will tell you,' said Carrel, standing up suddenly.  'I fabricated
+the poems of Sappho,--yes, the manuscript from which _you_ are reaping so
+much credit'--he took up the newspaper--'from the morning press.  When I
+take to art criticism, as you kindly suggested a dishonest man might do,
+it will be of a livelier description than any to which you are usually
+accustomed.  Vain dupe, you think yourself impeccable.  Infallible ass,
+there is hardly a museum in Europe where my manuscripts are not carefully
+preserved for the greatest and rarest treasures by senile curators, too
+ignorant to know their errors or too vain to acknowledge them.  I fancied
+you clever; until now I do not know that I ever caught you out, though
+you may have bought many of my wares for all I know.  I find you,
+however, like the rest--dull, pedantic, and Pecksniffian.  At Cambridge
+we were not taught pretty manners, but we knew enough not to give
+fellowships to pretentious charlatans like yourself.'
+
+The room swam round Professor Lachsyrma, and the mummy behind the door
+grinned.  The plaster casts and the statues seemed to wave their
+mutilated limbs with the joy of demoniacal possession.  Dead things were
+startled into life.  Sick giddiness permeated his brain.  It was some
+horrible nightmare.  Yet his soul's tempest was entirely subjective;
+outwardly his demeanour suffered no change.  His tormentor noted with
+astonishment and admiration his apparent self-control.  There was merely
+a slight falter in his speech.
+
+'What proofs have you?  A blackmailer must have some token--something on
+which to base a ridiculous libel.'
+
+'A few minutes ago I handed you a spurious papyrus, which you tell me you
+recognise.  In the same lot of rubbish, purporting to come from the
+Fayyum, were the alleged poems of Sappho.  You swallowed the bait which
+has waited for you so long, and, if it is any consolation to you, I will
+admit that in the opinion of the profession, to continue my piscatorial
+simile, I have landed the largest salmon.'
+
+'I am deeply sensible of the compliment, but I must point out to you, my
+friend, that your coming to tell me that a papyrus I happen to have
+purchased from one of your shady friends is counterfeit, does not
+necessarily prove it to be so.'
+
+The Professor realised that he must act cautiously, and consider his
+position quietly.  Each word must be charged with suppressed meaning.  His
+eyes wandered over the room, resting now and again on the majestic,
+impassive smile of the mummy.  It seemed to restore his nerve.  He found
+himself unconsciously looking towards it over Carrel's head each time he
+spoke.  While the blackmailer, seated once more, gazed up to his face
+with a defiant, insolent stare, swinging his chair backwards and
+forwards, unconcerned at the length of the interview, apparently careless
+of its issue.  The Professor brooded on the terrible chagrin, the wounded
+vanity of discovering himself the victim of an obviously long-contrived
+hoax.  At his asking for a proof, Carrel laughed.
+
+'You are sceptical at last,' he sneered.  'I have the missing portions of
+the papyrus here with me.  You can have them for a song.  I was afraid to
+leave the roll too complete, lest I should invite detection.  It would be
+a pity to let them go to some other museum.  Berlin is longing for a new
+acquisition.'
+
+Then he produced from his bag damning evidence of the truth of his
+story--deftly confected sheets of papyrus, brown with the months it had
+taken to fabricate them, and cracked with forger's inks and acids--ghastly
+replicas of the former purchase.  Nervously the Professor replaced the
+green cardboard shade over the lamp, as though the glare affected his
+eyes.
+
+'But how do you know I have not discovered the forgery already?' he said,
+craftily.  Carrel started.  'And see what I am sending to the press this
+evening,' he added.
+
+Walking to the end of the table, he picked up a sheet of paper where
+there was writing, and another object which Carrel could not see in the
+gloom, so quickly and adroitly was the action accomplished.
+
+'Shall I read it to you, or will you read it yourself?'
+
+He advanced again towards the lamp, held the paper in the light, and
+beckoned to Carrel, who leant over the table to see what was written.
+Then Professor Lachsyrma plunged a long Greek knife into his back.  A
+toreador could hardly have done it more skilfully; the bull was pinned
+through the heart, and expired instantaneously.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Now he paced the room in deep thought.  For the first time he found
+himself an actor in modern life, which hitherto for him meant digging
+among excavations, or making romantic restoration for jaded connoisseurs,
+of some faultless work of art described by Pausanias and hidden for
+centuries beneath the rubbish of modern Greece.  The entire absence of
+horror appalled him.  Even the dignity of tragedy was not there.  He was
+wrestling with hideous melodrama, often described to him by patrons of
+Thespian art at transpontine theatres.  The vulgarity--the
+anachronism--made him shudder.  Having till now ignored the issue of the
+present, he began to be sceptical about the virtues of antiquity.
+Antiquity, his only religion, his god, whose mangled incompleteness
+endeared it to him, was crumbling away.  He wondered if there were
+friends with whom he might share his ugly secret.  There was young
+Fairleigh, who was always so modern, and actually read modern books.  He
+might have coped with the blackmailer alive, but hardly with his corpse.
+You cannot run round and ask neighbours for coffins, false beards, and
+rope in the delightful convention of the _Arabian Nights_, because you
+have grazed modern life at a sharp angle, without exciting suspicion or
+running the risk of positive refusal.  There was his wife, to whom he
+confided everything; but she was a lady from Massachusetts, and her
+father was European correspondent to many American papers of the highest
+repute.  How could their pure ears be soiled with so sordid a confidence?
+Poor Irene! she was to have an 'At Home' the following afternoon.  It
+would have to be postponed.  Professor Lachsyrma fell to thinking of such
+trivial matters, contemptible in their unimportance, as we do at the
+terrible moments of our lives.  He wondered if they would wait dinner for
+him.  He often remained at his club--the Serapeum--to finish a discussion
+with some erudite antagonist.  His absence would therefore cause no
+alarm.  He consulted the little American clock; it had stopped.  How like
+America!  The only recorded instance, he would explain to Irene, of an
+export from that country being required--the commodity proved inadequate.
+No, that would make Irene cry. . . . The folly of hopeless, futile
+thoughts jingled on.  Suddenly he heard the cry of a belated newsvendor,
+howling some British victory, some horrible scandal in Paris.  Scandal,
+exposure, publicity--_there_ was the horror.  He could almost hear the
+journalists stropping their pens.  If his thoughts drifted towards any
+potential expiation demanded by officialism, he put them aside.  A social
+_debacle_ was more fearful and vivid than the dock and its inevitable
+consequence. . . . Presently his eyes rested again on the mummy case.  A
+brilliant inspiration!  Here, at all events, was a temporary hiding-place
+for the corpse of the blackmailer.  If it was putting new wine into old
+bottles, circumstances surely justified a violation of the proverb.  Till
+now a severe unromantic Hellenist, he held Egyptology in some contempt;
+and for Egypt, except in so far as it illustrated the art of Greece or
+remained a treasure-house for Greek manuscripts, his distaste was only
+surpassed by that of the Prophet Isaiah.  A bias so striking in the
+immortal Herodotus is hardly shared by your modern encyclopaedist.  While
+the science of Egyptology and its adepts command rather awe and wonder
+than sympathy from the uninitiated, who keep their praises for the more
+attractive study of Greek art.  Yet some of us still turn with relief
+from the serene material masterpieces of Greece, soulless in their very
+realism and truth of expression, to the vague and happily unexplained
+monsters, the rigid gods and hieratic princes, who are given new names by
+each succeeding generation.  A knowledge that behind painted masks and
+gilded, tawdry gew-gaws are the remains of a once living person gives
+even the mummy a human interest denied to the most exquisite handiwork of
+Pheidias.
+
+Professor Lachsyrma at present felt only the impossibility of a situation
+that would have been difficult for many a weaker man to face.  Humiliation
+overwhelms the strongest.  Modern agencies for the concealment of a body
+having failed to suggest themselves, he must needs fall back on the
+despised expedient of Egypt.  Palaeography and Greek art were obviously
+useless in the present instance.  He understood at last why deplorable
+people wanted to abolish Greek from the University curriculum.
+
+The coffin was of varnished sycamore wood, ornamented on the outside with
+gods in their shrines and inscriptions relating to the name and titles of
+the deceased, painted in red and green.  The face was carved out of a
+separate piece of wood, with the conventional beard attached to the chin;
+the eyelids were of bronze; the eyes of obsidian; wooden hands were
+crossed on the breast.  Inside the lid were pictures of apes in yellow on
+a purple background, symbolising the Spirits of the East adoring the Gods
+of the Morning and Evening.  The mummy itself was enclosed in a handsome
+cartonnage case laced up the back.  The Professor lifted it gently out on
+the table, and substituted Carrel's body.  He staunched as he best could
+the blood which trickled on to the glaring pictures of the Judgment of
+Osiris and the goddess Nut imparting the Waters of Life; then he turned
+to examine the former occupant, whom two thousand years, even at such a
+moment endowed with a greater interest than could attach to the corpse of
+a defunct blackmailer.  It now occurred to him that he might profitably
+utilise the mummy cerements along with the coffin for more effectually
+concealing Carrel's body until he could arrange for its final disposal.
+He hastened to carry his idea into effect.
+
+The cartonnage case, composed of waste papyrus fragments glued together,
+was painted with figures of deities.  The face was a gilded mask, on the
+headdress were lotus flowers, and the collar was studded to imitate
+precious stones.  Over the breast were representations of Horus, Apis,
+and Thoth, and lower down the dead man was seen on his bier attended by
+Anubis and the children of Horus, while the soul in the form of a hawk
+hovered above.  The Professor observed that an earlier method had been
+employed for the preservation and protection of the body than is usually
+found among Ptolemaic mummies.
+
+Beneath a network of blue porcelain bugles and a row of sepulchral gods
+suspended by a wire to the neck was a dusky, red-hued sheet, sewn at the
+head and feet and fastened with brown strips of linen.  Under this last
+shroud were the bandages which swathed the actual corpse, inscribed with
+passages from the Book of the Dead, the mysterious fantastic directions
+for the life hereafter.  The symbolism requisite for the external
+decoration of the mummy had been scrupulously executed by skilful
+artists, and the conscientious method of wrapping again indicated the
+pristine mode of embalmment practised when the craft was at its zenith,
+long before the Greek conquest of Egypt.
+
+A considerable time was occupied in unrolling the three or four hundred
+yards of linen.  Meanwhile a strange fragrance of myrrh, cassia,
+cinnamon, the sweet spices and aromatic unguents used in embalming,
+filled the room.  Gradually the yellow skin preserved by the natron began
+to appear through the cross-hatchings of the bandages.  Attached to a
+thick gold wire round the neck and placed over the heart was a scarab of
+green basalt, mounted in a gold setting; and on the henna-stained little
+finger of the left hand was another of steatite.  As the right arm was
+freed from its artificially tightened grasp a peculiar wooden cylinder
+rolled on to the floor into the heap of scented mummy dust and bandages.
+
+Languidly inquisitive, Professor Lachsyrma groped for it.  Such objects
+are generally found beneath the head.  There was a seal at each end, both
+of which he broke.  A roll of papyrus was inside.  He trembled, and with
+forced deliberation made for the table, his knees tottering from
+exhaustion.  Excitement at this unexpected discovery made him forget
+Carrel.  The ghastly events of the evening were for the moment blotted
+from his memory.  After all, he was a palaeographer--an archaeologist
+first, a murderer afterwards.  Eagerly, painfully, he began to read,
+adjusting his spectacles from time to time, the muscles of his face
+twitching with anxiety and expectation.  For a long time the words were
+strange to him.  Suddenly his glasses became dim.  There were tears in
+his eyes; he was reading aloud, unconsciously to himself, the beautiful
+verses familiar to all students of Greek poetry:--
+
+   [Greek verse]
+
+and to students of English, in the marvellous, rendering of them by the
+late Mr. Rossetti:
+
+   'Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
+   A-top on the topmost twig,--which the pluckers forgot, somehow,--
+   Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.'
+
+The papyrus was of great length, and contained the poems of Sappho in a
+cursive literary handwriting of the third century--the real poems, lost
+to the world for over eight hundred years.  It was morning now--a London
+spring morning; dawn was creeping through the great north-east light of
+the studio; birds were twittering outside.  The murderer sobbed
+hysterically.
+
+* * * * *
+
+On referring to 'Euterpe,' the second book of the Histories of Herodotus,
+Professor Lachsyrma selected the second method of embalming as less
+troublesome and more expeditious.  The whole matter lasted little longer
+than the seventy prescribed days.  At the end of which time he was able,
+in accordance with his original intention, to deposit in a handsome glass
+case at the British Museum the Mummy of Heliodorus, a Greek settler in
+Egypt who held some official appointment at the Court of Ptolemy
+Philadelphus.  It is described in the catalogue as one of the best
+examples of its kind in Europe.  Indeed, it is probably unique.
+
+Professor Lachsyrma often pauses before the case when visiting our gaunt
+House of Art.  Even the policeman on duty has noticed this peculiarity,
+and smiles respectfully.  The Professor has ceased to ridicule
+Egyptology; and his confidence in the resources and sufficiency of
+antiquity, so rudely shaken for one long evening, is completely
+re-established.
+
+_To_ S. S. SPRIGGE, ESQ., M.D.
+
+
+
+
+THE BRAND OF ISIS.
+
+
+   'Videant irreligiosi videant et errorem suum recognoscant.  En ecce
+   pristinis aerumnis absolutus, Isidis magnae providentia gaudens Lucius
+   de sua fortuna triumphat.'  APULEIUS.
+
+   'Her image comes into the gloom
+   With her pale features moulded fair,
+   Her breathing beauty, morning bloom,
+   My heart's delight, my tongue's despair.'  BINYON.
+
+   'An Oxford scholar of family and fortune; but quaint and opinionated,
+   despising every one who has not had the benefit of an University
+   education.'  RICHARDSON.
+
+   [Greek text].  HERODOTUS.
+
+I once had the good fortune to take down to dinner a young American lady
+of some personal attractions.  Her vivacity and shrewdness were racial;
+her charm peculiar to herself.  Her conversation consisted in a rather
+fierce denunciation of Englishmen, young Oxford Englishmen in particular.
+Their thoughts, their dress, their speech, their airs of superiority
+offended one brought up with that Batavian type of humanity, the American
+youth, to whom we have nothing exactly corresponding in this country
+except among drawing-room conjurors.  But I was startled at her keen
+observation when I inquired with a smile how she knew I was not an Oxford
+man myself.
+
+'Had you been one, you would never have listened to what I have been
+saying,' she retorted.  Rather nettled, I challenged her to pick out from
+the other guests those on whom she detected the brand of Isis.  A pair of
+gloves was the prize for each successful guess.  She won seven; in fact
+all the stakes during the course of the evening.  Over one only she
+hesitated, and when he mentioned that he had neither the curiosity nor
+the energy to cross the Atlantic, she knew he came from Oxford.
+
+Yes, there is something in that manner after all.  It irritates others
+besides Americans.  Novelists try to describe it.  We all know the hero
+who talks English with a Balliol accent--that great creature who is
+sometimes bow and sometimes cox of his boat on alternate evenings; who
+puts the weight at the University Sports and conducts the lady home from
+a College wine without a stain on her character; is rusticated for a year
+or so; returns to win the Newdigate and leaves without taking a degree.
+Or that other delightful abstraction--he has a Balliol accent too--with
+literary tastes and artistic rooms, where gambling takes place.  He is
+invariably a coward, but dreadfully fascinating all the same; though he
+scorns women he has an hypnotic influence over them; something in his
+polished Oxford manner is irresistible.  Throughout a career of crime his
+wonderful execution on the piano, his knowledge of Italian painting, and
+his Oxford manner never seem to desert him.  We feel, not for the first
+time, how dangerous it must be to allow our simple perky unspoiled
+Colonials to associate with such deleterious exotic beings, who, though
+in fiction horsewhipped or (if heroes) shot in the last chapter, in real
+life are so apt to become prosperous city men or respected college
+officials.
+
+The Oxford manner is, alas, indefinable; I was going to say indefensible.
+Perhaps it is an attitude--a mental attitude that finds physical
+expression in the voice, the gesture, the behaviour.  Oxford, not
+conduct, is three-fourths of life to those who acquire the distemper.
+Without becoming personal it is not easy to discuss purely social
+aspects, and we must seek chiefly in literature for manifestations of the
+phenomenon: in the prose of Matthew Arnold for instance--in the poems of
+Mr. Laurence Binyon, typical examples where every thought seems a mental
+reservation.  Enemies rail at the voice, and the voice counts for
+something.  Any one having the privilege of hearing Mr. Andrew Lang speak
+in public will know at once what I mean--a pleasure, let me hasten to
+say, only equalled by the enjoyment of his inimitable writing, so pre-
+eminently Oxonian when the subject is not St. Andrews, Folk Lore, or
+cricket.  Though Oxford men have their Cambridge moments, and beneath
+their haughty exterior there sometimes beats a Cambridge heart.  Behind
+such reserve you would never suspect any passions at all save one of
+pride.  Even frankly irreligious Oxford men acquire an ecclesiastical pre-
+Reformation aloofness which must have piqued Thackeray quite as much as
+the refusal of the city to send him to Westminster.  He complains
+somewhere that the undergraduates wear kid gloves and drink less wine
+than their jolly brethren of the Cam.  He was thoroughly Cambridge in his
+attitude towards life, as you may see when he writes of his favourite
+eighteenth century in his own fascinating style.  How angry he becomes
+with the vices and corruption of a dead past!  Now no Oxford essayist
+would dream of being angry with the past.  How annoyed the sentimental
+author of _The Four Georges_ would be with Mr. Street's genial treatment
+of the same epoch!  It would, however, be the annoyance of a father for
+his eldest son, whom he sent to Oxford perhaps to show that an old slight
+was forgiven and forgotten.
+
+There have been, of course, plenty of men unravaged by the blithe
+contagion.  Mr. Gladstone intellectually always seemed to me a Cambridge
+man in his energy, his enthusiasm, his political outlook.  Only in his
+High Church proclivities is he suspect.  The poet Shelley was an obvious
+Cantab.  He was, we are told, a man of high moral character.  Well,
+principles and human weakness are common to all Universities, and others
+besides Shelley have deserted their wives: but to desert your wife on
+principle seems to me callous, calculating, and Cambridge-like.
+
+A painful but interesting case came under my personal observation, and it
+illustrates the other side of the question.  A clever young graduate of
+my acquaintance, after four years of distinguished scholarship at Oxford,
+came up to the metropolis and entered the dangerous lists of literature.
+It is not indiscreet if I say that he belonged to what was quite a
+brilliant little period--the days of Mr. Eric Parker, Mr. Max Beerbohm,
+and Mr. Reginald Turner.  So there was nothing surprising in his literary
+tastes, though I believe he was unknown to those masters of prose.  He
+was tall, good-looking, and prepossessing, but his Oxford manner was
+unusually pronounced.  He never expressed disgust--no Oxford man
+does--only pained surprise at what displeased him; he never censured the
+morals or manners of people as a Cambridge man might have done.  Out of
+the University pulpit no Oxford man would dream of scolding people for
+their morals.  After a year of failure he fell into a decline.  His
+parents became alarmed.  They hinted that his ill success was due to his
+damned condescension (the father was of course a Cambridge man).  I too
+suggested in a mild way that a more ingratiating manner might produce
+better luck with editors.  At last his health broke down, and a wise
+family physician was called in.  After studying the case for some months,
+Aesculapius (he was M.B. of Cambridge) divined that ill success rather
+than ill health was the provocative; and he related to the patient (this
+is becoming like an Arabian Night) the following story:
+
+'A certain self-made man, confiding to a friend plans for his son's
+education, remarked: "Of course I shall send him to Eton."  "Why Eton?"
+said the friend.  "Because he is to be a barrister, and if he did not go
+to Eton no one would speak to him if they knew his poor old father was a
+self-made man.  Then he will go to Cambridge."  "Why not Oxford?" said
+the friend, who was a self-made Oxford tradesman.  "Because then he would
+never speak to me," replied the first self-made man.'
+
+My friend from that moment recovered.  He became more tolerant; he became
+successful.  He became a distinguished dramatist.  He justified his early
+promise.
+
+There is in this little story perhaps a charge of snobbishness from which
+Oxford men are really entirely free.  They are too conscious of their own
+superiority to be tuft-hunters, and I believe miss some of the prizes of
+life by their indifference towards those who have already 'arrived.'  Yet
+they appear snobbish to others who have not had the benefit of a
+University education, and in this little essay I endeavour to hold up the
+mirror to their ill-nature--the fault to which I am unduly attached.
+Writers besides Richardson have referred to it.  I might quote many
+eloquent tributes from Dryden to Wordsworth and Byron, all Cambridge men,
+who have felt the charm and acknowledged a weakness for the step-sister
+University.  Cambridge has never been fortunate in having the compliment
+reciprocated.  Neither Oxford men nor her own sons have been
+over-generous in her praises: you remember Ruskin on King's Chapel.  And
+I, the obscurest of her children, who cast this laurel on the Isis, will
+content myself with admitting that I sincerely believe you can obtain a
+cheaper and better education at Cambridge, though it has always been my
+ambition to be mistaken for an Oxford man.
+
+I often wonder whether Mr. Cecil Rhodes, while he had the English
+Government in one pocket, the English Press in the other, and South
+Africa in the hollow of his hand, felt a certain impotency before Oxford.
+He had to acknowledge its influence over himself--an influence stronger
+than Dr. Jameson or the Afrikander Bond.  He was never quite sure whether
+he admired more the loneliness of the Matoppos or the rather over-crowded
+diamond mines of Kimberley.  On the grey veld he used to read _Marius the
+Epicurean_, and sought in Mr. Pater the key to the mystery he was unable
+to solve.  He turned to the Thirty-nine Articles (more tampered with at
+Oxford than in any other cathedral city) with the same want of success.
+That always seems to me a real touch of Oxford in what some one well
+said, was an 'ugly life.'  What a wonderful subject for the brush of a
+Royal Academician! no ordinary artist could ever do it justice: the great
+South African statesman on the lonely rocks where he had chosen his tomb;
+a book has fallen from his hand (Mr. Pater's no doubt); his eyes are
+gazing from canvas into the future he has peopled with his dreams.  By
+some clever device of art or nature the clouds in the sky have shaped
+themselves into Magdalen Tower--into harmony with his thoughts, and the
+setting sun makes a mandorla behind him.  He is thinking of Oxford, and
+round his head _Oriel_ clings as in 'The Blessed Damozel.'
+
+He could terrorise the Colonial Secretary, he could foment a war and add
+a new empire to England; he could not overcome his love of Oxford, the
+antithesis of all sordid financial intrigue and political marauding.
+Athens was after all a dearer name than Groot-Schuurr.  He set fire to
+both.
+
+I speculate sometimes whether the University was aware of his
+testamentary dispositions before it conferred on him an honorary degree.
+I hope not.  He deserved it as the greatest son of Oxford, the greatest
+Englishman of his time.  Imre Kiralfy, who has done for a whole district
+of London what Mr. Rhodes tried to do for the empire, is but an
+_impresario_ beside him.  A French critic says we cannot admire greatness
+in England; and this was shown by the timid way a large number of
+Imperialists, while professing to believe the war a righteous one,
+thought they would seem independent if they disclaimed approval of Mr.
+Rhodes, by not having the pluck to admit the same motives though ready
+enough to share the plunder.  You may compare the ungrateful
+half-unfriendly obituaries in the press with the leaders a few days
+later, after the will was opened.
+
+But what immediately concerns us here is the intention of Mr. Rhodes.  Was
+it entirely benevolence, or some wish to test the strength of Oxford--to
+bring undergraduates into contact with something coarser, some terrific
+impermeable force that would be manner-proof against Oxford?  Would he
+conquer from the grave?  Several Americans have been known to go through
+the University retaining the Massachusetts _patina_.  What if a number of
+these savages were grafted on Oxford?  How would they alter the tone?  We
+shall see.  It will be an interesting struggle.  Shall we hear of six-
+shooters in the High?--of hominy and flannel cake for breakfast?--will
+undergrads look 'spry?'--will they 'voice' public opinion? . . . I
+forbear: my American vocabulary is limited.  _Outre_ _mer, outres moeurs_,
+as Mr. Walkley might say in some guarded allusion to Paul Bourget. . . .
+I shall be sorry to see poker take the place of roulette, and the Christ
+Church meadows turned into a ranch for priggish cowboys, or Addison's
+Walk re-named the Cake Walk.  But no, I believe Mr. Rhodes, if there was
+just a touch of malice in his testament, realised that Oxford manners
+were stronger than the American want of them.  Oxford may be wounded, but
+I have complete confidence in the issue.  These Boeotian invaders must
+succumb, as nobler stock before them.  They will form an interesting
+subject for some exquisite study by Mr. Henry James, who will deal with
+their gradual civilisation.  Preserved in the amber of his art they will
+become immortal.
+
+I have been able to clip only the fringe of a great theme.  Athletes
+require an essay to themselves.  In later age they seem to me more
+melancholy than their Cambridge peers and less successful.  These
+splendid creatures are really works of art, and form our only substitute
+for sculpture in the absence of any native plastic talent.  From the
+collector's point of view they belong to the best period, while the
+graceful convention of isocephaly, which has raised the standard of
+height, renders them inapt for the 'battles' of life, however well
+equipped for those of their College where the cuisine is at all
+tolerable.
+
+I am not enough of an antiquary to conjecture if there was ever a temple
+to Isis during the Roman occupation of Britain on the site of the now
+illustrious University.  But I like to imagine that there existed a
+cultus of the venerable goddess in the green fields where the purple
+fritillaries, so reminiscent of the lotus, blossom in the early spring.
+In the curious formal pattern of their petals I see a symbol of the
+Oxford manner--something archaic, rigid, severe.  The Oxford Don may well
+be a reversion to some earlier type, learned, mystic, and romantic as
+those priests of whom Herodotus has given us so vivid a picture.  The
+worship of Apis, as Mr. Frazer or Mr. Lang would tell us, becomes then
+merely the hieroglyph for a social standard, a manner of life.  This, I
+think, will explain the name Oxford on the Isis--the Ford of Apis, the ox-
+god at this one place able to pass over the benign deity.  You remember,
+too, the horrid blasphemy of Cambyses (his very name suggests Cambridge),
+and the vengeance of the gods.  So be it to any sacrilegious reformer who
+would transmute either the Oxford Don or the Oxford undergraduate--the
+most august of human counsellors, the most delightful of friends.
+
+(1902.)
+
+
+
+
+HOW WE LOST THE BOOK OF JASHER.
+
+
+Everyone who knows anything about art, archaeology, or science has heard
+of the famous FitzTaylor Museum at Oxbridge.  And even outsiders who care
+for none of these things have heard of the quarrels and internal
+dissensions that have disturbed that usual calm which ought to reign
+within the walls of a museum.  The illustrious founder, to whose
+munificence we owe this justly famous institution, provided in his will
+for the support of four curators, who govern the two separate departments
+of science and art.  The University has been in the habit of making
+grants of money from time to time to these separate departments for the
+acquisition of scientific or archaeological curiosities and MSS.  I
+suppose there was something wrong in the system, but whatever it may be,
+it led to notorious jealousies and disputes.  At the time of which I
+write, the principal curators of the art section were Professor
+Girdelstone and Mr. Monteagle, of Prince's College.  I looked after the
+scientific welfare of the museum with Lowestoft as my understudy--he was
+practically a nonentity and an authority on lepidoptera.  Now, whenever a
+grant was made to the left wing of the building, as I call it, I always
+used to say that science was being sacrificed to archaeology.  I mocked
+at the illuminated MSS. over which Girdelstone grew enthusiastic, and the
+musty theological folios purchased by Monteagle.  They heaped abuse upon
+me, of course, when my turn came, and cracked many a quip on my splendid
+skeleton of the ichthyosaurus, the only known specimen from Greenland.  At
+one time the strife broke into print, and the London press animadverted
+on our conduct.  It became a positive scandal.  We were advised, I
+remember, to wash our dirty linen at home, and though I have often
+wondered why the press should act as a voluntary laundress on such
+occasions, I suppose the remark is a just one.
+
+There came a day when we took the advice of the press, and from then
+until now science and art have gone hand in hand at the University of
+Oxbridge.  How the breach was healed forms the subject of the present
+leaf from my memoirs.
+
+America, it has been wisely said, is the great land of fraud.  It is the
+Egypt of the modern world.  From America came the spiritualists, from
+America bogus goods, and cheap ideas and pirated editions, and from
+America I have every reason to believe came Dr. Groschen.  But if his
+ancestors came from Rhine or Jordan, that he received his education on
+the other side of the Atlantic I have no doubt.  Why he came to Oxbridge
+I cannot say.  He appeared quite suddenly, like a comet.  He brought
+introductions from various parts of the world--from the British Embassy
+at Constantinople, from the British and German Schools of Archaeology at
+Athens, from certain French Egyptologists at Alexandria, and a holograph
+letter from Archbishop Sarpedon, Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, Curator
+of the MSS. in the Monastery of St. Basil, at Mount Olympus.  It was this
+last that endeared him, I believe, to the High Church party in Oxbridge.
+Dr. Groschen was already the talk of the University, the lion of the
+hour, before I met him.  There was rumour of an honorary degree before I
+saw him in the flesh, at the high table of my college, a guest of the
+Provost.  If Dr. Groschen did not inspire me with any confidence, I
+cannot say that he excited any feeling of distrust.  He was a small,
+black, commonplace-looking little man, very neat in his attire, without
+the alchemical look of most archaeologists.  Had I known then, as I know
+now, that he presented his first credentials to Professor Girdelstone, I
+might have suspected him.  Of course, I took it for granted they were
+friends.  When the University was ringing with praises of the generosity
+of Dr. Groschen in transferring his splendid collections of Greek
+inscriptions to the FitzTaylor Museum, I rejoiced; the next grant would
+be devoted to science, in consideration of the recently enriched
+galleries of the art and archaeological section.  I only pitied the
+fatuity of the authorities for being grateful.  Dr. Groschen now wound
+himself into everybody's good wishes, and the University degree was
+already conferred.  He was offered a fine set of rooms in a college
+famous for culture.  He became a well-known figure on the Q.P.  But he
+was not always with us; he went to Greece or the East sometimes, for the
+purpose, it was said, of adding to the Groschen collection, now the glory
+of the FitzTaylor.
+
+It was after a rather prolonged period of absence that he wrote to
+Girdelstone privately, announcing a great discovery.  On his return he
+was bringing home, he said, some MSS. recently unearthed by himself in
+the monastic library of St. Basil, and bought for an enormous sum from
+Sarpedon, the Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis.  He was willing to sell
+them to 'some public institution' for very little over the original
+price.  Girdelstone told several of us in confidence.  It was public news
+next day.  Scholars grew excited.  There were hints at the recovery of a
+lost MS., which was to 'add to our knowledge of the antique world and
+materially alter accepted views of the early state of Roman and Greek
+society.'  On hearing the news I smiled.  'Some institution,' that was
+suspicious--MSS.--they meant forgery.  The new treasure was described as
+a palimpsest, consisting of fifty or sixty leaves of papyrus.  On one
+side was a portion of the _Lost Book of Jasher_, of a date not later than
+the fourth century; on the other, in cursive characters, the too
+notorious work of Aulus Gellius--_De moribus Romanorum_, concealed under
+the life of a saint.
+
+But why should I go over old history?  Every one remembers the excitement
+that the discovery caused--the leaders in the _Times_ and the
+_Telegraph_, the doubts of the sceptical, the enthusiasm of the
+archaeologists, the jealousy of the Berlin authorities, the offers from
+all the libraries of Europe, the aspersions of the British Museum.  'Why,'
+asked indignant critics, 'did Dr. Groschen offer his MS. to the
+authorities at Oxbridge?'  'Because Oxbridge had been the first to
+recognise his genius,' was the crushing reply.  And Professor Girdelstone
+said that should the FitzTaylor fail to acquire the MS. by any false
+economy on the part of the University authorities, the prestige of the
+museum would be gone.  But this is all old history.  I only remind the
+reader of what he knows already.  I began to bring all my powers, and the
+force of the scientific world in Oxbridge, to bear in opposition to the
+purchase of the MS.  I pulled every wire I knew, and execration was
+heaped on me as a vandal, though I only said the University money should
+be devoted to other channels than the purchase of doubtful MSS.  I was
+doing all this, when I was startled by the intelligence that Dr. Groschen
+had suddenly come to the conclusion that his find was after all only a
+forgery.
+
+The Book of Jasher was a Byzantine fake, and he ascribed the date at the
+very earliest to the reign of Alexis Comnenus.  Theologians became fierce
+on the subject.  They had seen the MS.; they knew it was genuine.  And
+when Dr. Groschen began to have doubts on Aulus Gellius, suggesting it
+was a sixteenth-century fabrication, the classical world 'morally and
+physically rose and denounced' him.  Dr. Groschen, who had something of
+the early Christian in his character, bore this shower of opprobrium like
+a martyr.  'I may be mistaken,' he said, 'but I believe I have been
+deceived.  I have been taken in before, and I would not like the MS.
+offered to any library before two of the very highest experts could
+decide as to its authenticity.'  People had long learnt to regard Dr.
+Groschen himself as quite the highest expert in the world.  They thought
+he was out of his senses, though the press commended him for his honesty,
+and one daily journal, loudest in declaring its authenticity, said it was
+glad Dr. Groschen had detected the forgery long recognised by their
+special correspondent.  Dr. Groschen was furthermore asked to what
+experts he would submit his MS., and by whose decision he would abide.
+After some delay and correspondence, he could think of only two--Professor
+Girdelstone and Monteagle.  They possessed great opportunities, he said,
+of judging on such matters.  Their erudition was of a steadier and more
+solid nature than his own.  Then the world and Oxbridge joined again in a
+chorus of praise.  What could be more honest, more straightforward, than
+submitting the MS. to a final examination at the hands of the two
+curators of the FitzTaylor, who were to have the first refusal of the MS.
+if it was considered authentic?  No museum was ever given such an
+opportunity.  Professor Girdelstone and his colleague soon came to a
+conclusion.  They decided that there could be no doubt as to the
+authenticity of the Aulus Gellius.  In portions it was true that between
+the lines other characters were partly legible; but this threw no slur on
+the MS. itself.  Of the commentary on the book of Jasher, it will be
+remembered, they gave no decisive opinion, and it is still an open
+question.  They expressed their belief that the Aulus Gellius was alone
+worth the price asked by Dr. Groschen.  It only remained now for the
+University to advance a sum to the FitzTaylor for the purchase of this
+treasure.  The curators, rather prematurely perhaps, wrote privately to
+Dr. Groschen making him an offer for his MS., and paid him half the
+amount out of their own pockets, so as to close the bargain once and for
+all.
+
+The delay of the University in making the grant caused a good deal of
+apprehension in the hearts of Professor Girdelstone and Monteagle.  They
+feared that the enormous sums offered by the Berlin Museum would tempt
+even the simple-minded Dr. Groschen, though the interests of the
+FitzTaylor were so near his heart.  These suspicions proved unfounded as
+they were ungenerous.  The _savant_ was contented with his degree and
+college rooms, and showed no hurry for the remainder of the sum to be
+paid.
+
+One night, when I was seated in my rooms beside the fire, preparing
+lectures on the ichthyosaurus, I was startled by a knock at my door.  It
+was a hurried, jerky rap.  I shouted, 'Come in.'  The door burst open,
+and on the threshold I saw Monteagle, with a white face, on which the
+beads of perspiration glittered.  At first I thought it was the rain
+which had drenched his cap and gown, but in a moment I saw that the
+perspiration was the result of terror or anxiety (cf. my lectures on
+Mental Equilibrium).  Monteagle and I in our undergraduate days had been
+friends; but like many University friendships, ours proved evanescent;
+our paths had lain in different directions.
+
+He had chosen archaeology.  We failed to convert one another to each
+other's views.  When he became a member of 'The Disciples,' a mystic
+Oxbridge society, the fissure between us widened to a gulf.  We nodded
+when we met, but that was all.  With Girdelstone I was not on speaking
+terms.  So when I found Monteagle on my threshold I confess I was
+startled.
+
+'May I come in?' he asked.
+
+'Certainly, certainly,' I said cordially.  'But what is the matter?'
+
+'Good God!  Newall,' he cried, 'that MS. after all is a forgery.'
+
+This expression I thought unbecoming in a 'Disciple,' but I only smiled
+and said, 'Really, you think so?'  Monteagle then made reference to our
+old friendship, our unfortunate dissensions.  He asked for my help, and
+then really excited my pity.  Some member of the High Church party in
+Oxbridge had apparently been to Greece to attend a Conference on the
+Union of the Greek and Anglican Churches.  While there he met Sarpedon,
+Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, and in course of conversation told him
+of the renowned Dr. Groschen.  Sarpedon became distant at mention of the
+Doctor's name.  He denied all knowledge of the famous letter of
+introduction, and said the only thing he knew of the Professor was, that
+he was usually supposed to have been the thief who had made off with a
+large chest of parchments from the monastery of St. Basil.
+
+The Greek Patriarch refused to give any further information.  The English
+clergyman reported the incident privately to Girdelstone.
+
+Dr. Groschen's other letters were examined, and found to be fabrications.
+The Book of Jasher and Aulus Gellius were submitted to a like scrutiny.
+Girdelstone and Monteagle came reluctantly to the conclusion that they
+were also vulgar and palpable forgeries.  At the end of his story
+Monteagle almost burst into tears.  I endeavoured to cheer him, although
+I was shrieking with laughter at the whole story.
+
+Of course it was dreadful for him.  If he exposed Dr. Groschen, his own
+reputation as an expert would be gone, and the Doctor was already paid
+half the purchase money.  Monteagle was so agitated that it was with
+difficulty I could get his story out of him, and to this day I have never
+quite learned the truth.  Controlling my laughter, I sent a note round to
+Professor Girdelstone, asking him to come to my rooms.  In about ten
+minutes he appeared, looking as draggled and sheepish as poor Monteagle.
+In his bosom he carried the fateful MS., which I now saw for the first
+time.  If it was a forgery (and I have never been convinced) it was
+certainly a masterpiece.  From what Girdelstone said to me, then and
+since, I think that the Aulus Gellius portion was genuine enough, and the
+Book of Jasher possibly the invention of Groschen; however, it will never
+be discovered if one or neither was genuine.  Monteagle thought the ink
+used was a compound of tea and charcoal, but both he and Girdelstone were
+too suspicious to believe even each other by this time.
+
+I tried to console them, and promised all help in my power.  They were
+rather startled and alarmed when I laid out my plan of campaign.  In the
+first place, I was to withdraw all opposition to the purchase of the MS.
+Girdelstone and Monteagle, meanwhile, were to set about having the Aulus
+Gellius printed and facsimiled; for I thought it was a pity such a work
+should be lost to the world.  The facsimile was only to be _announced_;
+and publication by the University Press to be put in hand at once.  The
+text of Aulus Gellius can still be obtained, and a translation of those
+portions which can be rendered into English forms a volume of Mr. Bohn's
+excellent classical library, which will satisfy the curious, who are
+unacquainted with Latin.  Professor Girdelstone was to write a preface in
+very guarded terms.  This will be familiar to all classical scholars.
+
+It was with great difficulty that I could persuade Girdelstone and
+Monteagle of the sincerity of my actions; but the poor fellows were ready
+to catch at any straw for hope from exposure, and they listened to every
+word I said.  As the whole University knew I was not on speaking terms
+with Girdelstone, I told him to adopt a Nicodemus-like attitude, and to
+come to me in the night-time, when we could hold consultation.  To the
+outer world, during these anxious evenings, when I would see no one, I
+was supposed to be preparing my great syllabus of lectures on the
+ichthyosaurus.  I communicated to my fellow-curators my plans bit by bit
+only, for I thought it would be better for their nerves.  I made
+Monteagle send round a notice to the press:--'That the MS. about to
+become the property of the University Museum was being facsimiled prior
+to publication, and at the earliest possible date would be on view in the
+Galleries where Dr. Groschen's collections are now exhibited.'  This was
+to quiet the complaints already being made by scholars and commentators
+about the difficulty of obtaining access to the MS.  The importunities of
+several religious societies to examine the Book of Jasher became
+intolerable.  The Dean of Rothbury, an old friend of Girdelstone's, came
+from the north on purpose to collate the new-found work.  With permission
+he intended, he said, to write a small brochure for the S.P.C.K. on the
+Book of Jasher, though I believe that he also felt some curiosity in
+regard to Aulus Gellius.  I may be wronging him.  The subterfuges, lies,
+and devices to which we resorted were not very creditable to ourselves.
+Girdelstone gave him a dinner, and Monteagle and I persuaded the Senate
+to confer on him an honorary degree.  We amused him with advance sheets
+of the commentary.  He was quite a month at Oxbridge, but at last was
+recalled on business to the north by some lucky domestic family
+bereavement.  Our next difficulty was the news that Sarpedon, Patriarch
+of Hermaphroditopolis, was about to visit England to attend an Anglican
+Synod.  I thought Girdelstone would go off his head.  Monteagle's hair
+became grey in a few weeks.  Sarpedon was sure to be invited to Oxbridge.
+He would meet Dr. Groschen and then expose him.  Our fears, I soon found
+out, were shared by the _savant_, who left suddenly on one of those
+mysterious visits to the East.  I saw that our action must be prompt; or
+Girdelstone and Monteagle would be lost.  They were horrified when I told
+them I proposed placing the MS. on public view in the museum immediately.
+A large plate-glass case was made by my orders, in which Girdelstone and
+Monteagle, who obeyed me like lambs, deposited their precious burden.  It
+was placed in the Groschen Hall of the FitzTaylor.  The crush that
+afternoon was terrible.  All the University came to peer at the new
+acquisition.  I must tell you that Dr. Groschen's antiquities occupied a
+temporary and fire-proof erection built of wood and tin, at the back of
+the museum, with which it was connected by a long stone gallery, adorned
+with plaster casts.
+
+I mingled with the crowd, and heard the remarks; though I advised
+Girdelstone and Monteagle to keep out of the way, as it would only upset
+them.  Various dons came up and chaffed me about the opposition I made to
+the MS. being purchased.  A little man of dark, sallow complexion asked
+me if I was Professor Girdelstone.  He wanted to obtain leave to examine
+the MS.  I gave him my card, and asked him to call on me, when I would
+arrange a suitable day.  He told me he was a Lutheran pastor from
+Pomerania.
+
+I was the last to leave the museum that afternoon.  I often remained in
+the library long after five, the usual closing hour.  So I dismissed the
+attendants who locked up everything with the exception of a small door in
+the stone gallery always used on such occasions.  I waited till six, and
+as I went out opened near this door a sash window, having removed the
+iron shutters.  After dinner I went round to Monteagle's rooms.  He and
+Girdelstone were sitting in a despondent way on each side of the fire,
+sipping weak coffee and nibbling Albert biscuits.  They were startled at
+my entrance.
+
+'What _have_ you decided?' asked Girdelstone, hoarsely.
+
+'All is arranged.  Monteagle and I set fire to the museum to-night,' I
+said, quietly.
+
+Girdelstone buried his face in his hands and began to sob.
+
+'Anything but that--anything but that!' he cried.  And Monteagle turned a
+little pale.  At first they protested, but I overcame their scruples by
+saying they might get out of the mess how they liked.  I advised
+Girdelstone to go to bed and plead illness for the next few days, for he
+really wanted rest.  At eleven o'clock that night, Monteagle and myself
+crossed the meadows at the back of our college, and by a circuitous route
+reached the grounds surrounding the museum, which were planted with
+rhododendrons and other shrubs.  The pouring rain was, unfortunately, not
+favourable for our enterprise.  I brought however a small box of
+combustibles from the University Laboratories, and a dark lantern.  When
+we climbed over the low wall not far from the stone gallery, I saw, to my
+horror, a light emerging from the Groschen Hall.  Monteagle, who is
+fearfully superstitious, began chattering his teeth.  When we reached the
+small door I saw it was open.  A thief had evidently forestalled us.
+Monteagle suggested going back, and leaving the thief to make off with
+the MS.; but I would not hear of such a proposal.
+
+The door opening to the Groschen Hall at the end of the gallery was open,
+and beyond, a man, whom I at once recognised as the little Lutheran, was
+busily engaged in picking the lock of the case where were deposited the
+Book of Jasher and Aulus Gellius.  Telling Monteagle to guard the door, I
+approached very softly, keeping behind the plaster casts.  I was within a
+yard of him before he heard my boots creak.  Then he turned round, and I
+found myself face to face with Dr. Groschen.  I have never seen such a
+look of terror on any one's face.
+
+'You scoundrel!' I cried, collecting myself, 'drop those things at once!'
+and I made for him with my fist.  He dodged me.  I ran after him; but he
+threaded his way like a rat through the statues and cases of antiquities,
+and bolted down the passage out of the door, where he upset Monteagle and
+the lantern, and disappeared in the darkness and rain.  I then returned
+to the scene of his labours.  Monteagle was too frightened, owing to the
+rather ghostly appearance of the museum by the light of a feeble
+oil-lamp.  In a small cupboard there was some dry sacking I had deposited
+there for the purpose some days before.  This I ignited, along with
+certain native curiosities of straw and skin, wicker-work, and other
+ethnographical treasures.
+
+Some new unpacked cases left by the attendants the previous afternoon
+materially assisted the conflagration.
+
+It was an impressive scene, to witness the flames playing round the
+pedestals of the torsos, statues, and cases.  I only waited for a few
+moments to make sure that my work was complete.  I shut the iron door
+between the gallery and the hall to avoid the possibility of the fire
+spreading to the rest of the building.  Then I seized Monteagle by the
+arm and hurried him through the rhododendrons, over the wall, into the
+meadows.  I turned back once, and just caught a glimpse of red flame
+bursting through the windows.  Having seen Monteagle half-way back to the
+college, I returned to see if any alarm was given.  Already a small crowd
+was collecting.  A fire-engine arrived, and a local pump was almost set
+going.  I returned to college, where I found the porter standing in the
+gateway.
+
+'The FitzTaylor is burning,' he said.  'I have been looking out for you,
+sir.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+There is nothing more to tell.  To this day no one suspects that the fire
+was the work of an incendiary.  The Professor has returned from the East,
+but lives in great retirement.  His friends say he has never quite
+recovered the shock occasioned by the loss of his collection.  The rest
+of the museum was uninjured.
+
+The death of Sarpedon, Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, at Naples, was a
+sudden and melancholy catastrophe, which people think affected Dr.
+Groschen more than the fire.  Strangely enough, he had just been dining
+with the Doctor the evening before.  They met at Naples purposely to bury
+the hatchet.  Sometimes I ask myself if I did right in setting fire to
+the museum.  You see, it was for the sake of others, not myself, and
+Monteagle was an old friend.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOOTAWA VANDYCK.
+
+
+'My own experience,' said an expert to a group of mostly middle-aged men,
+who spent their whole life in investigating spiritual phenomena, 'is a
+peculiar one.
+
+'It was in the early autumn of 1900.  I was at Rome, where I went to
+investigate the relative artistic affinity between Pietro Cavallini and
+Giotto (whose position, I think, will have to be adjusted).  There were
+as yet only a few visitors at the Hotel Russie, chiefly maiden ladies and
+casual tourists, besides a certain Scotch family and myself.  Colonel
+Brodie, formerly of the 69th Highlanders, was a retired officer of that
+rather peppery type which always seems to belong to the stage rather than
+real life, though you meet so many examples on the Continent.  He
+possessed an extraordinary topographical knowledge of modern Rome, the
+tramway system, and the hours at which churches and galleries were open.
+He would waylay you in the entrance-hall and inquire severely if you had
+been to the Catacombs.  In the case of an affirmative answer he would
+describe an unvisited tomb or ruin, far better worth seeing; in that of a
+negative, he would smile, tell you the shortest and cheapest route, and
+the amount which should be tendered to the Trappist Father.  Later on in
+the evening, over coffee, if he was pleased with you, he would mention in
+a very impressive manner, "I am, as you probably know, Colonel Brodie, of
+Hootawa."  His wife, beside whom I sat at table d'hote, retained traces
+of former beauty.  She was thin, and still tight-laced; was somewhat acid
+in manner; censorious concerning the other visitors; singularly devoted
+to her tedious husband, and fretfully attached to the beautiful daughter,
+for whose pleasure and education they were visiting Rome.  I gathered
+that they were fairly well-to-do.
+
+It was Mrs. Brodie who first broke the ice by asking if I was interested
+in pictures.  Miss Brodie, who sat between her parents, turned very red,
+and said, "Oh, mamma, you are talking to one of the greatest experts in
+Europe!"  I was surprised and somewhat gratified by her knowledge
+(indeed, it chilled me some days later when she confessed to having
+learnt the information only that day by overhearing an argument between
+myself and a friend at the Colonna Gallery on Stefano de Zevio, and the
+indebtedness of Northern Italian art to Teutonic influences).
+
+Mrs. Brodie took the intelligence quite calmly, and merely inspected me
+through her lorgnettes as if I were an object in a museum.
+
+"Ah, you must talk to Flora about pictures.  I have no doubt that she
+will tell you a good deal that even _you_ do not know.  We have some very
+interesting pictures up in Scotland.  My husband is Colonel Brodie of
+Hootawa (no relation to the Brodie of Brodie).  His grandfather was a
+great collector, and originally we possessed seven Raphaels."
+
+"Indeed," I replied, eagerly, "might I ask the names of the pictures?  I
+should know them at once."
+
+"I have never seen them," said Mrs. Brodie; "they were not left to my
+husband, who quarrelled with his father.  Fortunately none of us cared
+for Raphaels; but the most valuable pictures, including a Vandyck, were
+entailed.  Flora is particularly attached to Vandyck.  He is always so
+romantic, I think."
+
+Flora, embarrassed by her mother's eulogy of family heirlooms, leaned
+across, as if to address me, and said, "Oh, mamma, I don't think they
+really were Raphaels; they were probably only by pupils--Giulio Romano,
+Perino del Vaga, or Luca Penni."
+
+"As you never saw them, my dear," said Mrs. Brodie, severely, "I don't
+think you can possibly tell.  Your grandfather" (she glared at me) "was
+considered _the_ greatest expert in Europe, and described them in his
+will as Raphaels.  It would be impious to suggest that they are by any
+one else.  There were _two_ Holy Families.  One of them was given to your
+grandfather by the King of Holland in recognition of his services; and a
+third was purchased direct from the Queen of Naples.  But your father is
+getting impatient for his cigar."
+
+They rose, and bowed sweetly.  I joined them in the glass winter-garden a
+few minutes later.
+
+"Have you been to the Pincio?  But I forgot, of course you know Rome.  I
+do love the Pincio," sighed Mrs. Brodie over some needlework, and then,
+as an afterthought, "Do you know the two things that have impressed me
+most since I came here?"
+
+"I could not dare to guess any more than I dare tell you what has
+impressed me most," I replied, gazing softly at Flora.
+
+"The two things which have really and truly impressed me most," continued
+Mrs. Brodie, "more than anything else, more than the Pantheon, or the
+Forum, are--St. Peter's and the Colosseum."  She almost looked young
+again.
+
+The next day we visited the Borghese; and I was able to explain to Flora
+why the circular "Madonna and Angels" was not by Botticelli.  And,
+indeed, there was hardly a picture in Rome I was unable to reattribute to
+its rightful owner.  In the apt Flora I found a receptive pupil.  She
+even grew suspicious about the great Velasquez at the Doria, in which she
+fancied, with all the enthusiasm of youth, that she detected the handling
+of Mazo.  I soon found that it was better for her training to discourage
+her from looking at pictures at all--we confined ourselves to
+photographs.  In a photograph you are not disturbed by colour, or by
+impasto.  You are able to study the morphic values in a picture, by which
+means you arrive at the attribution without any disturbing aesthetic
+considerations.
+
+One afternoon, returning from some church ceremony, Flora said to me,
+"Oh, Aleister" (we were already engaged secretly), "papa is going to ask
+you next winter to stay at Hootawa.  Before I forget, I want to warn you
+never to criticise the pictures.  They are mostly of the Dutch and
+English School, and I dare say you will find a great many of the names
+wrong; but, you know, papa is irritable, and it would offend him if you
+said that the 'Terborch' was really by Pieter de Hooghe.  You can easily
+avoid saying anything--and then, you will really admire the Vandyck."
+
+"Darling Flora, of course I promise.  By the way, you never speak of your
+family ghost, although Mrs. Brodie always refers to it as if I knew all
+about it; and the Colonel has often told me of Sir Rupert's military
+achievements."
+
+"Oh, Aleister, I don't know whether you believe in ghosts: it _is_ very
+extraordinary.  Whenever any disaster, or any good fortune happens to our
+family, Sir Rupert Brodie's figure, just as he appears in the Vandyck, is
+seen walking in the Long Gallery; and every night he appears at twelve
+o'clock in the green spare bedroom; but only guests and servants ever see
+him there.  We have a saying at Hootawa, that servants will not stay
+unless they are able to see Sir Rupert the first month after their
+arrival.  Only members of the family are able to see him in the Long
+Gallery, and, of course, we never know whether he betokens good or ill
+luck.  The last time he appeared there, papa was so nervous that he sold
+out of Consols, which went down an eighth the day after.  We were all
+very much relieved.  But he invested the money in some concern called
+"The Imperial Federation Stylograph Pen Company," and lost most of it; so
+it was not of much use."
+
+"Tell me, darling, of your father's other investments," I asked
+anxiously.
+
+"Oh, you must ask papa about them, I don't understand business; but I
+want to tell you about Sir Rupert.  The Society for Psychical Research
+sent down a Committee to inquire into the credibility of the ghost, and
+recorded four authentic apparitions in the spare bedroom; and on family
+evidence accepted at least three events in the Long Gallery.  It was just
+after their report was issued that papa was invited to lease the house to
+some Americans for the summer.  He always gets a good price for it now,
+simply on account of the ghost.  I always think that rather horrid.  I
+don't believe poor Sir Rupert would like it."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't know," I suggested.
+
+"Of course, you don't believe in him," she said in rather an offended
+way.
+
+"My darling, of course I do; I have always believed in ghosts.  Most of
+the pictures in the world, as I am always saying, were painted by
+_ghosts_."
+
+"Oh, no, Aleister, you're laughing at me; but when you see Sir Rupert, as
+you will, in the spare bedroom, you will believe too."
+
+At the end of January, I became Flora's accepted fiance.
+
+In February, I moved with the Brodies to Florence, where I was able to
+introduce them to all my kind and hospitable friends,--the Berensons, Mr.
+Charles Loeser, Mr. Herbert Horne, and Mr. Hobart Cust.  Flora was in
+every way a great success, and commenced a little book on Nera di Bicci
+for Bell's Great Painters Series.  She was invited to contribute to the
+_Burlington Magazine_.  It was quite a primavera.  Our marriage was
+arranged for the following February.  The Brodies were to return to
+Hootawa after it was vacated by the American summer tenants.  I was to
+join them for Christmas on my return from America, where I was compelled
+to go in order to settle my affairs.  My father, Lorenzo Q. Sweat, of
+Chicago, evinced great pleasure at my approaching union with an old
+Scotch family; he promised me a handsome allowance considering his recent
+losses in the meat packing swindle--I mean trade.  I was able to dissuade
+him from coming to Europe for the ceremony.  After delivering two
+successful lectures on Pietro Cavallini in the early fall at mothers'
+soirees, I sailed for Liverpool.
+
+There was deep snow on the ground when I arrived at Hootawa in the early
+afternoon of a cold December day.  The Colonel met me at the station in
+the uniform of the 69th, attended by two gillies holding torches.
+
+"There will just be enough light to glance at the pictures before tea,"
+he said gaily, and in three-quarters of an hour I was embracing Flora and
+saluting her mother, who were in the hall to greet me.  For the most part
+Hootawa was a typical old Scotch castle, with extinguisher turrets; an
+incongruous Jacobean addition rather enhancing its picturesque ensemble.
+
+"You'll see better pictures here than anything in Rome," remarked the
+Colonel; but Flora giggled rather nervously.
+
+In the smoking-room and library, I inspected, with assumed interest,
+works by the little masters of Holland, and some more admirable examples
+of the English Eighteenth Century School.  Faithful to my promise, I
+pronounced every one of them to be little gems, unsurpassed by anything
+in the private collections of America or Europe.  We passed into the
+drawing-room and parlour with the same success.  In the latter apartment
+the Colonel, grasping my arm, said impressively: "Now you will see our
+great treasure, the Brodie Vandyck, of which Flora has so often told you.
+I have never lent it for exhibition, for, as you know, we are rather
+superstitious about it.  Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 1780, offered to paint
+the portraits of the whole family in exchange for the picture.  Dr.
+Waagen describes it in his well-known work.  Dr. Bode came from Berlin on
+purpose to see it some years ago, when he left a certificate (which was
+scarcely necessary) of its undoubted authenticity.  I was so touched by
+his genuine admiration, that I presented him with a small Dutch picture
+which he admired in the smoking-room, and thought not unworthy of placing
+in the Berlin Gallery.  I expect you know Dr. Bode."
+
+"Not personally," I said, as we stepped into the Long Gallery.
+
+It was a delightful panelled room, with oak-beamed ceiling.  Between the
+mullioned windows were old Venetian mirrors and seventeenth-century
+chairs.  At the end, concealed by a rich crimson brocade, hung the
+Vandyck, the only picture on the walls.
+
+It was the Colonel himself who drew aside the curtain which veiled
+discreetly the famous picture of Sir Rupert Brodie at the age of thirty-
+two, in the beautiful costume of the period.  The face was unusually
+pallid; it was just the sort of portrait you would expect to walk out of
+its frame.
+
+"You have never seen a finer Vandyck, I am sure," said Mrs. Brodie,
+anxiously.  I examined the work with great care, employing a powerful
+pocket-glass.  There was an awkward pause for about five minutes.
+
+"Well, sir," said the Colonel, sternly, "have you nothing to say?"
+
+"It is a very interesting and excellent work, though _not_ by Vandyck; it
+is by Jamieson, his Scotch pupil; the morphic forms . . ."--but I got no
+further.  There was a loud clap of thunder, and Flora fainted away.  I
+was hastening to her side when her father's powerful arm seized my
+collar.  He ran me down the gallery and out by an egress which led into
+the entrance hall, where some menial opened the massive door.  I felt one
+stinging blow on my face; then, bleeding and helpless, I was kicked down
+the steps into the snow from which I was picked up, half stunned, by one
+of the gillies.
+
+"Eh, mon, hae ye seen the bogles at Hootawa?" he observed.
+
+"It will be very civil of you if you will conduct me to the depot, or the
+nearest caravanserai," I replied.
+
+I never saw Flora again.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+'But what has happened about the ghost, Mr. Sweat?  You never told us
+anything about it.  Did you ever see it?' asked one of the listeners in a
+disappointed tone.
+
+'Oh, I forgot; no, that was rather tragic.  _Sir Rupert Brodie never
+appeared again_, not even in the spare bedroom; he seemed offended.
+Eventually his portrait was sent up to London, where Mr. Lionel Cust
+pointed out that it could not have been painted until after Vandyck's
+death, at which time Sir Rupert was only ten years old.  Indeed, there
+was some uncertainty whether the picture represented Sir Rupert at all.
+Mr. Bowyer Nichols found fault with the costume, which belonged to an
+earlier date prior to Sir Rupert's birth.  Colonel Brodie never recovered
+from the shock.  He resides chiefly at Harrogate.  Gradually the servants
+all gave notice, and Hootawa ceased to attract Americans.  Poor Flora!  I
+ought to have remembered my promise; but the habit was too strong in me.
+Sir Oliver Lodge, I believe, has an explanation for the non-appearance of
+the phantom after the events I have described.  He regards it as a good
+instance of _bypsychic duality_--the fortuitous phenomenon by which
+spirits are often uncertain as to whom they really represent.  But I am
+only an art critic, not a physicist.'
+
+_To_ HERBERT HORNE, ESQ.
+
+
+
+
+THE ELEVENTH MUSE.
+
+
+In the closing years of the last century I held the position of a
+publisher's hack.  Having failed in everything except sculpture, I became
+publisher's reader and adviser.  It was the age of the 'dicky dongs,'
+and, of course, I advised chiefly the publication of deciduous
+literature, or books which dealt with the history of decay.  The
+business, unfortunately, closed before my plans were materialised; but
+there was a really brilliant series of works prepared for an ungrateful
+public.  A cheap and abridged edition of Gibbon was to have heralded the
+'Ruined Home' Library, as we only dealt with the decline and fall of
+things, and eschewed Motley in both senses of the word.  'Bad Taste in
+All Ages' (twelve volumes edited by myself) would have rivalled some of
+Mr. Sidney Lee's monumental undertakings.  It was a memory of these
+unfulfilled designs which has turned my thoughts to an old notebook--the
+skeleton of what was destined never to be a book in being.
+
+I have often wondered why no one has ever tried to form an anthology of
+bad poetry.  It would, of course, be easy enough to get together a dreary
+little volume of unreadable and unsaleable song.  There are, however,
+certain stanzas so exquisite in their unconscious absurdity that an
+inverted immortality may be claimed for them.  It is essential that their
+authors should have been serious, because parody and light verse have
+been carried to such a state of perfection that a tenth muse has been
+created--the muse of Mr. Owen Seaman and the late St. John Hankin for
+example.  When the Anakim, men of old, which were men of renown--Shelley,
+Keats, or Tennyson--become playful, I confess to a feeling of
+nervousness: the unpleasant, hot sensation you experience when a
+distinguished man makes a fool of himself.  Rossetti--I suppose from his
+Italian origin--was able to assume motley without loss of dignity, and
+that wounded Titan, the late W. E. Henley, was another exception.  Both
+he and Rossetti had the faculty of being foolish, or obscene, without
+impairing the high seriousness of their superb poetic gifts.
+
+But I refer to more serious folly--that of the disciples of Silas Wegg.
+Some friends of mine in the country employed a ladies'-maid with literary
+proclivities.  She was never known to smile; the other servants thought
+her stuck up; she was a great reader of novels, poetry, and popular books
+on astronomy.  One day she gave notice, departed at the end of a month,
+left no address, and never applied for a character.  Beneath the mattress
+of her bed was found a manuscript of poems.  One of these, addressed to
+our satellite, is based on the scientific fact (of which I was not aware
+until I read her poem) that we see only one side of the moon.  The ode
+contains this ingenious stanza:--
+
+   O beautiful moon!
+   When I gaze on thy face
+   Careering among the boundaries of space,
+   The thought has often come to my mind
+   If I ever shall see thy glorious behind.
+
+It was my pleasure to communicate this verse to our greatest living
+conversationalist, a point I mention because it may, in consequence, be
+already known to those who, like myself, enjoy the privileges of his
+inimitable talk.  I possess the original manuscript of the poem, and can
+supply copies of the remainder to the curious.
+
+In a magazine managed by the physician of a well-known lunatic asylum I
+found many inspiring examples.  The patients are permitted to contribute:
+they discuss art and literature, subject of course to a stringent
+editorial discretion.  As you might suppose, poetry occupies a good deal
+of space.  It was from that source of clouded English I culled the
+following:--
+
+   His hair is red and blue and white,
+   His face is almost tan,
+   His brow is wet with blood and sweat,
+   He steals from where he can:
+   And looks the whole world in the face,
+   A drunkard and a man.
+
+I think we have here a Henley manque.  In robustious assertion you will
+not find anything to equal it in the Hospital Rhymes of that author.  I
+was so much struck by the poem that I obtained permission to correspond
+with the poet.  I discovered that another Sappho might have adorned our
+literature; that a mute inglorious Elizabeth Barrett was kept silent in
+Darien--for the asylum was in the immediate vicinity of the Peak in
+Derbyshire.  Of the correspondence which ensued I venture to quote only
+one sentence:
+
+   'I was brought up to love beauty; my home was more than cultured; it
+   was refined; we took in the _Art Journal_ regularly.'
+
+Of all modern artists, I suppose that Sir Edward Burne-Jones has inspired
+more poetry than any other.  A whole school of Oxford poets emerged from
+his fascinating palette, and he is the subject of perhaps the most
+exquisite of all the _Poems and Ballads_--the '_Dedication_'--which forms
+the colophon to that revel of rhymes.  I sometimes think that is why his
+art is out of fashion with modern painters, who may inspire dealers, but
+would never inspire poets.  For who could write a sonnet on some
+uncompromising pieces of realism by Mr. Rothenstein, Mr. John, or Mr.
+Orpen?  Theirs is an art which speaks for itself.  But Sir Edward Burne-
+Jones seems to have dazzled the undergrowth of Parnassus no less than the
+higher slopes.  In a long and serious epic called 'The Pageant of Life,'
+dealing with every conceivable subject, I found:--
+
+   With some the mention of Burne-Jones
+   Elicits merely howls and groans;
+   But those who know each inch of art
+   Believe that he can bear his part.
+
+I don't remember what he could bear.  Perhaps it referred to his election
+at the Royal Academy.  Then, again, in a 'Vision' of the next world, a
+poet described how--
+
+   Byron, Burne-Jones, and Beethoven,
+   Charlotte Bronte and Chopin are there.
+
+I wonder if this has escaped the eagle eye of Mr. Clement Shorter.  Though
+perhaps the most delightful nonsense, for which, I fear, this great
+painter is partly responsible, may be found in a recent poem addressed to
+the memory of my old friend, Simeon Solomon:--
+
+   More of Rossetti?  Yes:
+      You follow'd than Burne-Jones,
+   Your depth of colour his
+      than that of monochromes!
+   Yes; amber lilies poured, I say,
+   A joy for thee, than poet's bay.
+
+   But while true art refines
+      and often stimulates,
+   ART does, at times, I say,
+      sit grief within our gates!
+   Art causes men to weep at times--
+   If you may heed these falt'ring rhymes.
+
+A small volume of lyrics once sent to me for review afforded another
+flower for my garland:--
+
+   Where in the spring-time leaves are wet,
+   Oh, lay my love beneath the shades,
+   Where men remember to forget,
+   And are forgot in Hades.
+
+But I have given enough examples for what would form Part I. of the
+English anthology.  Part II. would consist of really bad verses from
+really great poetry.
+
+   Auspicious Reverence, hush all meaner song,
+
+is one of the most pompously stupid lines in English poetry.  Arnold did
+not hesitate to quote instances from Shakespeare:--
+
+   Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,
+   Confronted him with self-comparisons.
+
+You would have to sacrifice Browning, because it might fairly be
+concluded--well, anything might be concluded about Browning.  Byron is,
+of course, a mine.  Arthur Hugh Clough is, perhaps, the 'flawless
+numskull,' as, I think, Swinburne calls him.  Tennyson surpassed
+
+   A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman,
+
+in many of his serious poems.
+
+   To travellers indeed the sea
+   Must always interesting be
+
+I have heard ascribed to Wordsworth, but wrongly, I believe.  I should,
+of course, exclude from the collection living writers; only the select
+dead would be requisitioned.  They cannot retort.  And the entertaining
+volume would illustrate that curious artistic law--the survival of the
+unfittest, of which we are only dimly beginning to realise the
+significance.  It is like the immortality of the invalid, now recognised
+by all men of science.  You see it manifested in the plethora of memoirs.
+All new books not novels are about great dead men by unimportant little
+living ones.  When I am asked, as I have been, to write recollections of
+certain 'people of importance,' as Dante says, I feel the force of that
+law very keenly.
+
+_To_ FREDERICK STANLEY SMITH, ESQ.
+
+
+
+
+SWINBLAKE: A PROPHETIC BOOK, WITH HOME ZARATHRUSTS.
+
+
+Every student of Blake has read, or must read, Mr. Swinburne's
+extraordinary essay, _William Blake: a critical study_, of which a new
+edition was recently published.  It would be idle at this time of day to
+criticise.  Much has been discovered, and more is likely to be
+discovered, about Blake since 1866.  The interest of the book, for us, is
+chiefly reflex.  _And does not the great mouth laugh at a gift_, if
+scheduled in an examination paper with the irritating question, 'From
+what author does this quotation come?' would probably elicit the reply,
+'Swinburne.'  Yet it occurs in one of Blake's prophetic books.
+
+How fascinated Blake would have been with Mr. Swinburne if by some
+exquisite accident he had lived _after_ him.  We should have had, I
+fancy, another Prophetic Book; something of this kind:
+
+   Swinburne roars and shakes the world's literature--
+   The English Press, and a good many contemporaries--
+   Tennyson palls, Browning is found--
+   Only a brownie--
+   The mountains divide, the Press is unanimous--
+   Aylwin is born--
+   On a perilous path, on the cliff of immortality--
+   I met Theodormon--
+   He seemed sad: I said, 'Why are you sad--
+   Are you writing the long-promised life--
+   Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?'--
+   He sighed and said, 'No, not that--
+   Not that, my child--
+   I consigned the task to William Michael--
+   Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are cheap to-day--
+   You can have them for a sextet or an octave.'--
+   I brightened and said, 'Then you are writing a sonnet?'
+   He shook his head and said it was symbolical--
+   For six and eightpence!--
+   A golden rule: Never lend only George Borrow--
+
+A new century had begun, and I asked Theodormon what he was doing on that
+path and where Mr. Swinburne was.  Beneath us yawned the gulf of
+oblivion.
+
+'Be careful, young man, not to tumble over; are you a poet or a
+biographer?'
+
+I explained that I was merely a tourist.  He gave a sigh of relief: 'I
+have an appointment here with my only disciple, Mr. Howlglass; if you are
+not careful he may write an appreciation of you.'
+
+'My dear Theodormon, if you will show me how to reach Mr. Swinburne I
+will help you.'
+
+'I swear by the most sacred of all oaths, by Aylwin, you shall see
+Swinburne.'
+
+Just then we saw a young man coming along the path with a Kodak and a
+pink evening paper.  He seemed pleased to see me, and said, 'May I
+appreciate you?'
+
+I gave the young man a push and he fell right over the cliff.  Theodormon
+threw down after him a heavy-looking book which, alighting on his skull,
+smashed it.  'My preserver,' he cried, 'you shall see what you like, you
+shall do what you like, except write my biography.  Swinburne is close at
+hand, though he occasionally wanders.  His permanent address is the
+Peaks, Parnassus.  Perhaps you would like to pay some other calls as
+well.'
+
+I assented.
+
+We came to a printing-house and found William Morris reverting to type
+and transmitting art to the middle classes.
+
+'The great Tragedy of Topsy's life,' said Theodormon, 'is that he
+converted the middle classes to art and socialism, but he never touched
+the unbending Tories of the proletariat or the smart set.  You would have
+thought, on homoeopathic principles, that cretonne would appeal to
+cretins.'
+
+'Vale, vale,' cried Charles Ricketts from the interior.
+
+I was rather vexed, as I wanted to ask Ricketts his opinions about
+various things and people and to see his wonderful collection.  Shannon,
+however, presented me with a lithograph and a copy of 'Memorable
+Fancies,' by C. R.
+
+   How sweet I roamed from school to school,
+      But I attached myself to none;
+   I sat upon my ancient Dial
+      And watched the other artists' fun.
+
+   Will Rothenstein can guard the faith,
+      Safe for the Academic fold;
+   'Twas very wise of William Strang,
+      What need have I of Chantrey's gold?
+
+   Let the old masters be my share,
+      And let them fall on B. B.'s corn;
+   Let the Uffizi take to Steer--
+      What do I care for Herbert Horne
+
+   Or the stately Holmes of England,
+      Whose glories never fade;
+   The Constable of Burlington,
+      Who holds the Oxford Slade.
+
+   It's Titian here and Titian there,
+      And come to have a look;
+   But 'thanks of course Giorgione,'
+      With Mr. Herbert Cook.
+
+   For MacColl is an intellectual thing,
+      And Hugh P. Lane keeps Dublin awake,
+   And Fry to New York has taken wing,
+      And Charles Holroyd has got the cake.
+
+After turning round a rather sharp corner I began to ask Theodormon if
+John Addington Symonds was anywhere to be found.  He smiled, and said: 'I
+know why you are asking.  Of course he _is_ here, but we don't see much
+of him.  He published, at the Kelmscott, the other day, "An Ode to a
+Grecian Urning."  The proceeds of the sale went to the Arts and Krafts
+Ebbing Guild, but the issue of "Aretino's Bosom, and other Poems," has
+been postponed.'
+
+We now reached a graceful Renaissance building covered with blossoms; on
+each side of the door were two blue-breeched gondoliers smoking calamus.
+Theodormon hurried on, whispering: '_That_ is where he lives.  If you
+want to see Swinburne you had better make haste, as it is getting late,
+and I want you to inspect the Castalian spring.'
+
+The walking became very rough just here; it was really climbing.  Suddenly
+I became aware of dense smoke emerging with a rumbling sound from an
+overhanging rock.
+
+'I had no idea Parnassus was volcanic now,' I remarked.
+
+'No more had we,' said Theodormon; 'it is quite a recent eruption due to
+the Celtic movement.  The rock you see, however, is not a real rock, but
+a sham rock.  Mr. George Moore has been turned out of the cave, and is
+still hovering about the entrance.'
+
+Looming through the smoke, which hung like a veil of white muslin between
+us, I was able to trace the silhouette of that engaging countenance which
+Edouard Manet and others have immortalised.  'Go away,' he said: 'I do
+not want to speak to you.'  'Come, come, Mr. Moore,' I rejoined, 'will
+you not grant a few words to a really warm admirer?'--but he had faded
+away.  Then a large hand came out of the cavern and handed me a piece of
+paper, and a deep voice with a slight brogue said: 'If you see mi darlin'
+Gosse give this to him.'  The paper contained these verses:--
+
+   Georgey Morgie, kidden and sly,
+   Kissed the girls and made them cry;
+   _What_ the girls came out to say
+   George never heard, for he ran away.
+
+   W. B. Y
+
+We skirted the edge of a thick wood.  A finger-post pointed to the
+Castalian spring, and a notice-board indicated _Trespassers will be
+prosecuted_.  _The lease to be disposed of.  Apply to G. K. Chesterton_.
+
+Soon we came to an open space in which was situated a large, rather
+dilapidated marble tank.  I noticed that the water did not reach further
+than the bathers' stomachs.  Theodormon anticipated my surprise.  'Yes,
+we have had to depress the level of the water during the last few years
+out of compliment to some of the bathers, and there have been a good many
+bathing fatalities of a very depressing description.'
+
+'You don't mean to say,' I replied, 'Richard le Gallienne?'
+
+'Hush! hush! he was rescued.'
+
+'Stephen Phillips?' I asked, anxiously.
+
+'Well, he couldn't swim, of course, but he floated; you see he had the
+Sidney Colvin lifebelt on, and that is always a great assistance.'
+
+'Not,' I almost shrieked, 'my favourite poet, the author of "Lord 'a
+Muzzy don't you fret.  Missed we De Wet.  Missed we De Wet"?'
+
+Theodormon became very grave.  'We do not know any of their names,' he
+said.  'I will show you, presently, the Morgue.  Perhaps you will be able
+to identify some of your friends.  The Coroner has refused to open an
+inquest until Mr. John Lane can attend to give his evidence.'
+
+I saw the Poet Laureate trying very hard to swim on his back.  Another
+poet was sitting down on the marble floor so that the water might at
+least come up to his neck.  Gazing disconsolately into the pellucid
+shallows I saw the revered and much-loved figures of Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr.
+Austin Dobson, and Mr. Edmund Gosse.  'Going for a dip?' said Theodormon.
+'Thanks, we don't care about paddling,' Mr. Lang retorted.
+
+'I hope it is not _always_ so shallow,' I said to my guide.
+
+'Oh, no; we have a new water-supply, but as the spring is in the nature
+of a public place, we won't turn on the fresh water until people have
+learnt to appreciate what is good.  That handsome little marble structure
+which you see at the end of the garden is really the _new_ Castalian
+Spring.  At all events, that is where all the miracles take place.  The
+old bath is terribly out of repair, in spite of plumbing.'
+
+We then inspected a very neat little apartment mosaiced in gold.  Round
+the walls were attractive drinking-fountains, and on each was written the
+name of the new water--I mean the new poet.  Some of them I recognised:
+Laurence Binyon, A. E. Housman, Sturge Moore, Santayana, Arthur Symons,
+Herbert Trench, Henry Simpson, Laurence Housman, F. W. Tancred, Arthur
+Lyon Raile, William Watson, Hugh Austin.
+
+'You see we have the very latest,' said Theodormon, 'provided it is
+always the best.  I am sorry to say that some of the taps don't give a
+constant supply, but that is because the machinery wants oiling.  Try
+some Binyon,' said my guide, filling a gold cup on which was wrought by
+some cunning craftsman the death of Adam and the martyrdom of the Blessed
+Christina.  I found it excellent and refreshing, and observed that it was
+cheering to come across the excellence of sincerity and strength at a
+comparatively new source . . .
+
+Mr. Swinburne was seated in an arbour of roses, clothed in a gold
+dalmatic, a birthday gift from his British Peers.  Their names were
+embroidered in pearls on the border.  I asked permission to read my
+address:--
+
+   There beats no heart by Cam or Isis
+      (Where tides of poets ebb and flow),
+   But guards Dolores as a crisis
+      Of long ago.
+
+   A crisis bringing fire and wonder,
+      A gift of some dim Eastern Mage,
+   A firework still smouldering under
+      The feet of middle age.
+
+   For you could love and hate and tell us
+      Of almost everything,
+   You made our older poets jealous,
+      For you alone could sing.
+
+   In truth it was your splendid praises
+      Which made us wake
+   To glories hidden in the phrases
+      Of William Blake.
+
+   No boy who sows his metric salads
+      His tamer oats,
+   But always steals from Swinburne's ballads
+      The stronger notes.
+
+'Do you play golf?' said Mr. Swinburne, handing me two little spheres
+such as are used in the royal game.  And I heard no more; for I received
+a blow--whether delivered by Mr. Swinburne or the ungrateful Theodormon I
+do not know, but I found myself falling down the gulf of oblivion, and
+suddenly, with a dull thud, I landed on the remains of Howlglass.  The
+softness of his head had really preserved me from what might have been a
+severe shock, because the distance from Parnassus to Fleet Street, as you
+know, is considerable, and the escalade might have been more serious.  I
+reached my rooms in Half Moon Street, however, having seen only one star,
+with just a faint nostalgia for the realms into which for one brief day I
+was privileged to peep.
+
+(1906.)
+
+
+
+
+A MISLAID POET.
+
+
+In the closing years of my favourite last century, when poetry was more
+discussed than it is now (at all events as a marketable commodity), few
+verse-writers were overlooked.  Bosola's observation about 'the neglected
+poets of your time' could not be quoted with any propriety.  Mr. John
+Lane would make long and laborious journeys on the District Railway,
+armed _bag-a-pied_, in order to discover the new and unpublished.  Now he
+has shot over all the remaining preserves; laurels and bays, so necessary
+for the breed 'of men and women over-wrought,' have withered in the
+London soot.  There was one bright creature, however, who escaped his
+rifle; she was brought down by another sportsman, and thus missed some of
+the fame which might have attached to her had she been trussed and hung
+in the Bodley Head.  Poaching in the library at Thelema, I came across
+her by accident.  Her song is not without significance.
+
+In 1878 Georgiana Farrer mentioned on page 190 of her _Miscellaneous
+Poems_, 'I am old by sin entangled;' but this was probably a pious
+exaggeration.  Only some one young and intellectually very vigorous could
+have penned her startling numbers.  I suggest that she retained more of
+her youth than, from religious motives, she thought it proper to admit.
+In the 'eighties, when incense was burned in drawing-rooms, and people
+were talking about 'The Blessed Damozel,' she could write of Paradise:--
+
+   A home where Jesus Christ is King,
+   A home where e'en Archangels sing,
+   Where common wealth is shared by all,
+   And God Himself lights up the Hall.
+
+She was philosemite, and from the reference to Lord Beaconsfield we can
+easily date the following:--
+
+   You who doubt the truth of Scripture,
+   Pray tell me, then, who are the Jews?
+   Scattered in all lands and nations,
+   Pray why their evidence refuse?
+
+   It seems to me you must be blind;
+   Are they not daily gaining ground?
+   We find them now in every land,
+   And well-nigh ruling all around.
+
+   Their music is most sweet to hear;
+   Jews were Rossini and Mozart,
+   Mendelssohn, too, and Meyerbeer;
+   Grisi in song could charm the heart.
+
+   The funds their princes hold in hand;
+   Their merchants trade both near and far;
+   Ill-used and robbed they long have been,
+   Yet wealthy now they surely are.
+
+   In Germany who has great sway?
+   Prince Bismarck, most will answer me;
+   Our own Prime Minister retains
+   A name that shows his pedigree.
+
+   Who after this will dare to say
+   They nought in these strange people see;
+   Do they not prove the Scripture true,
+   And throw a light on history?
+
+The twenty-five years that have elapsed since the poem was written must
+have convinced those innocent persons who 'saw nought' in our Israelitish
+compatriots.  I never heard before that Prince Bismarck or Mozart was of
+Jewish extraction!
+
+Mrs. Farrer was, of course, an evangelical, somewhat old-fashioned for so
+late a date; and fairly early in her volume she warns us of what we may
+expect.  She is anxious to damp any undue optimism as to the lightness of
+her muse.  When worldly, foolish people like Whistler and Pater were
+talking 'art for art's sake,' she could strike a decisive didactic blow:--
+
+   My voice like thunder may appear,
+   Yet oft-times I have shed a tear
+   Behind the peal, like rain in storm,
+   To moisten those I would reform.
+
+   Then pardon if my stormy mood,
+   Instead of blighting, does some good.
+   Sooner a thunder-clap, think me,
+   Than sunstroke sent in wrath on thee.
+
+With a splendid Calvinism, too rare at that time, she would not argue
+beyond a _certain_ limit; there was an edge, she realised, to every
+platform; an ounce of assertion is worth pounds of proof.  Religious
+discussion after a time becomes barren:--
+
+   Then hundredfolds to sinners
+      Must be repaid in Hell.
+   If you think such men winners,
+      We disagree.  Farewell.
+
+But to the person who _is_ right (and Mrs. Farrer was never in a moment's
+doubt, though her prosody is influenced sometimes by the sceptical
+Matthew Arnold) there is no mean reward:--
+
+   I sparkle resplendent,
+      A star in His crown,
+   And glitter for ever,
+      A gem of renown.
+
+From internal evidence we can gauge her social position, while her views
+of caste appear in these radical days a trifle _demode_.  Her metaphors
+of sin are all derived from the life of paupers:--
+
+   Paupers through their sinful folly
+   Are workers of iniquity,
+   Living on Jehovah's bounty,
+   Wasting in abject poverty.
+
+   A pauper's funeral their end,
+   No angels waft their souls on high;
+   Rich they were thought on earth, perhaps,
+   Yet far from wealth accursed they lie.
+
+   Who are the rich?  God's Word declares,
+   The men whose treasure is above--
+   Those humble working _gentlefolk_
+   Whose life flows on in deeds of love.
+
+   Despised in life I may remain,
+   Misunderstood by rich and poor;
+   An entrance yet I hope to gain
+   To wealthy plains on endless shore.
+
+   No paupers in that heavenly land,
+   The sons of God are rich indeed;
+   His daughters all His treasures share;
+   It will their highest hopes exceed.
+
+Those paupers who are 'saved' are rewarded by material comforts such as
+graced the earthly home of Georgiana herself, one of the 'humble working
+_gentlefolk_.'  She enjoys her own fireside with an almost Pecksniffian
+relish, and she profoundly observes, as she sits beside her hearth:--
+
+   Like forest trees men rise and grow:
+   Good timber some will prove,
+   Others decayed as fuel piled,
+   Prepared are for that stove
+
+   That burns for ever, Tophet called,
+   Heated by jealous heat,
+   Adapted to destroy all chaff,
+   And leaves unscorched the wheat.
+
+Excellent Georgiana!  She could not stand very much chaff of any kind, I
+suspect.
+
+The alarming progress of ritualism in the 'eighties disturbed her
+considerably, though it inspired some of her more weighty verses.  They
+should be favourites with Dr. Clifford and Canon Hensley Henson:--
+
+   Some men in our days cover over
+      A body deformed with their sin:
+   A cross worked in various colours,
+      Forgetting that God looks within.
+
+   Alas! in our churches at present
+      Simplicity seems quite despised;
+   To represent things far above us
+      Are heathenish customs revived.
+
+   This evil is spreading among us,
+      And where will it end, can you tell?
+   Join not with the misled around us,
+      Take warning, my readers . . .
+
+The veneration of the Blessed Virgin goaded her into composition of
+stanzas unparalleled in the whole literature of Protestantism:--
+
+   My readers, can you nowhere see
+      A parallel to Israel's sin?
+   The House of God, at home, abroad:
+      _Idols are there_--that house within.
+
+   Who incense burns? are strange cakes made?
+      What woman's chapel, decked with gold,
+   Stands full of unchecked worshippers
+      Like those idolaters of old?
+
+   The Blessed Virgin--blest she is
+      That does not make her Heaven's Queen!
+   Yet some are taught to worship her;
+      What else does all this teaching mean?
+
+What she denied to the Mother of God she accorded (rather daringly, I
+opine) to one Harriet, whose death and future are recorded in the
+following lines:--
+
+   Declining like the setting sun
+   After a course divinely run,
+   I saw a maiden passing fair
+   Reposing on an easy chair.
+
+   A Bridegroom of celestial mien
+   Came forth and claimed her for His Queen;
+   One with His Father on His throne
+   She lives entirely His own.
+
+Harrietolatry, I thought, was confined to the members of the defunct
+Shelley Society.  But every reader will feel the poignant truth of Mrs.
+Farrer's view of the Church of England--truer to-day than it could have
+been in the 'eighties:--
+
+   The Church of England--grand old ship--
+      Toss'd is on a troubled sea!
+   Her sails are rent, her decks are foul'd,
+      Mutiny on board must be.
+
+   The winds of discord howl around,
+      Wild disputers throw up foam,
+   From high to low she's beat about;
+      Frighten'd some who love her roam.
+
+I do not know if the last word is intended for a pun, but I scarcely
+think it is likely.
+
+I would like to reconstruct Mrs. Farrer's home, with its stiff Victorian
+chairs, its threaded antimacassars, its pictorial paper-weights, its wax
+flowers under glass shades, and the charming household porcelain from the
+Derby and Worcester furnaces.  There must have been a sabbatic air of
+comfort about the dining-room which was soothing.  I can see the
+engravings after Landseer: 'The Stag at Bay,' 'Dignity and Impudence'; or
+those after Martin: 'The Plains of Heaven,' and 'The Great Day of His
+Wrath'; and 'Blucher meeting Wellington,' after Maclise.  I can see on
+each side of the mirror examples of the art of Daguerre, which have
+already begun to produce in us the same sentiment that we get from the
+early Tuscans; and on the mantelpiece a photograph of Harriet in a plush
+frame, the one touch of modernity in a room which was otherwise severely
+1845.  Then, on a bookshelf which hung above the old tea-caddy and cut-
+glass sugar-bowl, Georgiana's library--'Line upon Line,' 'Precept upon
+Precept,' 'Jane the Cottager,' 'Pinnock's Scripture History,' and a few
+costly works bound in the style of the Albert Memorial.  The
+drawing-room, just a trifle damp, must have contained Mr. Hunt's 'Light
+of the World,' which Mrs. Farrer never quite learned to love, though it
+was a present from a missionary, and rendered fire and artificial light
+unnecessary during the winter months.  Would that Mrs. Farrer's home-life
+had come under the magic lens of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for it would now be
+classic, like the household of Sir Thomas More.
+
+Whatever its attractions, Mrs. Farrer was at times induced to go abroad,
+visiting, I imagine, only the Protestant cantons of Switzerland.  She
+stayed, however, in Paris, which she apostrophises with Sibyllic
+candour:--
+
+   O city of pleasure, what did I see
+   When passing through or staying in thee.
+   Bright shone the sun above, blue was the sky,
+   Everywhere music heard, none seemed to sigh.
+   Beautiful carriages in Champs Elysee
+   Filled with fair maidens on cushions easy.
+   Such was the outer side; what was within?
+   Most I was often told revelled in sin.
+   Sad its fate since I left, sadder 'twill be
+   If they go on in sin as seen by me.
+   Let us hope, ere too late, warned by the past,
+   They may seek pleasures more likely to last,
+   Or, like to Babylon, it must decline,
+   And o'er its ruins its lovers repine.
+
+But London hardly fares much better, in spite of Mrs. Farrer's own
+residence, at Campden Hill, if I may hazard the locality:--
+
+   To the tomb they must go,
+   Rich and poor all in woe,
+   Strange motley throng.
+   Wealth in its splendour weeps,
+   Poverty silence keeps;
+   None last here long. . . .
+   So much for thee, London.
+
+Except in a spiritual sense, her existence was not an eventful one.  It
+was, I think, the loss of some neighbour's child which suggested:--
+
+   Nellarina, forced exotic,
+   Born to bloom in region fair,
+   Thou wert to me a narcotic,
+   Hope I did thy lot to share.
+
+Any near personal sorrow she does not seem to have experienced, I am glad
+to say, else she might have regarded it as a grievance the consequences
+of which one dares not contemplate; you feel that _Some One_ would have
+heard of it in no measured terms.  Certainty and content are, indeed, the
+dominating notes of her poetry rather than mere commonplace hope:--
+
+   I am bound for the land of Beulah,
+   There all the guests sing Hallelujah.
+   No longer time here let us squander,
+   But on the good things promised ponder.
+
+It would be futile to discuss the exact position on Parnassus of a lady
+whose throne was secured on a more celestial mountain, even more
+difficult of access.  But I think we may claim for her an honourable
+place in that new Oxford school of poetry of which Professor Mackail
+officially knows little, and of which Dr. Warren (the President of
+Magdalen) is the distinguished living protagonist.  With all her acrid
+Evangelicalism she was a good soul, for she was fond of animals and
+children, and kind to them both in her own way; so I am sure some of her
+dreams have been realised, even if there has reached her nostrils just a
+whiff of those tolerating purgatorial fires which, spelt differently, she
+believed to be _permanently_ prepared for the vast majority of her
+contemporaries.
+
+_To_ MRS. CAREW.
+
+
+
+
+GOING UP TOP.
+
+
+During the closing years of the last century certain critics contracted a
+rather depressing habit of numbering men of letters, especially poets, as
+though they were overcoats in a cloak-room, or boys competing in an
+examination set by themselves.  'It requires very little discernment,'
+wrote the late Churton Collins, A.D. 1891, 'to foresee that among the
+English poets of the present century the first place will _ultimately_ be
+assigned to Wordsworth, the second to Byron, and the third to Shelley.'
+Matthew Arnold, I fear, was the first to make these unsafe Zadkielian
+prognostications.  He, if I remember correctly, gave Byron the first
+place and Wordsworth the second; but Swinburne, with his usual
+discernment, observed that English taste in that eventuality would be in
+the same state as it was at the end of the seventeenth century, which
+firmly believed that Fletcher and Jonson were the best of its poets.
+
+But when is Ultimately?  Obviously not the present moment.  Byron does
+not hold the rank awarded him by the distinguished critic in 1891.  The
+cruel test of the auctioneer's hammer has recently shown that Keats and
+Shelley are regarded as far more important by those unprejudiced judges,
+the book-dealers.  Wordsworth, of course, is still one of the poets'
+poets, and the _Spectator_, that Mrs. Micawber of literature, will, of
+course, never desert him; but I doubt very much whether he has yet
+reached the harbour of Ultimately.  His repellent personality has blinded
+a good many of us to his exquisite qualities; on the Greek Kalends of
+criticism, however, may I be there to see.  I shall certainly vote for
+him if I am one of the examiners--or one of the cloak-room attendants.
+
+It was against such kind of criticism that Whistler hurled his impatient
+epigram about pigeon-holes.  And if it is absurd in regard to painting,
+how much more absurd is it in regard to the more various and less friable
+substances of literature.  By the old ten-o'clock rule (I do not refer to
+Whistler's lecture), once observed in Board schools, no scripture could
+be taught after that hour.  Once a teacher asked his class who was the
+wisest man.  'Solomon,' said a little boy.  'Right; go up top,' said the
+teacher.  But there was a small pedant who, while never paying much
+attention to the lessons, and being usually at the bottom of the form in
+consequence, knew the regulations by heart.  He interrupted with a shrill
+voice (for the clock had passed the hour), 'No, sir, please, sir; past
+ten o'clock, sir . . . Solon.'  Thus it is, I fear, with critics of every
+generation, though they try very hard to make the time pass as slowly as
+possible.
+
+But if invidious distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome,
+I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great
+man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we
+have been his contemporaries.  The caution of obituary notices seems to
+me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly too.  We have become
+Laodiceans.  We are even fearful of exposing imposture in current
+literature lest we get into hot water with a publisher.
+
+During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very
+diverting house-party.  This peer, it will be remembered, is the well-
+known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in
+the submerged tenth.  Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic
+structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir
+Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse.  Including our hosts we numbered
+forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and
+ladies'-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty.  In all, we were a
+hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five
+Scotch gardeners.  On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy
+of the _Petit Parisien_ relating the plebiscite for the greatest
+Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the
+_Evening News_ list.  The famous _Pall Mall Gazette_ Academy of Forty was
+recalled with indifferent accuracy.  Conversation was flagging; our
+hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a variation of
+that most charming game, _suck-pencil_.
+
+At first we decided to ignore the nineteenth century.  The ten greatest
+living Englishmen were to be named by our votes.  Bridge and billiard
+players were dragged to the polling-station in the green drawing-room.
+Lord Lyonesse and myself were the tellers.  I shivered with excitement.
+One of the Ultimatelies of Churton Collins seemed to have arrived: it was
+Gotterdammerung--the Twilight of the Idols.  And here is the result of
+the ballot, which I think every one will admit possesses extraordinary
+interest:
+
+Hall Caine.
+
+Marie Corelli.
+
+Rudyard Kipling.
+
+Lord Northcliffe.
+
+Sir Thomas Lipton.
+
+Hichens.
+
+Chamberlain.
+
+Barrie.
+
+George Alexander.
+
+Beerbohm Tree.
+
+I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual.
+There were our host and hostess, their three sons--one is a scholar of
+King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a
+stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal
+Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer
+with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife;
+three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a
+picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a
+baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself.  I think the only
+point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the
+ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list.  Lord Lyonesse,
+however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a
+pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I
+suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all
+abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals.  Lord
+Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian
+De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my
+pleading for him on imperialistic grounds.  I thought it rather insular,
+too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to
+me because they are American subjects.  My own final list, as pasted in
+the Album at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows:
+
+H. G. Wells.
+
+C. H. Shannon.
+
+Bernard Shaw.
+
+Thomas Hardy.
+
+Lord Northcliffe.
+
+Edmund Gosse.
+
+Andrew Lang.
+
+Oliver Lodge.
+
+Dom Gasquet.
+
+Reginald Turner.
+
+Mine, of course, is the choice of a recluse: a scholar without
+scholarship, one who lives remote from politics, newspapers, society, and
+the merry-go-round of modern life.  Its two chief interests lie in
+showing, first how far off I was from getting the prize (a vellum copy of
+poems, by our hostess), and secondly, that one name only, that of Lord
+Northcliffe, should have touched both the popular and the private
+imagination!  I regret to say that none of the guests knew the names of
+Dom Gasquet or Sir Oliver Lodge.  Every one, except the artist, thought
+C. H. Shannon was J. J. Shannon, and some of the voters were hardly
+convinced that Mr. Lang was still an ornament to contemporary literature.
+The prize was awarded to a lady whose list most nearly corresponded to
+the result of the general plebiscite.  I need not say she was the wife of
+the publisher.  After some suitable expressions from Lord Lyonesse, it
+was suggested that we should poll the servants' hall.  Pencils and paper
+were provided and the butler was sent for.  An hour was given for the
+election, and at half-past eleven the ballot papers were brought in on a
+massive silver tray discreetly covered with a red silk
+pocket-handkerchief, and here is the result:
+
+Frank Richardson.
+
+Marie Corelli.
+
+John Roberts.
+
+C. B. Fry.
+
+Eustace Miles.
+
+Robert Hichens.
+
+T. P. O'Connor.
+
+Lord Lyonesse.
+
+Dr. Williams (Pink Pills for Pale People).
+
+Hall Caine.
+
+The prize (and this is another odd coincidence) was won by the butler
+himself, to whom, very generously, the publisher's wife resigned the
+vellum copy of our hostess's poems.  From a literary point of view, it is
+interesting to note that Mr. Frank Richardson is the only master of
+_belles lettres_ who is appreciated in the servants' hall!  The other
+names we associate, rightly or wrongly, with something other than
+literature.
+
+The following evening I suggested choosing the greatest English names in
+the nineteenth century (twentieth-century life being strictly excluded).
+Every one by this time had caught the _suck-pencil_ fever.  By general
+consent the suffrage was extended to the domestics: the electorate being
+thus one hundred.  And what, you will ask, came of it all?  I suggest
+that readers should guess.  Any one interested should fill up, cut out,
+and send this coupon to my own publisher on April the first.
+
+_I think the Ten Greatest Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century were_:
+
+1 . . . . . . . . . .
+
+2  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+3  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+4  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+5  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+6  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+7  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+8  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+9  . . . . . . . . . .
+
+10 . . . . . . . . . .
+
+A prize, consisting of a copy of _Books of To-Day and Books of
+To-Morrow_, will be awarded for the best shot.
+
+
+
+
+MR. BENSON'S 'PATER.'
+
+
+In no other country has mediocrity such a chance as in England.  The
+second-rate writer, the second-rate painter meets with an almost
+universal and immediate recognition.  When good mediocrities die, if they
+do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of
+Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair
+chance of burial in Westminster Abbey.  'De mortuis nil nisi _bonus_,' in
+the shape of royalties, is the real test by which we estimate the authors
+who have just passed away.  A few of our great writers--Ruskin and
+Tennyson, for example--have enjoyed the applause accorded to senility by
+a people usually timid of brilliancy and strength, when it is
+contemporary.  The ruins of mental faculties touch our imagination,
+owing, perhaps, to that tenderness for antiquity which has preserved for
+us the remains of Tintern Abbey.  Seldom, however, does a great writer
+live to find himself, in the prime of his literary existence, a component
+part of English literature.  Yet there are happy exceptions, and not the
+least of these was Walter Pater.
+
+His inclusion in the _English Men of Letters_ series, so soon after his
+death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers.  Mr. Benson was complimented on a
+daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of
+innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of _Dodo_.  'To
+a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small
+souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so
+strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only
+the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end
+with Lord Macaulay.
+
+It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more
+discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been
+chosen as commentator of Pater.  Among the plutarchracy of the present
+day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on
+deceased writers--a reaction against misplaced eulogy--tearing them and
+their works to pieces, and leaving nothing for reviewers or posterity to
+dissipate.  From the author of the _Upton Letters_ we expect sympathy and
+critical acumen.  It is needless to say we are never disappointed.  His
+book is not merely about a literary man: it is a work of literature
+itself.  So it is charming to disagree with Mr. Benson sometimes, and a
+triumph to find him tripping.  You experience the pleasure of the
+University Extension lecturer pointing out the mistakes in Shakespeare's
+geography, the joy of the schoolboy when the master has made a false
+quantity.  In marking the modern discoveries which have shattered, not
+the value of Pater's criticisms, but the authenticity of pictures round
+which he wove his aureoles of prose, Mr. Benson says: 'In the essay on
+Botticelli he is on firmer ground.'  But among the first masterpieces
+winged by the sportsmen of the new criticism was the Hamilton Palace
+'Assumption of the Virgin' (now proved to be by Botticini), to which
+Pater makes one of his elusive and delightful allusions.  While the
+'_School of Giorgione_,' which Mr. Benson thinks a little _passe_ in the
+light of modern research is now in the movement.  The latest bulletins of
+Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly
+satisfactory.  Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are
+being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook.  A curious and
+perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice.  Referring to
+the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma
+fui--his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads _fuit_.  But
+perhaps the _t_ was added by the Italian Government out of Reference to
+the English residents in Florence, and the word read _fui_ in 1871.
+_Troja fuit_ might be written all over Florence.
+
+Then some of the architecture at Vezelay 'typical of Cluniac sculpture'
+is pure Viollet-le-Duc, I am assured by a competent authority.  A more
+serious error of Pater's, for it is adjectival, not a fact, occurs in
+_Apollo in Picardy_--'_rebellious_ masses of black hair.'  This is the
+only instance in the _parfait prosateur_, as Bourget called him, of a
+cliche worthy of the 'Spectator.'  Then it is possible to differ from Mr.
+Benson in his criticism of the _Imaginary Portraits_ (the four fair ovals
+in one volume), surely Pater's most exquisite achievement after the
+_Renaissance_.  _Gaston_ is the failure Pater thought it was, and
+_Emerald Uthwart_ is frankly very silly, though Mr. Benson has a curious
+tenderness for it.  One sentence he abandons as absolute folly.  The
+grave psychological error in the story occurs where the surgeon expresses
+compunction at making the autopsy on Uthwart because of his perfect
+anatomy.  Surely this would have been a source of technical pleasure and
+interest to a surgeon, much as a butterfly-collector is pleased when he
+has murdered an unusually fine species of lepidoptera.  Speaking myself
+as a vivisector of some experience, I can confidently affirm that a well-
+bred golden collie is far more interesting to operate upon than a mongrel
+sheep-dog.  Nor can I comprehend Mr. Benson's blame of _Denys
+l'Auxerrois_ as too extravagant and even unwholesome, when the last
+quality, so obvious in _Uthwart_, he seems to condone.
+
+Again, _Marius the Epicurean_ is a failure by Pater's own high standard:
+you would have imagined it seemed so to Mr. Benson.
+
+Dulness is by no means its least fault.  In scheme it is not unlike _John
+Inglesant_; but how lifeless are the characters compared with those of
+Shorthouse.  Both books deal with philosophic ideas and sensations; the
+incidents are merely illustrative and there is hardly a pretence of
+sequence.  In the historical panorama which moves behind _Inglesant_,
+there are at least 'tactile' values, and seventeenth-century England is
+conjured up in a wonderful way; how accurately I do not know.  In
+_Marius_ the background is merely a backcloth for mental _poses
+plastiques_.  You wonder, not how still the performers are, but why they
+move at all.  Marcus Aurelius, the delightful Lucian, even Flavian, and
+the rest, are busts from the Capitoline and Naples museums.  Their bodies
+are make-believe, or straw from the loft at 'White Nights.'  Cornelius,
+Mr. Benson sorrowfully admits, is a Christian prig, but Marius is only a
+pagan chip from the same block.  John Inglesant is a prig too, but there
+is blood in his veins, and you get, at all events, a Vandyck, not a
+plaster cast.  The magnificent passages of prose which vest this image
+make it resemble the _ex voto_ Madonnas of continental churches--a shrine
+in literature but not a lighthouse.
+
+I sometimes wonder what Pater would have become had he been a Cambridge
+man, and if the more strenuous University might have _forced_ him into
+greater sympathy with modernity; or if he had been born in America, as he
+nearly was, and Harvard acted as the benign stepmother of his days.  Such
+speculations are not beyond all conjecture, as Sir Thomas Browne said.  I
+think he would have been exactly the same.
+
+On the occasion of Pater's lecture on Prosper Merimee, his friends
+gathered round the platform to congratulate him; he expressed a hope that
+the audience was able to hear what he said.  'We overheard you,' said
+Oscar Wilde.  'Ah, you have a phrase for everything,' replied the
+lecturer, the only contemporary who ever influenced himself, Wilde
+declared.  How admirable both of the criticisms!  Pater is an aside in
+literature, and that is why he was sometimes overlooked, and may be so
+again in ages to come.  Though he is the greatest master of style the
+century produced, he can never be regarded as part of the structure of
+English prose.  He is, rather, one of the ornaments, which often last,
+long after a structure has perished.  His place will be shifted, as
+fashions change.  Like some exquisite piece of eighteenth-century
+furniture perchance he may be forgotten in the attics of literature
+awhile, only to be rediscovered.  And as Fuseli said of Blake, 'he is
+damned good to steal from.'  If he uses words as though they were
+pigments, and sentences like vestments at the Mass, it is not merely the
+ritualistic cadence of his harmonies which makes his works imperishable,
+but the ideas which they symbolise and evoke.  Pater thinks beautifully
+always, about things which some people do not think altogether beautiful,
+perhaps; and sometimes he thinks aloud.  We overhear him, and feel almost
+the shame of the eavesdropper.
+
+Mr. Benson has approached Walter Pater, the man, with almost sacerdotal
+deference.  He suggests ingeniously where you can find the
+self-revelation in _Gaston_ and _The Child in the House_.  This is far
+more illuminating than the recollections of personal friends whose
+reminiscences are modelled on those of Captain Sumph.  Mr. Humphry Ward
+remembers Pater only once being angry--it was in the Common Room--it was
+with X, an elderly man!  The subject of the difference was 'modern
+lectures.'  'Relations between them were afterwards strained.'  Mr.
+Arthur Symons remembers that he intended to bring out a new volume of
+_Imaginary Portraits_.  Fancy that!  Really, when friends begin to tell
+stories of that kind, I begin to suspect they are trying to conceal
+something.  Perhaps we have no right to know everything or anything about
+the amazing personalities of literature; but Henleys and Purcells lurk
+and leak out even at Oxford; and that is not the way to silence them.
+Just when the aureole is ready to be fitted on, some horrid graduate
+(Litterae _in_humaniores) inks the statue.  Anticipating something of the
+kind, Mr. Benson is careful to insist on the divergence between Rossetti
+and Pater, and on page eighty-six says something which is ludicrously
+untrue.  If self-revelation can be traced in _Gaston_, it can be found
+elsewhere.  There are sentences in _Hippolytus Veiled_, the _Age of the
+Athletic_ _Prizemen_, and _Apollo in Picardy_, which not only explode Mr.
+Benson's suggestions, but illustrate the objections he urges against
+_Denys l'Auxerrois_.  They are passages where Pater thinks aloud.  If
+Rossetti wore his heart on the sleeve, Pater's was just above the cuff,
+like a bangle; though it slips down occasionally in spite of the alb
+which drapes the hieratic writer not always discreetly.
+
+(1906.)
+
+
+
+
+SIMEON SOLOMON.
+
+
+A good many years ago, before the Rhodes scholars invaded Oxford, there
+lingered in that home of lost causes and unpopular names, the afterglow
+of the aesthetic sunset.  It was not a very brilliant period.  Professor
+Mackail and Mr. Bowyer Nichols had left Balliol.  Nothing was expected of
+either the late Sir Clinton Dawkins or Canon Beeching; and the
+authorities of Merton could form no idea where Mr. Beerbohm would
+complete his education.  Names are more suggestive than dates and give
+less pain.  Then, as now, there were 'cultured' undergraduates, and those
+who were very cultured indeed, read Shelley and burned incense, would
+always have a few photographs after Simeon Solomon on their walls--little
+notes of illicit sentiment to vary the monotony of Burne-Jones and
+Botticelli.  When uncles and aunts came up for Gaudys and Commem., while
+'Temperantia' and the 'Primavera' were left in their places, 'Love dying
+from the breath of Lust,' 'Antinous,' and other drawings by Solomon with
+titles from the Latin Vulgate, were taken down for the occasion.  Views
+of the sister University, Cambridge took their places, being more
+appropriate to Uncle Parker's and Aunt Jane's tastes.  More advanced
+undergraduates, who 'knew what things were,' possessed even originals.
+Now the unfortunate artist is dead his career can be mentioned without
+prejudice.
+
+Simeon Solomon was born in 1841.  He was the third son of Michael
+Solomon, a manufacturer of Leghorn hats, and the first Jew ever admitted
+to the Freedom of London.  The elder brother, Abraham, became a
+successful painter of popular subjects ('Waiting for the Verdict' and
+'First and Third Class'), and died on the day of his election to the
+Academy!  Rebecca a sister who was also a painter, copied with success
+some of Millais's pictures.  At the age of sixteen Simeon exhibited at
+the Academy, though beyond a short training at Leigh's Art School in
+Newman Street he was almost self-taught.  He was an early and intimate
+friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, with whose art he had much in common,
+though it is only for convenience that he is included in the school.  Like
+Whistler, he was profoundly affected by the genius of Rossetti.  Racial
+and other causes removed him from any real affinity to the archaistic
+moralatarianism of Mr. Holman Hunt.  For obvious reasons the
+Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are silent about him, but Burne-Jones was said to
+have maintained, in after years, 'that he was the greatest artist of us
+all.'  Throughout the sixties Solomon was one of those black-and-white
+draughtsmen whose contributions to the magazines have made the period
+famous in English art.  He found ready purchasers for his pictures and
+drawings, not only among the well-to-do Hebrew community, such as Dr.
+Ernest Hart, his brother's brother-in-law, but with well-known Christian
+collectors like Mr. Leathart.  He was on intimate terms with Walter
+Pater, of whom he executed one of the only two known portraits; and in
+the _Greek Studies_ will be found a graceful reference to the 'young
+Hebrew painter' whose 'Bacchus' at the Academy obviously contributed to
+the 'gem-like' flame of which we have heard so much.
+
+In a short-lived magazine, the _Dark Blue_, of July 1871, may be found a
+characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon's strange rhapsody, _A
+Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_, his only literary work, now a great
+rarity.  This is the longest, and with one exception the most
+interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published.  'Since the first years
+of his early and brilliant celebrity as a young artist of high
+imagination, power, and promise,' Swinburne says, 'he has been at work
+long enough to enable us to define at least certain salient and dominant
+points of his genius . . . I have heard him likened to Heine as a kindred
+Hellenist of the Hebrews; Grecian form and beauty divide the allegiance
+of his spirit with Hebrew shadow and majesty.'  It would be difficult to
+add anything further, in praise of the unfortunate artist, to the poet's
+eloquent eulogy of his friend's talents.  An interesting piece of
+autobiography is afforded in the same article, where Swinburne tells us
+that his own poem of 'Erotion,' in the first series of _Poems and
+Ballads_, was written for a drawing by Simeon Solomon; and in another
+number of the same magazine there appeared 'The End of the Month,' to
+accompany a new design of Solomon's, the poem appearing later in the
+second series of _Poems and Ballads_.  Very few English artists--not even
+Millais--began life with fairer prospects.  Thackeray wrote in one of the
+'Roundabout Papers' for 1860: 'For example, one of the pictures I admired
+most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my
+knowledge, set eyes.  The picture is (346) "Moses," by S. Solomon.  I
+thought it finely drawn and composed.  It nobly represented to my mind
+the dark children of the Egyptian bondage. . . . My newspaper says: "Two
+ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing
+object," and so good-bye, Mr. S. S.'  This beautiful picture, painted
+when the artist was only nineteen, is now in the collection of Mr. W. G.
+Rawlinson, and was seen quite recently at the Franco-British Exhibition,
+where those familiar with his work considered it one of Solomon's
+masterpieces.  Very few students of Thackeray realised, however, that the
+painter thus singled out for praise formed the subject of a sordid
+inquest reported in the _Times_ of August 18th, 1905.
+
+That Solomon's pictures were at first better known to the public than
+those of his now more famous associates is shown by Robert Buchanan
+confessing that he had scarcely seen any of their works except those of
+Solomon, which he proceeded to attack in the famous _The Fleshly School
+of Poetry_.  As a sort of justification of the criticism, in the early
+seventies, the extraordinary artist had become a pariah.  He was
+imprisoned for a short while, and on his release was placed in a private
+asylum by his friends.  Scandal having subsided, since he showed no
+further signs of eccentricity, he was, by arrangement, sent out to post a
+letter in order that he might have a chance of quietly escaping and
+returning to the practice of his art.  He returned to the asylum in half
+an hour!--a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity.  He was
+subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily
+downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance.  Every effort
+was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him.  Studios were taken for
+him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him.  He spent
+his week-ends in the lock-up.  Several picture-dealers tried giving him
+an allowance, but he turned up intoxicated to demand advances, and the
+police had to be called in.  He was found selling matches in the Mile End
+Road and tried his hand at pavement decoration without much success.  The
+companion of Walter Pater and Swinburne became the associate of thieves
+and blackmailers.  A story is told that one afternoon he called for
+assistance at the house of a well-known artist, a former friend, from
+whom he received a generous dole.  Observing that the remote
+neighbourhood of the place lent itself favourably to burgling operations,
+Solomon visited his benefactor the same evening in company with a
+housebreaker.  They were studying the dining-room silver when they were
+disturbed; both were in liquor, and the noise they made roused the
+sleepers above.  The unwilling host good-naturedly dismissed them!
+
+Though a very delightful book might be made of his life by some one who
+would not shirk the difficulties of the subject, it is unnecessary here
+to dwell further on a career which belongs to the history of morbid
+psychology rather than of painting.  After drifting from the stream of
+social existence into a Bohemian backwater, he found himself in the main
+sewer.  This he thoroughly enjoyed in his own particular way, and
+rejected fiercely all attempts at rescue or reform.  To his other old
+friends, such as Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, there must have been
+something very tragic in the contemplation of his wasted talents, for few
+young painters were more successful.  Any one curious enough to study his
+pictures will regret that he was lost to art by allowing an ill-regulated
+life to prey upon his genius.  He had not sufficient strength to keep the
+two things separate, as Shakespeare, Verlaine, and Leonardo succeeded in
+doing.  At the same time, it is a consolation to think that he enjoyed
+himself in his own sordid way.  When I had the pleasure of seeing him
+last, so lately as 1893, he was extremely cheerful and not aggressively
+alcoholic.  Unlike most spoilt wastrels with the artistic temperament, he
+seemed to have no grievances, and had no bitter stories or complaints
+about former friends, no scandalous tales about contemporaries who had
+remained reputable; no indignant feeling towards those who assisted him.
+This was an amiable, inartistic trait in his character, though it may be
+a trifle negative; and for a positive virtue, as I say, he enjoyed his
+drink, his overpowering dirt, and his vicious life.  He was full of
+delightful and racy stories about poets and painters, policemen and
+prisons, of which he had wide experience.  He might have written a far
+more diverting book of memoirs than the average Pre-Raphaelite volume to
+which we look forward every year, though it is usually silent about poor
+Simeon Solomon.  Physically he was a small, red man, with keen, laughing
+eyes.
+
+By 1887 he entirely ceased to produce work of any value.  He poured out a
+quantity of pastels at a guinea apiece.  They are repulsive and
+ill-drawn, with the added horror of being the shadows of once splendid
+achievements.  Long after his name could be ever mentioned except in
+whispers, Mr. Hollyer issued a series of photographs of some of the fine
+early sanguine, Indian ink, and pencil drawings.  The originals are
+unique of their kind.  It is very easy to detect the unwholesome element
+which has inspired many of them, even the titles being indicative:
+'Sappho,' 'Antinous,' 'Amor Sacramentum.'  One of the finest, 'Love dying
+from the breath of Lust,' of which also he painted a picture, became
+quite popular in reproduction owing to the moral which was screwed out of
+it.  Another, of 'Dante meeting Beatrice at a Child's Party,' is
+particularly fascinating.  To the present generation his work is perhaps
+too 'literary,' and his technique is by no means faultless; but the
+slightest drawing is informed by an idea, nearly always a beautiful one,
+however exotic.  The faceless head and the headless body of shivering
+models dear to modern art students were absent from Solomon's designs.
+His pigments, both in water-colour and oils, are always harmonious, pure
+in tone, and rich without being garish.  We need not try to frighten
+ourselves by searching too curiously for hidden meanings.  His whole art
+is, of course, unwholesome and morbid, to employ two very favourite
+adjectives.  His work has always appealed to musicians and men of letters
+rather than collectors--to those who ask that a drawing or a picture
+should suggest an idea rather than the art of the artist.  Subject with
+him triumphs over drawing.  He is sometimes hopelessly crude; but during
+the sixties, when, as some one said, 'every one was a great artist,' he
+showed considerable promise of draughtsmanship.  His pictures are less
+fantastic than the drawings, and aim at probability, even when they are
+allegorical, or, as is too often the case, _odd_ in sentiment.  He is
+apparently never concerned with what are called 'problems,' the
+articulation of forms, or any fidelity to nature beyond the human frame.
+Unlike many of the Pre-Raphaelites, he showed a feeling for the medium of
+oil.  His friends and contemporaries, with the exception of Millais, and
+Rossetti occasionally, were always more at ease with water-colour or
+gouache, and you feel that most of their pictures ought to have been
+painted in _tempera_, the technique of which was not then understood.
+Since Millais was of French extraction, Rossetti of Italian, and Solomon
+of Hebrew, I fear this does not get us very much further away from the
+old French criticism that the English had forgotten or never learnt how
+to paint in oil.  It must be remembered that Whistler, who in the sixties
+achieved some of his masterpieces, was an American.
+
+It is strange that Solomon did not allow a sordid existence to alter the
+trend of his subjects, for these are always derived from poetry and the
+Bible, or from Catholic, Jewish, or Greek Orthodox ritual--a strange
+contrast to the respectable, impeccable painter, M. Degas, the doyen of
+European art, nationalist and anti-Semite, who finds beauty only in
+brasseries, in the vulgar circus, and in the ghastly wings of the opera.
+How far removed from his surroundings are the inspirations of the artist!
+I believe J. F. Millet would have painted peasants if he had been born
+and spent his days in the centre of New York.  With the life-long friend
+of M. Degas--Gustave Moreau--Solomon had much in common, but the colour
+of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous.
+I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective
+art, especially at the present day.  There is hardly room for an inverted
+Watts.  At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot
+take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a
+little overpowering, may care to explore an interesting byway of art.  For
+poor Solomon there was no place in life.  Casting reality aside, he
+stepped back into the riotous pages of Petronius.  Perhaps on the Paris
+boulevards, with Verlaine and Bibi la Puree, he might have enjoyed a
+distinct artistic individuality.  Expeditions conducted by Mr. Arthur
+Symons might have been organized in order to view him at some popular
+cafe.  Mr. George Moore might have written about him.  But in respectable
+London he was quite impossible.  In the temple of Art, which is less
+Calvinistic than artists would have us suppose, he will always have his
+niche.  To the future English Vasari he will be a real gold-mine.
+
+(1905.)
+
+
+
+
+AUBREY BEARDSLEY.
+
+
+Middle-aged, middle-class people, with a predilection for mediaeval art,
+still believe that subject is an important factor in a picture or
+drawing.  I am one of the number.  The subject need not be literary or
+historical.  After you have discussed in the latest studio jargon its
+carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must
+affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to
+possess it.  That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo
+you to surrender, I admit.  Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art
+matters, and hold that Rembrandt and the Boer school (the greatest
+technicians who ever lived) are finer artists than Titian, you will find
+yourself preferring Gainsborough to Degas, and the unskilful Whistler to
+the more accomplished Edouard Manet.  Long ago French critics invented an
+aesthetic formula to conceal that poverty of imagination which sometimes
+stares from their perfectly executed pictures, and this was eagerly
+accepted by certain Englishmen, both painters and writers.  Yet, when an
+artist frankly deals with forbidden subjects, the canons regular of
+English art begin to thunder; the critics forget their French accent; the
+old Robert Adam, which is in all of us, asserts himself; we fly for the
+fig-leaves.
+
+I am led to these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the
+reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from
+the inner circle of advanced intellectuals.  Too much occupied with the
+obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche
+in the temple of fame.  'A wish to _epater le bourgeois_,' says Mr.
+Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.'  I do not think so; at least, in an
+artist.  Now much of Beardsley's work shows the _eblouissement_ of the
+burgess on arriving at Montmartre for the first time--a weakness he
+shared with some of his contemporaries.  This must be conceded in
+praising a great artist for a line which he never drew, after you have
+taken the immortal Zero's advice and divested yourself of the scruples.
+
+'I would rather be an Academician than an artist,' said Aubrey Beardsley
+to me one day.  'It takes thirty-nine men to make an Academician, and
+only one to make an artist.'  In that sneer lay all his weakness and his
+strength.  Grave friends (in those days it was the fashion) talked to him
+of 'Dame Nature.'  '_Damn Nature_!' retorted Aubrey Beardsley, and pulled
+down the blinds and worked by gaslight on the finest days.  But he was a
+real Englishman, who from his glass-house peppered the English public.  No
+Latin could have contrived his arabesque.  The grotesques of Jerome Bosch
+are positively pleasant company beside many of Beardsley's inventions.
+Even in his odd little landscapes, with their twisted promontories
+sloping seaward, he suggested mocking laughter; and the flowers of 'Under
+the Hill' are cackling in the grass.
+
+An essay, which Mr. Arthur Symons published in 1897, has always been
+recognised as far the most sympathetic and introspective account of this
+strange artist's work.  It has been reissued, with additional
+illustrations, by Messrs. Dent.  Those who welcome it as one of the most
+inspiring criticisms from an always inspired critic, will regret that
+eight of the illustrations belong to the worst period of Beardsley's art.
+Kelmscott dyspepsia following on a surfeit of Burne-Jones, belongs to the
+pathology of style; it is a phase that should be produced by the
+prosecution, not by the eloquent advocate for the defence.  Moreover, I
+do not believe Mr. Arthur Symons admires them any more than I do; he
+never mentions them in his text.  'Le Debris d'un Poete,' the 'Coiffing,'
+'Chopin's Third Ballad,' and those for _Salome_ would have sufficed.  With
+these omissions the monograph might have been smaller; but it would have
+been more truly representative of Beardsley's genius and Mr. Arthur
+Symons's taste.
+
+At one time or another every one has been brilliant about Beardsley.
+'Born Puck, he died Pierrot,' said Mr. MacColl in one of the superb
+phrases with which he gibbets into posterity an art or an artist he
+rather dislikes.  'The Fra Angelico of Satanism,' wrote Mr. Roger Fry of
+an exhibition of the drawings.  There seems hardly anything left even for
+Mr. Arthur Symons to write.  Long anterior to these particular fireworks,
+however, his criticism is just as fresh as it was twelve years ago.  I
+believe it will always remain the terminal essay.
+
+The preface has been revised, and I could have wished for some further
+revision.  Why is the name of Leonard Smithers--here simply called _a_
+publisher--omitted, when the other Capulets and Montagus are faithfully
+recorded?  When no one would publish Beardsley's work, Smithers stepped
+into the breach.  I do not know that the _Savoy_ exactly healed the
+breach between Beardsley and the public, but it gave the artist another
+opportunity; and Mr. Arthur Symons an occasion for song.  Leonard
+Smithers, too, was the most delightful and irresponsible publisher I ever
+knew.  Who remembers without a kindly feeling the little shop in the
+Royal Arcade with its tempting shelves; its limited editions of _5000_
+copies; the shy, infrequent purchaser; the upstairs room where the roar
+of respectable Bond Street came faintly through the tightly-closed
+windows; the genial proprietor?  In the closing years of the nineteenth
+century his silhouette reels (my metaphor is drawn from a Terpsichorean
+and Caledonian exercise) across an artistic horizon of which the _Savoy_
+was the afterglow.  Again, why is Mr. Arthur Symons so precise about
+forgetting the date of Beardsley's expulsion from the _Yellow Book_?  It
+was in April 1895, April 10th.  A number of poets and writers blackmailed
+Mr. Lane by threatening to withdraw their own publications unless the
+Beardsley Body was severed from the Bodley Head.  I am glad to have this
+opportunity, not only of paying a tribute to the courage of my late
+friend Smithers, but of defending my other good friend, Mr. John Lane,
+from the absurd criticism of which he was too long the victim.  He could
+hardly be expected to wreck a valuable business in the cause of unpopular
+art.  Quite wrongly Beardsley's designs had come to be regarded as the
+pictorial and sympathetic expression of a decadent tendency in English
+literature.  But if there was any relation thereto, it was that of
+Juvenal towards Roman Society.  Never was mordant satire more evident.  If
+Beardsley is carried away in spite of himself by the superb invention of
+_Salome_, he never forgets his hatred of its author.  It is
+characteristic that he hammered beauty from the gold he would have
+battered into caricature.  _Salome_ has survived other criticism and
+other caricature.  And Mr. Lane once informed an American interviewer
+that since that April Fool's Day poetry has ceased to sell altogether.
+The bards unconsciously committed suicide; and the _Yellow Book_ perished
+in the odour of sanctity.
+
+Recommending the perusal of some letters (written by Beardsley to an
+unnamed friend) published some years ago, Mr. Arthur Symons says: 'Here,
+too, we are in the presence of the real thing.'  I venture to doubt this.
+I do not doubt Beardsley's sincerity in the religion he embraced, but his
+expression of it in the letters.  At least, I hope it was insincere.  The
+letters left on some of us a disagreeable impression, at least of the
+recipient.  You wonder if this pietistic friend received a copy of the
+_Lysistrata_ along with the eulogy of St. Alfonso Liguori and Aphra Behn.
+A fescennine temperament is too often allied with religiosity.  It
+certainly was in Beardsley's case, but I think the other and stronger
+side of his character should, in justice to his genius, be insisted upon,
+as Mr. Arthur Symons insisted upon it.  If we knew that the ill-advised
+and unnamed friend was the author of certain pseudo-scientific and
+pornographic works issued in Paris, we should be better able to gauge the
+unimportance of these letters.  Far more interesting would have been
+those written to Mr. Joseph Pennell, one of the saner influences; or
+those to Aubrey Beardsley's mother and sister.
+
+'It was at Arques,' says Mr. Arthur Symons . . . 'that I had the only
+serious, almost solemn conversation I ever had with Beardsley.'  You can
+scarcely believe that any of the conversations between the two were other
+than serious and solemn, because he approaches Beardsley as he would John
+Bunyan or Aquinas.  Art, literature and life, are all to this engaging
+writer a scholiast's pilgrim's progress.  Beside him, Walter Pater, from
+whom he derives, seems almost flippant--and to have dallied too long in
+the streets of Vanity Fair.
+
+(1906.)
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH AESTHETICS.
+
+
+The law reports in newspapers contain perhaps the only real history of
+England that has any relation to truth.  Here, too, may be found
+indications of current thought, more pregnant than the observations of
+historians.  They still afford material for the future short or longer
+history of the English people by the John Richard Greens of posterity.
+This was brought home to me by perusing two cases reported in the
+_Morning Post_, that of Mrs. Rita Marsh and the disputed will of Miss
+Browne.  I yield to no one in my ignorance of English law, but I have
+seldom read judgments which seemed so conspicuously unfair, so
+characteristic of the precise minimum of aesthetic perception in the
+English people.
+
+The hostelries of Great Britain are famous for their high charges, their
+badly-kept rooms, and loathsome cooking; let me add, their warm welcome.
+In the reign of Edward III. there was legislation on the subject.  The
+colder and cheaper hospitality of the Continent strikes a chill, I am
+sometimes told by those familiar with both.  The hotel selected by a
+certain Mrs. Rita Marsh was no exception to the ordinary English
+caravanserai.  It was 'replete with every comfort.'  The garden contained
+an _oubliette_, down which Mrs. Marsh, while walking in the evening,
+inadvertently fell.  On the Continent the _oubliettes_ are inside the
+house, and you are ostentatiously warned of their immediate
+neighbourhood.  These things are managed better in France, if I may say
+so without offending Tariff Reformers.
+
+The accident disfigured Mrs. Marsh for life; and for the loss of unusual
+personal attractions an English jury awarded her only 500_l_.  The judge
+made a joke about it.  Mr. Gill was very playful about her photograph,
+and every one, except, I imagine, Mrs. Marsh, seems to have been
+satisfied that ample justice was done.  The hotel proprietors did not
+press their counter-claim for a bill of 191_l_.!  Chivalrous fellows!
+Still, I can safely say that in France Mrs. Marsh would have been awarded
+at least four times that amount; though if she had been murdered the
+proprietors would have only been fined forty francs.  But beauty to its
+fortunate possessors is more valuable than life itself, and the story is
+to me one of the most pathetic I have ever heard.  To the English mind
+there is something irresistibly comic when any one falls, morally or
+physically.  It is the basis of English Farce.  Jokes made about those
+who have never fallen, 'too great to appease, too high to appal,' are
+voted bad taste.  Caricaturists of the mildest order are considered
+irreligious and vulgar if they burlesque, say, the Archbishop of
+Canterbury for example; or unpatriotic if they hint that Lord Roberts did
+not really finish the Boer War when he professed to have done so.  After
+Parnell came to grief I remember the Drury Lane pantomime was full of
+fire-escapes, and every allusion to the _cause celebre_ produced roars of
+laughter.  Mr. Justice Bigham was only a thorough Englishman when he
+gently rallied the jury for awarding, as he obviously thought, excessive
+damages.  So little is beauty esteemed in England.
+
+The case of Miss Browne was also singular.  She left a trust fund 'for
+the erection of an ornamental structure of Gothic design, such as a
+market cross, tall clock, street lamp-stand, or all combined, in a
+central part of London, the plan whereof shall be offered for open
+competition, and ultimately decided upon by the Royal Institute of
+British Architects.'  The President of the Probate Division said _he was
+satisfied that Miss Browne was not of sound mind, and pronounced against
+the will_, with costs out of the estate.  I wonder what the Royal
+Institute thinks of this legal testimonial.  It seems almost a pity that
+some one did not dispute Sir Francis Chantrey's will years ago on similar
+grounds.  I suggest to Mr. MacColl that it might still be upset.  That
+would settle once and for all the question whether the administration of
+the bequest has evinced evidence of insanity or not.  A recent Royal
+Commission left the matter undecided.  I do not, however, wish to
+criticise trustees, but to defend the memory of Miss Browne (who may have
+been eccentric in private life) from such a charge, because her
+testamentary dispositions were a trifle aesthetic.  The will was
+un-English in one respect: '_no inscription of my name shall be placed on
+such erection_.'  Was that the clause which proved her hopelessly mad?
+The erection was to be Gothic.  I know Gothic is out of fashion just now.
+Ruskin is quite over; the Seven Lamps exploded long ago; but Miss Browne
+seems to have attended before her death Mr. MacColl's lectures, knew all
+about 'masses' and 'tones' in architecture, and wished particular stress
+to be laid on 'the general outline as seen from a good distance.'  This
+is greeted by some of the papers as particularly side-splitting and
+eccentric.  Looking at the unlovely streets of London, never one of the
+more beautiful cities of Europe, where each new building seems contrived
+to go one better in sheer _uglitude_ (especially since builders of Tube
+stations have ventured into the Vitruvian arena), you can easily suppose
+that poor Miss Browne, with her views about 'general outlines seen from a
+good distance,' must have appeared hopelessly insane.  The decision of
+the court is not likely to encourage any further public bequests of this
+kind.  I have cut the British Museum and the National Gallery out of my
+own will already.  And I understand why Mr. MacColl, with his passionate
+pleading for a living national architecture, for official recognition of
+past and present English art, is thought by many good people quite odd.
+How he managed to attract the notice of any but the Lunacy Commissioners
+I cannot conceive.  Valued critic, admired artist, model keeper, I only
+hope he will attract no further attention.
+
+Since it is clear that the law assists in blackening reputations even in
+the grave, I claim that other Miss Brownes who take advantage of life,
+and time by the forelock to put up monuments in the sufficiently hideous
+thoroughfares should be pronounced _non compos mentis_.  The perpetrators
+of the erection in High Street, Kensington, hard by St. Mary Abbots, may
+serve as an example.  Inconvenient, vulgar, inapposite, this should debar
+even the subscribers from obtaining probate for their wills.  I invoke
+posthumous revenge, and claim that at least 500_l_. damages should be
+paid as compensation to the nearest hospital for the _indignant_ blind,
+as my friend Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan calls them in one of his delightful
+stories.
+
+(1906.)
+
+
+
+
+NON ANGELI SED ANGLI.
+
+
+I wish that the Rokeby Velasquez now firmly secured for the British
+nation could have been allowed to remain in Bond Street for a short
+while; not to tantalise the foreign countries who so eagerly competed for
+its acquisition, nor to emphasise the patriotism of its former owners,
+but as a contrast to 'Some Examples of the Independent Art of To-day,'
+held at Messrs. Agnew's.  Perhaps not as a contrast even, but as a
+complement.  I do not mean to place all the examples on the same level
+with the 'Venus,' though with some I should have preferred to live; yet
+the juxtaposition would have asserted the tradition of the younger
+painters and the modernity of the older master.  'We are all going
+to--Agnew's, and Velasquez will be of the company,' or something like
+Gainsborough's dying words would have occurred sooner or later.  I am
+persuaded that we look at the ancient pictures with frosted magnifying-
+glasses, and stare at the younger men from the wrong end of the
+binoculars.  It was ever thus; it always will be so.  Most of us suspect
+our contemporaries or juniors.  And they--_les jeunes feroces_--are
+impatient of their immediate predecessors.  _Nos peres out toujours
+tort_.  Though grandpapa is sometimes quite picturesque; his waistcoat
+and old buttons suit us very well.  'Your Raphael is not even divine,'
+said Velasquez when he left Rome and that wonderful _p.p.c_. card on the
+Doria.  'Your Academicians are not even academic,' some of the younger
+painters and their champions are saying to-day.
+
+I found, moreover, the epithet 'independent,' to qualify an entertaining
+and significant exhibition, misleading.  For many of the items could only
+be so classified in the sense that they were independent of Messrs. Agnew
+and the Royal Academy.  Mr. Tonks and Professor Brown are official
+instructors at the Slade School in London; Mr. C. J. Holmes is Keeper of
+the National Portrait Gallery.  Mr. Gerard Chowne was a professor at
+Liverpool.  Mr. Fry is now an official at New York; and the majority of
+the painters belonged to two distinctive and _dependent_ groups--the
+Glasgow School and the New English Art Club.  Intense individualism is
+not incompatible with militant collectivism.  The only independent
+artists, if you except Mr. Nicholson, were Mr. C. H. Shannon and Mr.
+Charles Ricketts, who have always stood apart, being neither for the
+Royal Academy nor its enemies; their choice is in their pictures.
+
+I feel it difficult to write of painters for some of whom I acted showman
+so long at the Carfax Gallery.  I confess that when I heard they were
+going to Bond Street my pangs were akin to those of the owner of a small
+country circus on learning that his troupe of performing dogs had been
+engaged by Mr. Imre Kiralfy or the Hippodrome.  A quondam dealer in
+ultramontanes, I became an Othello of the trade.  And in their grander
+quarters (I grieve to say) they looked better than ever, though I would
+have chosen another background, something less expensive and more severe.
+Yes, they all went through their hoops gracefully.  With one exception, I
+never saw finer Wilson Steers; the 'Sunset' might well be hung beside the
+new Turners, when the gulf between ancient and modern art would be almost
+imperceptible.  The 'Aliens' of Mr. Rothenstein in the cosmopolitan
+society of a public picture gallery would hardly appear foreigners,
+because they belong to a country where the inhabitants are racy of every
+one else's soil.  When time has given an added dignity (if that were
+possible) to this work, I can realise how our descendants will laugh at
+our lachrymose observations on the decadence of art.  The background
+against which the stately Hebrew figures are silhouetted is in itself a
+liberal education for the aged and those who ask their friends what these
+modern fellows mean.
+
+When the inhabitants of the unceltiferous portion of these islands employ
+the adjective _un-English_ you may be sure there is something serious on
+the carpet.  It is valedictory, expressive of sorrow and contempt rather
+than anger.  All the other old favourites of vituperative must have
+missed fire before this almost sacred, disqualifying Podsnappianism is
+applied to the objectionable person, picture, book, behaviour, or
+movement.  And when the epithet is brought into action, in nine cases out
+of ten it is aimed at some characteristic essentially, often blatantly,
+Anglo-Saxon.  Throughout the nineteenth century all exponents of art and
+literature not conforming to Fleet Street ideals were voted un-English;
+Byron, Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, the Pre-Raphaelites, and, in course of
+good time, those artists who formed the New English Art Club.  There was
+some ground for suspicion of foreign intrigue.  They regarded Mr.
+Whistler, an American, who flirted with French impressionism, as a
+pioneer.  Some of their names suggest the magic Orient or the romantic
+scenery of the Rhine.  But it is not extravagant to assert that if Mr.
+Rothenstein had chosen to be born in France or Germany, instead of in
+Bradford, his art would have come to us in another form.  In his strength
+and his weakness he is more English than the English.  Art may have
+cosmopolitan relations (it is usually a hybrid), but it must take on the
+features of the country and people where it grows; or it may change them,
+or change the vision of the people of its adoption.  Yet Ruth must not
+look too foreign in the alien corn, or her values will get wrong.  When
+an English artist airs his foreign accent and his smattering of French
+pigment his work has no permanent significance.  Even Professor Legros
+unconsciously assimilated British subjectivity: his Latin rein has been
+slackened; his experiments are often literary.
+
+It is an error however to regard the exhibitions of the New English Art
+Club as a homogeneous movement, such as that of Barbizon and the
+Pre-Raphaelite--inspired by a single idea or similar group of ideas.  The
+members have not even the cohesion of Glasgow or defunct Newlyn.  The
+only thing they have in common, in common originally with Glasgow, was a
+distaste for the tenets and ideals of Burlington House.  The serpent (or
+was it the animated rod?) of the Academy soon swallowed the
+sentimentalities of Newlyn, just as the International boa-constrictor
+made short work of Glasgow.  And the forbidden fruit of an official Eden
+has tempted many members of the Club.  Others have resigned from time to
+time, but with no ill result--to the Club.  Now, the reason for this is
+that the members have no dependence on each other, except for the
+executive organization of Mr. Francis Bate.  It may be doubted if in
+their heart of hearts they admire each other's works.  They are intense
+individualists (personal friends, maybe, in private life) artistically
+speaking, on terms of cutting acquaintance at the Slade.
+
+The mannerism of Professor Legros is still, of course, a common
+denominator for the older men, and the younger artists evince a
+familiarity with drawing unusual in England, due to the admirable
+training of Professor Brown and Mr. Henry Tonks.  The Spartan Mr. Tonks
+may not be able to make geniuses, but he has the faculty of turning out
+efficient workmen.  Whether they become members of the Club or drift into
+the haven of Burlington House, at all events they _can_ fly and wear
+their aureoles with propriety.  A society, however, which contains such
+distinctive and assertive personalities as Mr. Wilson Steer, Mr. Henry
+Tonks, Mr. Augustus John, Mr. William Orpen, Mr. Von Glehn, Mr. MacColl,
+and Professor Holmes, cannot possess even such unity of purpose as
+inspired Mr. Holman Hunt and his associates of the 'fifties.  The New
+English Art Club is simply an admirably administered association whose
+members have rather less in common than is shared by the members of an
+ordinary political club.  The exhibitions are for this reason intensely
+interesting.  They cannot be waved aside like mobs, and no comprehensive
+epigram can do them even an injustice.
+
+I never knew any painter worthy of the name who paid the smallest
+attention to what a critic says, even in conversation.  He will retort;
+but he will not change his style or regulate his motives to suit a
+critic's palate.  So may I now mention their faults?  What painter is
+without fault?  Their faults are shared by _nearly_ all of them; their
+virtues are their own.  I see among them an absence of any _desire_ for
+beauty--for physical beauty.  If the artists have fulfilled a mission in
+abolishing 'the sweetly pretty Christmas supplement kind of work,' I
+think they dwell too long on the trivial and the ignoble.  They put a not
+very interesting domesticity into their frames.  Rossetti, of course,
+wheeled about the marriage couch, but his was itself an interesting
+object of _virtu_.  Modern art ceased to express the better aspirations
+and thoughts of the day when modern artists refused to become the
+servants of the commune, but asserted themselves as a component part of
+an intellectual republic.  That is why people only commission portraits,
+and prefer to buy old masters who anticipate those better aspirations.
+Burne-Jones, however, expressed in paint that longing to be out of the
+nineteenth century which was so widespread.  Now we are well out of it,
+the rising generation does not esteem his works with the same enthusiasm
+as the elders.  It reads Mr. Wells on the future, and looks into the
+convex mirror of Mr. Bernard Shaw; but it does not buy Dubedats to the
+extent that it ought to do.  The members of the New English Art Club
+could, I think, preserve their aesthetic conscience and yet paint
+beautiful things and beautiful people.  Mr. Steer has now given them a
+lead.  I wonder what Mr. Winter's opinion would be?  He is the best
+salesman in London.
+
+Among dealers, the ancient firm of Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi, of which
+Thackeray writes, is the _doyen_.  That of Messrs. Agnew is the _douane_.
+Here it is that the official seal must be set before modern paintings can
+pass onwards to the Midlands and the middle classes.  Well, I felicitate
+the august officials on removing a tariff of prejudice; I felicitate the
+young artists who, released from the bondage of the Egyptian Hall, can
+now enjoy the lighter air, the larger day, the pasturage and patronage of
+Palestine.  I compliment the fearless collectors, such as Mr. C. K.
+Butler, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Daniel, His Honour Judge Evans, the
+Leylands and the Leathearts of a latter day, for ignoring contemporary
+ridicule and anticipating the verdict, not of passing fashion but of
+posterity.  As the servant spoke well of his master while wearing his
+clothes which were far too big for him, let me congratulate the
+Chrysostom of critics, the Origen who has scourged our heresies, Mr. D.
+S. MacColl; because the Greeks have entered Troy or the barbarians the
+senate-house.  _Dissolve frigus ligna super foco large reponens_, and let
+us mix our metaphors.  What was Mr. MacColl's Waterloo was a Canossa for
+Messrs. Agnew.
+
+(1906.)
+
+
+
+
+MR.  HOLMAN HUNT AT THE LEICESTER GALLERIES.
+
+
+An enterprising American syndicate was once formed for manufacturing
+Stilton cheeses on a large scale; like the pirated Cheddars from similar
+sources, enjoyed by members of most London clubs.  Various farms
+celebrated for their Stiltons were visited, sums of money being offered
+for old family recipes.  The simple peasants of the district willingly
+parted with copies of their heirlooms, for a consideration, to the
+different American agents, who, filled with joy, repaired to their London
+offices in order to compare notes, and fully persuaded that England was a
+greener country than ever Constable painted it.  What was their
+mortification on discovering that all the recipes were entirely
+different; they could not be reconciled even by machinery.  So it is with
+Pre-Raphaelitism; every critic believes that he knows the great secret,
+and can always quote from one of the brotherhood something in support of
+his view.  At the beginning the brothers meekly accepted Ruskin's
+explanation of their existence; his, indeed, was a very convenient,
+though not entirely accurate, exposition of their collective view, if
+they can be said to have possessed one.  How far Ruskin was out of
+sympathy with them, indiscreet memoirs have revealed.  An artistic idea,
+or a group of ideas, must always be broken gently to the English people,
+because the acceptance of them necessitates the swallowing of words.  When
+the golden ladders are let down from heaven by poets, artists, or critics
+even; or new spirits are hovering in the intellectual empyrean, the
+patriarch public snoring on its stone pillow wakes up; but he will not
+wrestle with the angel.  He mistakes the ladders for scaffolding, or some
+temporary embarrassment in the street traffic; he orders their instant
+removal; he writes angry letters to the papers and invokes the police.
+After some time Ruskin's definition of Pre-Raphaelitism was generally
+accepted, and then the death of Rossetti produced other recipes for the
+Stilton cheese, Mr. Hall Caine being among the grocers.  Whatever the
+correct definition may be, ungracious and ungrateful though it is to
+praise the dead at the expense of the living, it has to be recognised
+that among the remarkable group of painters in which even the minor men
+were little masters, the greatest artist of them all was Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti.  'By critic I mean finding fault,' says Sir William Richmond;
+so let us follow his advice, and avoid technical discussion along with
+the popular jargon of art criticism.  'After staying two or three hours
+in the always-delightful Leicester Galleries, let us walk home and think
+a little of what we have seen.'  For the essence of beauty there is
+nothing of Mr. Holman Hunt's to compare with Rossetti's 'Beloved' or the
+'Blue Bower;' and you could name twenty of the poet's water-colours
+which, for design, invention, devious symbolism, and religious impulse,
+surpass the finest of Mr. Hunt's most elaborate works.  Even in the
+painter's own special field--the symbolised illustration of Holy Writ--he
+is overwhelmed by Millais with the superb 'Carpenter's Shop.'  In
+Millais, it was well said by Mr. Charles Whibley, 'we were cheated out of
+a Rubens.'  Millais was the strong man, the great oil-painter of the
+group, as Rossetti was the supreme artist.  In Mr. Holman Hunt we lost
+another Archdeacon Farrar.  Then, in the sublimation of uglitude, Madox-
+Brown, step-father of the Pre-Raphaelites (my information is derived from
+a P.R.B. aunt), was an infinitely greater conjurer.  Look at the radiant
+painting of 'Washing of the Feet' in the Tate Gallery; is there anything
+to equal that masterpiece from the brush of Mr. Holman Hunt?  The
+'Hireling Shepherd' comes nearest, but the preacher, following his own
+sheep, has strayed into alien corn, and on cliffs from which is ebbing a
+tide of nonconformist conscience.  Like his own hireling shepherd, too,
+he has mistaken a phenomenon of nature for a sermon.
+
+One of the great little pictures, 'Claudio and Isabella,' proves,
+however, that _once_ he determined to be a painter.  In the 'Lady of
+Shalott' he showed himself a designer with unusual powers akin to those
+of William Blake.  Still, examined at a distance or close at hand, among
+his canvases do we find a single piece of decoration or a picture in the
+ordinary sense of the word?  My definition of a religious picture is a
+painted object in two dimensions destined or suitable for the decoration
+of an altar or other site in a church, or room devoted to religious
+purposes; if it fails to satisfy the required conditions, it fails as a
+work of art.  Where is the work of this so-called religious painter which
+would satisfy the not exacting conditions of a nonconformist or Anglican
+place of worship?  You are not surprised to learn that Keble College
+mistook the 'Light of the World' for a patent fuel, or that the
+background of the 'Innocents' was painted in 'the Philistine plain.'  Who
+could live even in cold weather with the 'Miracle of the Sacred Fire?'
+Give me rather the 'Derby Day' of Mr. Frith--admirable and underrated
+master.  What are they if we cannot place them in the category of
+pictures?  They are pietistic ejaculations--tickled-up maxims in pigment
+of extraordinary durability--counsels of perfection in colour and
+conduct.  Of all the Pre-Raphaelites, Mr. Hunt will remain the most
+popular.  He is artistically the scapegoat of that great movement which
+gave a new impulse to English art, a scapegoat sent out to wander by the
+dead seas of popularity.  I once knew a learned German who regretted that
+none of his countrymen could paint 'Alpine scenery' as Mr. Hunt has done
+in the 'Scapegoat'!  Yes, he has a message for every one, for my German
+friend, for Sir William Richmond, and myself.  He is a missing link
+between art and popularity.  He symbolises the evangelical attitude of
+those who would go to German Reed's and the Egyptian Hall, but would not
+attend a theatre.  After all, it was a gracious attitude, because it is
+that of mothers who aged more beautifully, I think, than the ladies of a
+later generation which admired Whistler or Burne-Jones and regularly
+attended the Lyceum.  When modern art, the brilliant art of the 'sixties,
+was strictly excluded from English homes except in black and white
+magazines, engravings from the 'Finding of Christ in the Temple' and the
+'Light of the World' were allowed to grace the parlour along with 'Bolton
+Abbey,' the 'Stag at Bay,' and 'Blucher meeting Wellington.'  You see
+them now only in Pimlico and St. John's Wood.  A friend of mine said he
+could never look at the picture of 'Blucher meeting Wellington' without
+blushing. . . . Like a good knight and true, Sir William Richmond,
+another Bedivere, has brandished Excalibur in the form of a catalogue for
+Mr. Hunt's pictures.  He offers the jewels for our inspection; they make
+a brave show; they are genuine; they are intrinsic, but you remember
+others of finer water, Bronzino-like portraits of Mr. Andrew Lang and
+Bismarck and many others.  Now, you should never recollect anything
+during the enjoyment of a complete work of art.
+
+Every one knows the view from Richmond, I should say _of_ Richmond; it is
+almost my own . . . Far off Sir Bedivere sees Lyonesse submerged; Camelot-
+at-Sea has capitulated after a second siege to stronger forces.  The new
+Moonet is high in the heaven and a dim Turner-like haze has begun to
+obscure the landscape and soften the outlines.  Under cover of the mist
+the hosts of Mordred MacColl, _en-Tate_ with victory, are hunting the
+steer in the New English Forest.  Far off the enchanter Burne-Jones is
+sleeping quietly in Broceliande (I cannot bear to call it Rottingdean).
+Hark, the hunt, (not the Holman Hunt) is up in Caledon (Glasgow); they
+have started the shy wilson steer: they have wound the hornel; the lords
+of the International, who love not Mordred overmuch, are galloping nearer
+and nearer.  Sir Bedivere can see their insolent pencils waving black and
+white flags: and the game-keepers and beaters (critics) chant in low
+vulgar tones:
+
+   When we came out of Glasgow town
+   There was really nothing at all to see
+   Except Legros and Professor Brown,
+   But _now_ there is Guthrie and Lavery.
+
+Undaunted Sir Bedivere drags his burden to a hermitage near Coniston; but
+he finds it ruined; he bars the door in order to administer refreshment
+to the wounded Pre-Raphaelite; there is a knocking at the wicket-gate; is
+it the younger generation?  No, he can hear the tread of the royal
+sargent-at-arms; his spurs and sword are clanking on the pavement.  Sir
+Bedivere feels his palette parched; his tongue cleaves to the roof of St.
+Paul's; but he is undaunted.  'We are surely betrayed if that is really
+Sargent,' he says.  Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic
+window a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic
+arms; he feels a twinge.  Some Merlin told him he would suffer from
+ricketts with shannon complications.  Seizing Excalibur, he opens the
+door cautiously.  'Draw, caitiffs,' he cries; 'draw.'  'Perhaps they
+cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists,' said a raven on the hill;
+and he flew away.
+
+(1906.)
+
+_To_ SIR WILLIAM BLAKE RICHMOND, R.A., K.C.B.
+
+
+
+
+THE ECLECTIC AT LARGE.
+
+
+In _The Education of an Artist_, Mr. Lewis Hind invented a new kind of
+art criticism--a pleasing blend of the Morelli narrative (minus the
+scientific method) and _Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour_.  He contrives a
+young man, ignorant like the Russian, Lermoliev, who receives certain
+artistic impressions, faithfully recorded by Mr. Hind and visualised for
+the reader in a series of engaging half-tone illustrations.  The hero's
+name is itself suggestive--Claude Williamson Shaw.  By the end of the
+book he is nearly as learned as Mr. Claude Phillips: he might edit a
+series of art-books with all the skill of Dr. Williamson, and his power
+of racy criticism rivals that of Mr. George Bernard Shaw.  You can hardly
+escape the belief that these three immortals came from the north and
+south, gathered as unto strife, breathed upon his mouth and filled his
+body--with ideas: Mr. Hind supplying the life.  But this is not so: the
+ideas are all Mr. Hind's and the godfathers only supplied the name.  What
+a name it is to be sure!  It recalls one of Ibsen's plays: 'Claude
+Williamson Shaw was a miner's son--a Cornish miner's son, as you know; or
+perhaps you didn't know.  He was always wanting _plein-air_.'  Some one
+ought to say that in the book, but I must say it instead.  At all events,
+Mr. Hind nearly always refers to him by his three names, and every one
+must think of him in the same way, otherwise side issues will intrude
+themselves--thoughts of other things and people.  'O Captain Shaw, type
+of true love kept under,' is not inapposite, because Claude Williamson
+Shaw fell in love with a lady who in a tantalising manner became a
+religious in one of the strictest Orders, the rules of which were duly
+set forth in old three-volume novels; that is the only conventional
+incident in the book.  C. W. S., although he trains for painting, is
+admitted by Mr. Hind to be quite a bad artist.  Apart, therefore, from
+the admirable criticism which is the main feature of the book, it shows
+great courage on the part of the inventor, great sacrifice, to admit that
+C. W. S. _was_ a failure as an artist.  Bad artists, however, are always
+nice people.  I do not say that the reverse is true; indeed, I know many
+good and even great artists who are charming; but I never met a
+thoroughly inferior painter (without any promise of either a future or a
+past) who was not irresistible socially.  This accounts for some of the
+elections at the Royal Academy, I believe, and for the pictures on the
+walls of your friends whose taste you know to be impeccable.  There is
+more hearty recognition of bad art in England than the Tate Gallery gives
+us any idea of.
+
+I know that the Chantrey Trustees were deprived of the only possible
+excuse for their purchases by the finding of Lord Lytton's Commission;
+but I, for one, shall always think of them as kindly men with a fellow-
+feeling for incompetence, who would have bought a work by Claude
+Williamson Shaw if the opportunity presented itself.  I have sometimes
+tried to imagine what the pictures of _invented_ artists in fiction or
+drama were really like--I fear they were all dreadful performances.  I
+used to imagine that Oswald Avling was a sort of Segantini, but something
+he says in the play convinced me that he was merely another Verboekhoven.
+Then Thackeray's Ridley must have been a terrible Philistine--a sort of
+Sir John Gilbert.  Poor Basil Hallward's death was no great loss to art,
+I surmise: his portrait of 'Dorian Grey, Esq.', from all accounts,
+resembled the miraculous picture exhibited in Bond Street a short while
+ago.  I am not surprised that its owner, whose taste improved, I suspect,
+with advancing years, destroyed it in the ordinary course after reading
+something by Mr. D. S. MacColl.  It is distinctly stated that Dorian read
+the _Saturday Review_!  Frenhofer, Hippolite Schimier, and Leon de Lora
+were probably chocolate-box painters of the regular second-empire type.
+Theobald, we know from Mr. Henry James, was a man of ideas who could not
+carry out his intentions.  It must have been an exquisite memory of
+Theobald's failures which made Pater, when he wished to contrive an
+imaginary artistic personality, take Watteau as being some one in whose
+achievements you can believe.  No literary artist can persuade us into
+admiring pictures which never existed; though an artist can reconstruct
+from literature a picture which has perished we know, from the 'Calumny
+of Apelles' by Botticelli.  It was, therefore, wise to make Claude
+Williamson Shaw a failure as a painter.  In accordance with my rule he
+was an excellent fellow, nearly as charming as his author, and better
+company in a picture-gallery it would be difficult to find--and you
+cannot visit picture-galleries with every friend: you require a
+sympathetic personality.  It is the Claude--the Claude Phillips in him
+which I like best: the Dr. Williamson I rather suspect.  I mean that when
+he was at Messrs. Chepstow, the publishers, he must have mugged up some
+of the real Dr. Williamson's art publications.  Whether in the Louvre, or
+National Gallery, or in Italian towns, he always goes for the right
+thing; sometimes you wish he would make a mistake.  Bad artists, of
+course, are often excellent judges of old pictures and make excellent
+dealers, and I am not denying the instinct of C. W. S.; but I cannot
+think it all came so naturally as Mr. Hind would indicate.
+
+The reason why Claude Williamson Shaw discovered 'that he would not find
+a true expression of his temperament' in painting readers of this
+ingenious book will discover for themselves.  Assuming that he had any
+innate talent, I do not think he went about the right way to cultivate
+it.  His friend Lund gave him the very worst advice; though we are the
+gainers.  It is quite unnecessary to go out of England and gaze at a lot
+of pictures of entirely different schools in order to become a painter.
+Gainsborough and our great Norwich artists evolved themselves without any
+foreign study.  There was no National Gallery in their days.  A second-
+rate Wynants and a doubtful Hobbema seem to have been enough to give them
+hints.  It would be tedious to mention other examples.  The fortunate
+meeting of Zuccarelli and Wilson at Venice is the only instance I know in
+which foreign travel benefited any English landscape painter.  Foreign
+travel is all very well when the artist has grown up.  Paris has been the
+tomb of many English art students.  M. Bordeaux, who gave Mr. Hind's hero
+tips in the atelier, seems to have been as 'convincing' as the famous
+barrel of the same name.  Far better will the English student be under
+Mr. Tonks at the Slade; or even at the Royal Academy, where, owing to the
+doctrine of contraries, out of sheer rebellion he may become an artist.
+In Paris you learn perfect carpentry, but not art, unless you are a born
+artist; but in that case you will be one in spite of Paris, not because
+of it.  But if C. W. Shaw had been a real painter he would have seen at
+Venice certain Tiepolos which seem to have escaped him, and in other
+parts of Italy certain Caravaggios.  Yes, and Correggios and Guido Renis,
+too hastily passed by.  He was doomed to be a connoisseur.
+
+(1906.)
+
+
+
+
+EGO ET MAX MEUS.
+
+
+'How very delightful Max's drawings are.  For all their mad perspective
+and crude colour, they have, indeed, the sentiment of style, and they
+reveal with rarer delicacy than does any other record the spirit of Lloyd-
+George's day.'  This sentence is not quite original: it is adapted from
+an eminent author because the words sum up so completely the
+inexpressible satisfaction following an inspection of Mr. Beerbohm's
+caricatures.  To-day essentially belongs to the Minister who once
+presided at the Board of Trade.  Several attempts indeed have been made
+to describe the literature, art and drama of the present as 'Edwardian,'
+from a very proper and loyal spirit, to which I should be the last to
+object.  We were even promised a few years ago a new style of furniture
+to inaugurate the reign--something to supplant that Louis Dix-neuvieme
+_decor_ which is merely a compromise with the past.  But somehow the
+whole thing has fallen through; in this democratic aeon the adjective
+'Edwardian' trips on the tongue; our real dramatists are all Socialists
+or Radicals; our poets and writers Anarchists.  Our artists are the only
+conservatives of intellect.  Our foreign policy alone can be called
+'Edwardian,' so personal is it to the King.  Everything else is a
+compromise; so our time must therefore be known--at least ten years of
+it--as the Lloyd-Georgian period.  I can imagine collectors of the future
+struggling for an _alleged_ genuine work of art belonging to this brief
+renaissance, and the disappointment of the dealer on finding that it
+dated a year before the Budget, thereby reducing its value by some
+thousands.
+
+Just as we go to Kneller and Lely for speaking portraits of the men who
+made their age, so I believe our descendants will turn to Max for
+listening likenesses of the present generation.  Of all modern artists,
+he alone follows Hamlet's advice.  If the mirror is a convex one, that is
+merely the accident of genius, and reflects the malady of the century.
+Other artists have too much eye on the Uffizi and the National Gallery
+(the more modest of them only painting up to the Tate).  In Max we have
+one who never harks forward to the future, and is therefore more
+characteristic, more Lloyd-Georgian than any of his peers.  Set for one
+moment beside some Rubens' goddess a portrait by Mr. Sargent, and how
+would she be troubled by its beauty?  Not in the slightest degree;
+because they are both similar but differing expressions of the same
+genius of painting.  The centuries which separate them are historical
+conventions; and in Art, history does not count; aesthetically, time is
+of no consequence.  But in the more objective art of caricature, history
+is of some import, and (as Mr. Beerbohm himself admitted about
+photographs) the man limned is of paramount importance.  Actual
+resemblance, truthfulness of presentation, criticism of the model become
+legitimate subjects for consideration.  Generally speaking, artists long
+since wisely resigned all attempts at catching a likeness, leaving to
+photography an inglorious victory.  Mr. Beerbohm, realising this fact,
+seized caricature as a substitute--the consolation, it may be, for a lost
+or neglected talent.  It is as though Watts (painter of the soul's prism,
+if ever there was one) had pushed away Ward and Downey from the camera,
+to insert a subtler lens, a more sensitive negative.
+
+* * * *
+
+If, reader, you have ever been to a West-end picture shop, you will have
+suffered some annoyance on looking too attentively at any item in the
+exhibition, by the approach of an officious attendant, who presses you to
+purchase it.  He begins by flattery; he felicitates you on your choice of
+the _best_ picture in the room--the one that has been 'universally
+admired by critics and collectors.'
+
+The fact of its not being sold is due (he naively confesses) to its
+rather high price; several offers have been submitted, and if not sold at
+the catalogued amount the artist has promised to consider them; but it is
+very unlikely that the drawing will remain long without a red ticket,
+'_as people come back to town to-morrow_.'  There is the stab, the stab
+in the back while you were drinking honey; the tragedy of Corfe Castle
+repeated.  _People with_ a capital _P_ in picture-dealing circles does
+not mean what they call the _Hoypolloy_; it means the great ones of the
+earth, the _monde_, the Capulets and Montagues with wealth or rank.  You
+have been measured by the revolting attendant.  He does not count you
+with them, or you would not be in town to-day; something has escaped you
+in the _Morning Post_, some function to which you were not invited, or of
+which you knew nothing.  If you happen to be a Capulet you feel mildly
+amused, and in order to correct the wrong impression and let the
+underling know your name and address you purchase the drawing; for the
+greatest have their weak side.  But, if not, and you have simply risen
+from the 'purple of commerce,' you are determined not to lag behind stuck-
+up Society; you will revenge yourself for the thousand injuries of
+Fortunatus; you will deprive him of his prerogative to buy the _best_.
+The purchase is concluded.  You go home with your nerves slightly shaken
+from the gloved contest--you go home to face your wife and children,
+wearing a look of wistful inquiry on their irregular upturned faces, as
+when snow lies upon the ground, they scent Christmas, and you look up
+with surprise at the whiteness of the ceiling.  Though in private life a
+contributor to the press, in public I used to be one of those importunate
+salesmen.
+
+It was my duty, my pleasurable duty, so to act for Mr. Beerbohm's
+caricatures when exhibited at a fashionable West-end gallery where among
+the visitors I recognised many of his models.  I observe that when Mr.
+Beerbohm is a friend of his victim he is generally at his best; that he
+is always excellent and often superb if he is in sympathy with the
+personality of that victim, however brutally he may render it.  His
+failures are due to lack of sympathy, and they are often, oddly enough,
+the mildest as caricatures.  Fortunately, Mr. Beerbohm selects chiefly
+celebrities who are either personal friends or those for whom he must
+have great admiration and sympathy.  By a divine palmistry he estimates
+them with exquisite perception.  I noted that those who were annoyed with
+their own caricature either did not know Mr. Beerbohm or disliked his
+incomparable writings; and, curiously enough, he misses the likeness in
+people he either does not know personally or whom you suspect he
+dislikes.  I am glad now of the opportunity of being sincere, because it
+was part of my function as salesman to agree with what every one said,
+whether in praise or in blame.
+
+And let me reproduce a conversation with one of the visitors.  It is
+illustrative:--
+
+[SCENE: _The Carfax Gallery; rather empty; early morning: Caricatures by
+Max Beerbohm; entrance one shilling.  Enter_ DISTINGUISHED CLIENT, _takes
+catalogue, but does not consult it.  No celebrity ever consults a
+catalogue in a modern picture-gallery.  This does not apply to ladies,
+however distinguished, who conscientiously begin at number one and read
+out from the catalogue the title of each picture_.  SHOPMAN _in
+attendance_.]
+
+D. C. (_glancing round_).  Yes; how very clever they are.
+
+SHOPMAN.  Yes; they are very amusing.
+
+D. C.  I suppose you have had heaps of People.  What a pity Max cannot
+draw!
+
+SHOPMAN.  Yes; it _is_ a great pity.
+
+D. C. (_examines drawing; after a pause_).  But he _can_ draw.  Look at
+that one of Althorp.
+
+SHOPMAN (_trying to look intelligent_): Yes; that certainly is well
+drawn.
+
+D. C. (_pointing to photograph of Paris inserted in Mr. Claude Lowther's
+caricature_).  And how extraordinary that is.  It is like one of Muirhead
+Bone's street scenes.  He does street scenes, doesn't he?
+
+SHOPMAN.  Yes; or one of Mr. Joseph Pennell's.
+
+D. C. (_after a pause_).  What a pity he never gets the likeness.  That's
+very bad of Arthur Balfour.
+
+SHOPMAN.  Yes; it is a great pity.  No; that's not at all a good one of
+Mr. Balfour.
+
+D. C. (_pointing to Mr. Shaw's photograph inserted in caricature_).  But
+he _has_ got the likeness there.  By Jove! it's nearly as good as a
+photograph.
+
+SHOPMAN (_examining photograph as if he had never seen it;
+enthusiastically_).  It's _almost_ as good as a photograph.
+
+D. C. (_pointing with umbrella to Lord Weardale_).  Of course, that's
+Rosebery?
+
+SHOPMAN (_nervously_): Y-e-s.  (_Brightly changing subject_.)  What do
+you think of Mr. Sargent's?
+
+D. C. (_now worked up_).  Oh! that's very good.  Yes; that's the best of
+all.  I see it's sold.  I should have bought that one if it hadn't been
+sold.  I wish Max would do a caricature of (_describes a possible
+caricature_).  Tell him I suggested it; he knows me quite well (_glancing
+round_).  He really is tremendous.  Are they going to be published?
+
+SHOPMAN.  Yes; by Methuen & Co.  (_Hastily going over to new-comer_.)
+Yes, madam, that is Mr. Arthur Balfour; it's considered the _best_
+caricature in the exhibition--the likeness is so particularly striking;
+and as a pure piece of draughtsmanship it is certainly the finest drawing
+in the room.  No; that's not so good of Lord Althorp, though it _was_ the
+first to sell.  (_Turning to another client_.)  Yes, sir; he is Mr.
+Beerbohm Tree's half-brother.
+
+(1907.)
+
+_To_ MRS. BEERBOHM.
+
+
+
+
+THE ETHICS OF REVIEWING.
+
+
+The 'Acropolis,' a review of literature, science, art, politics, society,
+and the drama, is, as every one knows, our leading literary weekly.  Its
+original promoters decided on its rather eccentric title with a symbolism
+now outmoded.  The 'Acropolis' was to be impregnable to outside
+contributors, and the editor was always to be invisible.  All the vile
+and secret arts of reclame and puffery were to find no place in its
+immaculate pages.  One afternoon some time ago a number of gentlemen,
+more or less responsible for the production of the 'Acropolis,' were
+seated round the fire in the smoking-room of a certain club.  For the
+last hour they had been discussing with some warmth the merits of signed
+or unsigned articles and the reviewing of books.  A tall, good-looking
+man, who pretended to be unpopular, was advocating the anonymous.  'There
+is something so cowardly about a signed article,' he was saying.  'It is
+nearly as bad as insulting a man in public, when there is no redress
+except to call for the police.  And that is ridiculous.  If I am slated
+by an anonymous writer, it is always in my power to pay no attention,
+whereas if the slate is signed, I am obliged to take notice of some kind.
+I must either deny the statements, often at a great sacrifice of truth,
+or if I assault the writer there is always the risk of his being
+physically stronger than I am.  No; anonymous attack is the only weapon
+for gentlemen.'
+
+'To leave for a moment the subject of anonymity,' said an eminent
+novelist, 'I think the great curse of all criticism is that of slating
+any book at all.  Think of the unfortunate young man or woman first
+entering the paths of literature, and the great pain it causes them.  You
+should encourage them, and not damp their enthusiasm.'
+
+'My dear fellow,' said North, 'I encourage no one, and writers should
+never have any feelings at all.  They can't have any, or they would not
+bore the public by writing.'
+
+The discussion was getting heated when the editor, Rivers, interfered.
+
+'My dear North,' he began, addressing the first speaker, 'your eloquent
+advocacy of the anonymous reminds me of a curious incident that occurred
+many years ago when I was assistant-editor of the "Acropolis."  The facts
+were never known to the public, and my old chief, Curtis, met with much
+misplaced abuse in consequence.  There were reasons for which he could
+never break silence; but it happened so long ago that I cannot be
+betraying any confidence.  All of you have heard of, and some of you have
+seen, Quentin Burrage, whose articles practically made the "Acropolis"
+what it now is.  His opinion on all subjects was looked forward to by the
+public each week.  Young poetasters would tremble when their time should
+come to be pulverised by the scathing epigrams which fell from his
+anonymous pen.  Essayists, novelists, statesmen were pale for weeks until
+a review appeared that would make or mar their fame.  In the various
+literary coteries of London no one knew that Quentin Burrage was the
+slater who thrilled, irritated, or amused them, though he was of course
+recognised as an occasional contributor.  The secret was well kept.  He
+was practically critical censor of London for ten years.  A whole school
+of novelists ceased to exist after three of his notices in the
+"Acropolis."  The names of painters famous before his time you will not
+find in the largest dictionaries now.  Four journalists committed suicide
+after he had burlesqued their syntax, and two statesmen resigned office
+owing to his masterly examination of their policy.  We were all much
+shocked when a popular actor set fire to his theatre on a first night
+because Curtis and his dramatic critic refused to take champagne and
+chicken between the acts.  This may give you some idea of Burrage's power
+in London for a decade of the last century.
+
+'One day a curious change came over him.  It was Monday when he and I
+were in the office receiving our instructions.  Curtis, after going over
+some books, handed to Quentin a vellum-covered volume of poems, saying
+with a grim smile: "There are some more laurels for you to hash."
+
+'An expression of pain spread over Quentin's serene features.
+
+'"I'll see what I can do," he said wearily.  But his curious manner
+struck both Curtis and myself.  The book was a collection of very
+indifferent verse which already enjoyed a wide popularity.  I cannot tell
+you the title, for that is a secret not my own.  It was early work of one
+of our most esteemed poets who for some time was regarded by _his
+friends_ as the natural successor to Mr. Alfred Austin.  The "Acropolis"
+had not spoken.  We were sometimes behindhand in our reviews.  The public
+waited to learn if the new poet was really worth anything.  You may
+imagine the general surprise when a week afterwards there appeared a
+flamingly favourable review of the poems.  It made a perfect sensation
+and was quoted largely.  The public became quite conceited with its
+foresight.  The reputation of the poet was assured.  "Snarley-ow must be
+dead," some one remarked in my hearing at the club, and members tried to
+pump me.  One day a telegram came from Curtis asking me to go down to his
+house at once.  A request from him was a command.  I found him in a state
+of some excitement, his manner a little artificial.  "My dear Rivers, I
+suppose you think me mad.  The geese have got into the Capitol at last."
+Without correcting his classical allusion, I said: "Where is Burrage?"
+"He is coming here presently.  Of course, I glanced at the thing in
+proof, and thought it a splendid joke, but reading it this morning, I
+have come to the conclusion that something is wrong with Burrage.  You
+remember his agitated manner the other day?"  I was about to reply, when
+Burrage was announced.  His haggard and pale appearance startled both of
+us.  "My dear Burrage, what _is_ the matter with you?" we exclaimed
+simultaneously.  He gave a sickly nervous smile.  "Of course you have
+sent to ask me about that review.  Well, I have changed my opinions, I
+have altered.  I think we should praise everything or ignore everything.
+To slate a book, good or bad, is taking the bread out of a fellow's
+mouth.  I have been the chief sinner in this way, and I am going to be
+the first reformer."  "Not in my paper," said Curtis, angrily.
+
+'Then we all fell to discussing that old question with all the warmth
+that North and the rest of you were doing just now.  We lost our tempers
+and Curtis ended the matter by saying: "I tell you what it is, Burrage,
+if you ever bring out a book yourself I'll send it to you to review.  You
+can praise it as much as you like.  But don't let this occur again, with
+any one else's work."  Burrage turned quite white, I thought, and Curtis,
+noticing the effect of his words, went up and taking him by the hand,
+added more kindly, "My poor Burrage, are you quite well?  I never saw you
+in so morbid a state before.  All this is mere sentimentality--so
+different from your usual manly spirit.  Go away for a change, to
+Brighton or Eastbourne, and you must come back with that wholesome
+contempt for your contemporaries that characterises most of your
+writings.  I'll look over the matter this time, and we'll say no more
+about it."  And here Curtis was so overcome that he dashed a tear from
+his eye.  A few hours later I saw Burrage off to the sea.  He was very
+strange in his manner.  "I'll never be quite the same again.  If I only
+dared to tell you," he said.  And the train rolled out of the station.
+
+'Some weeks later I was again in the editorial room and Curtis showed me
+a curiously bound book, printed on hand-made paper, entitled
+_Prejudices_.  I had already seen it.  "That book," Curtis remarked,
+"ought to have been noticed long ago.  I was keeping it for Burrage when
+he gets better.  Shall I send it to him?"
+
+'_Prejudices_ for some weeks had been the talk of London.  It was a
+series of very ineffectual essays on different subjects.  Sight, Colour,
+Sound, Art, Letters, and Religion were all dealt with in that highly
+glowing and original manner now termed _Style_.  It was delightfully
+unwholesome and extraordinarily silly.  Young persons had already begun
+to get foolish over it, and leaving the more stimulating pages of Mr.
+Pater they hailed the work as an earnest of the English Renaissance.
+Instead of stroking _Marius the Epicurean_ they fondled a copy of
+_Prejudices_.  I prophesied that Burrage would vindicate himself over it
+and that the public would hear very little of _Prejudices_ in a year's
+time.  The book was sent; and the first part of my prophecy was
+fulfilled, Burrage spared neither the author nor his admirers.  The
+pedantry, the affected style, the cheap hedonism were all pitilessly
+exposed.  London, rocked with laughter.  Some of the admirers, with the
+generosity of youth, nobly came to the rescue.  They made a paper war and
+talked of "The cruelty and cowardice of the attack," "The stab in the
+dark," "Journalistic marauding," "Disappointed author turned critic."  The
+slate was one that I am bound to say was _killing_ in both senses of the
+word.  A book less worthless could never have lived under it.  It was one
+of those decisive reviews of all ages.  _Prejudices_ was withdrawn by the
+publisher fearful of damaging his prestige.  Yet it was never looked on
+as a rarity, and fell at book auctions for a shilling, for some time
+after, amidst general tittering.  The daily papers meanwhile devoted
+columns to the discussion.  I telegraphed to Burrage in cipher and
+congratulated him, knowing that secrets leak out sometimes through the
+post office.  I was surprised to get no reply for some weeks, but Curtis
+said he was lying low while the excitement lasted.  One day I got a
+letter simply saying, "For God's sake come.  I am very ill."  I went at
+once.  How shall I describe to you the pitiful condition I found him in?
+The doctor told me he was suffering from incipient tuberculosis due to
+cerebral excitement and mental trouble.  When I went in to see him he was
+lying in bed, pale and emaciated as a corpse, surrounded by friends and
+relations.  He asked every one to go out of the room; he had something of
+importance to say to me.  I then learned what you have divined already.
+The anonymous author of _Prejudices_ was no other than Quentin Burrage
+himself.  Or rather not himself, but the other self of which neither I
+nor Curtis knew anything.  He had been living a double existence.  As a
+writer of trashy essays and verse, an incomplete sentimentalist
+surrounded by an admiring band of young ladies and gentlemen, he was not
+recognised as the able critic and the anonymous slater of the
+"Acropolis."
+
+'When he first received his own book for review he recalled the words of
+Curtis.  He must be honest, impartial, and just.  No one knew better the
+faults of _Prejudices_.  As he began to write, the old spirit of the
+slater came over him.  His better self conquered.  He forgot for the
+moment that he was the author.  He hardly realised the sting of his own
+sarcasms even when he saw them in proof.  It was not until it appeared,
+and the papers were full of the controversy, that the _cruelty_ and
+_unfairness_ of the attack dawned on him.  I was much shocked at the
+confession, and the extraordinary duplicity of Burrage, who had been
+living a lie for the last ten years.  His denunciation of poor Curtis
+pained me.  I would have upbraided him, but his tortured face and hacking
+cough made me relent.  I need not prolong the painful story.  Burrage
+never recovered.  He sank into galloping consumption, only aggravated by
+a broken heart.  I saw him on his deathbed at Rome.  He was attended by
+Strange, and died in his arms.  His last words to me were, "Rivers, tell
+Curtis I forgive him."
+
+'We buried in the Protestant cemetery near Keats and Shelley one whose
+name was written in hot water.  His sad death provoked a good deal of
+comment, as you may suppose.  Strange has often promised to write his
+life.  But he could never get through _Prejudices_, and I pointed out to
+him that you can hardly write an author's life without reading one of his
+works, even though he did die in your arms.  That is the worst of
+literary martyrs with a few brilliant exceptions: their works are
+generally dull.'
+
+'Is that all?' asked North.
+
+'That is all, and I hope you understand the moral.'
+
+'Perfectly; but your reminiscences have too much construction, my dear
+Rivers.'
+
+'The story is perfectly true for all that,' remarked the Editor, drily.
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE DOCTORED FAUST.  A PROLOGUE.
+
+
+'The version of _Faust_ which Mr. Stephen Phillips is contemplating will,
+it is interesting to learn from the author, be a "compact drama," of
+which the spectacular embellishment will form no part.  In Mr. Phillips's
+view the story is in itself so strong and so rich in all the elements
+that make for dramatic effectiveness that to treat the subject as one for
+elaborate scenic display would be to diminish the direct appeal of a
+great tragedy.  "First let me say," said Mr. Stephen Phillips, "how
+gladly I approach a task which will bring me again into association with
+Mr. George Alexander, whose admirable treatment of _Paolo and Francesco_,
+you will no doubt remember.  In the version of _Faust_ which I am going
+to prepare there will be nothing spectacular, nothing to overshadow or
+intrude upon an immortal theme.  As to how I shall treat the story, and
+as to the form in which it will be written, I am not yet sure--it may be
+a play in blank verse, or in prose with lyrics . . ."  Mr. Phillips added
+that he had also in view a play on the subject of _Harold_."--_The
+Tribune_.
+
+_Scene: The British Museum_.
+
+SIDNEY COLVIN.  Ah! my dear Stephen, when they told me Phillips
+Was waiting in my study, I imagined
+That it was Claude, whom I have been expecting.
+I have arranged that you shall have this room
+All to yourself and friends.  Now I must leave you.
+I have to go and speak to Campbell Dodgson
+About some prints we've recently acquired.
+
+STEPHEN PHILLIPS.  How can I ever thank you?  Love to Binyon!
+
+[COLVIN _goes out_.
+
+_Enter_ Mr. GEORGE ALEXANDER, GOETHE, MARLOWE, GOUNOD.
+
+ALEXANDER (_from force of habit_).  I always told you he was reasonable.
+
+GOETHE.  Well, I consent.  Mein Gott! how colossal
+You English are!  'Tis nigh impossible
+For poets to refuse you anything,
+And German thought beneath some English shade--
+_Unter den Linden_, as we say at home--
+Sounds really quite as well on British soil.
+Our good friend Marlowe hardly seems so pleased.
+
+MARLOWE.  Oh, Goethe! cease these frivolous remarks.
+Think you that I, who knew Elizabeth,
+And tasted all the joys of literature
+And played the dawn to Shakespeare's larger day,
+And heralded a mighty line of verse
+With half-a-dozen mighty lines my own,
+Am feeling well?
+
+GOUNOD (_brightening_).  Ah!  Monsieur Wells,
+Auteur d'une histoire fine et romanesque
+Traduit par Davray; il a des idees
+C'est une chose rare la-bas . . .
+
+STEPHEN PHILLIPS.  He does not speak of Huysmans; 'tis myself.
+I thank you, gentlemen, with all my heart;
+I thank you, gentlemen, with all my soul;
+I thank you, sirs, with all my soul and strength.
+So for your leave much thanks.  You know my weakness:
+I love to be at peace with all the past.
+The present and the future I can manage;
+The stirrup of posterity may dangle
+Against the heaving flanks of Pegasus.
+I feel my spurs against the saucy mare
+And Alexander turned Bucephalus.
+
+MARLOWE.  Neigh!  Neigh! though you have told us what you are,
+And we have witnessed Nero several times,
+You do not tell us of this wretched Faustus,
+Who must be damned in any case, I fear.
+
+S. P.  Of course, I treat you as material
+On which to work; but then I simplify
+And purify the story for our stage.
+The English stage is nothing if not pure.
+For instance, we will not allow _Salome_.
+So in Act II. of _Faust_ I represent
+The marriage feast of beauteous Margaret;
+Act I. I get from Goethe, III. from Marlowe,
+And Gounod's music fills the gaps in mine.
+Margaret, of course, will never come to grief.
+She only gets a separation order.
+By the advice of Plowden magistrate,
+She undertakes to wean Euphorion,
+Who in his bounding habit symbolises
+The future glories of the English empire.
+As the production must not cost too much,
+Harker, Hawes Craven, Hann are relegated
+To a back place.  It is a compact drama,
+Of which spectacular embellishment
+Will form no part.  The story is so strong,
+So rich in all the elements that make
+A drama suitable for Alexander,
+That scenery, if necessary to Tree,
+Shall not intrude on this immortal theme.
+
+GOETHE.  Pyramidal!  My friend, but you are splendid.
+Now, have you shown the manuscript to Colvin?
+
+MARLOWE.  He is a scholar, and a ripe and good one,
+And far too tolerant of modern poets.
+
+ALEXANDER.  One of your lines strike my familiar spirit.
+Surely, that does not come from Stephen Phillips.
+
+MARLOWE.  No matter; I may quote from whom I will.
+Shakespeare himself was not immaculate,
+And borrowed freely from a barren past.
+
+GOETHE.  What thinks Herr Sidney Colvin of your work?
+
+S. P.  That he will tell you when he sees it played.
+
+
+
+ACT I.
+
+
+_Scene: Faust's Studio_.
+
+SERVANT.  Well, if you have no further use for me,
+I will go make our preparation.
+
+FAUST.  If anybody calls, say I am out;
+I must have time to see how I will act.
+As to the form in which I shall be written,
+I must decide whether in prose or verse.
+My thoughts I'll bend.  Give me at once the _Times_:
+Walkley I always find inspiriting--
+And really I learn much about the drama
+(Even the German drama) from his pen,
+More curious than that of Paracelsus.
+(_Reads_) 'Sic vos non vobis, Bernard Shaw might say,
+Dieu et mon droit.  Ich dien.  Et taceat
+Femina in ecclesia.  Ellen Terry,
+La plus belle femme de toutes les femmes
+Du monde.'  Archer, I have observed,
+Writes no more for the World, but for himself.
+Then I forgot; he's writing for the _Leader_,
+That highly independent Liberal paper.
+
+[FAUST _muses_.  _Bell heard_.
+
+The Elixir of Life, is it a play
+Which runs a thousand nights?  Is it a dream
+Precipitated into some alembic
+Or glass retort by Ex-ray Lankester?
+
+_Enter_ SERVANT.
+
+SERVANT.  A gentleman has called.
+
+FAUST.  Say I am out.
+
+SERVANT.  He will take no denial.
+
+FAUST.  Show him in.
+Most probably 'tis Herbert Beerbohm Tree,
+Who long has planned a play of Doctor Faustus.
+
+_Enter_ MEPHISTOPHELES.
+
+MEPHISTOPHELES.  Ah! my dear Doctor, here we are again!
+Micawber-like, I never will desert you.
+How do you feel?  Your house I see myself
+In perfect order.  Ah! how much has past
+Since those Lyceum days when you and I
+Climbed up the Brocken on Walpurgis night.
+That times have changed I realise myself;
+No longer through the chimney I descend;
+I enter like a super from the side.
+Widowers' Houses dramas have become;
+Morals and sentiment and Clement Scott
+No more seem adjuncts of the English stage.
+
+FAUST.  Oh, Mephistopheles, you come in time
+To save the English drama from a deadlock!
+Like Mahmud's coffin hung 'twixt Heaven and Earth,
+It falters up to verse and down to prose.
+Tell us, then, how to act, how consummate
+The aspirations of our Stephen Phillips!
+
+MEPHISTO.  Ah, Alexander Faustus! young as ever,
+Still unabashed by Paolo and Francesca,
+You long for plays with literary motives,
+Plots oft attempted both in prose and rhyme.
+
+FAUST.  As ever, you are timid and old-fashioned.
+
+MEPHISTO.  Hark you!  One thing I know above all others,
+The English drama of the century past.
+Though English critics have consigned to me
+The plays of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and Shaw,
+And Wilde's _Salome_, none has ever reached me.
+Back to their native land they must have gone,
+Or else you have them here in Germany.
+Only to me come down real British plays,
+The mid-Victorian twaddle, the false gems
+Which on the stretched forefinger of oblivion
+Glitter a moment, and then perish paste.
+
+FAUST (_drily_).  Well, if I learn of any critic's death
+Leaving a vacant place upon the Press,
+You'll hear from me; meanwhile, Mephisto mine,
+As we must needs play out our little play,
+Whom would you cast for Margaret, _alias_ Gretchen?
+Kindly sketch out an inexpensive _Faust_,
+Modelled on the Vedrenne and Barker style
+Once much in favour at the English Court.
+
+MEPHISTO.  The stage is now an auditorium,
+And all the audiences are amateurs,
+First-nighters at the bottom of their heart.
+What do they care for drama in the least?
+All that they need are complimentary stalls,
+To know the leading actor, to be round
+At dress rehearsals, or behind the scenes,
+To hear the row the actor-manager
+Had with the author or the leading lady,
+Then to recount the story at the Garrick,
+Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies,
+They babble over chestnuts and their punch
+And stale round-table jests of years ago.
+
+FAUST.  So Mephistopheles is growing old!
+Kindly omit your stage philosophy,
+And tell me all your plans about the play.
+
+MEPHISTO.  First we must make you young and fresh as paint,
+Philters and elixirs are out of date.
+A week in London--that is what you want;
+London Society is our objective.
+There you will find a not unlikely Gretchen,
+For actresses are all the rage just now;
+Countesses quarrel over Edna May,
+And Mrs. Patrick Campbell is received
+In the best houses.  I shall introduce you
+As a philosopher from Tubingen.
+A sort of Nordau, no?  Then Doctor Reich--
+Advocates polyandry, children suffrage--
+One man, one pianola; the usual thing
+That will secure success: here is a card
+For Thursday next--Lady Walpurge 'At Home'
+From nine till twelve--a really charming hostess.
+Her ladyship is intellectual,
+The husband rich, dishonest, a collector
+Of _objets d'art_, especially old masters.
+He got his title for his promises
+To England in the war; financed the raid,
+A patriot millionaire within whose veins
+Imperial pints of German-Jewish blood
+Must make the English think imperially,
+And rather bear with all the ills they have
+Than fly to others that they know not of.
+
+FAUST.  Excellent plan!  Except at Covent Garden,
+I've hardly been in England since the 'eighties.
+
+
+
+Act II.
+
+
+_Scene: Brocken House, Park Lane_.
+
+_The top of the Grand Staircase_.  LORD _and_ LADY WALPURGE _receiving
+their guests.  The greatest taste is shown in the decorations, which are
+lent for the occasion of the play free of charge, owing to the deserved
+popularity of Mr. George Alexander.  Furniture supplied by Waring,
+selected by Mr. Percy Macquoid; Old Masters by Agnew & Son, P. & D.
+Colnaghi, Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell; Wigs by Clarkson.  A large,
+full-length Reynolds, seen above the well of staircase_; R. _a
+Gainsborough_, L. _a Hoppner.  The party is not very smart, rather
+intellectual and plutocratic; well-known musicians and artists in group_
+R., _and second-rate literary people_ L.  _An Irish peer and a member of
+the White Rose League are the only 'Society' present.  There are no
+actors or actresses_.  FAUST, _who has aged considerably since the
+Prologue, is an obvious failure, and is seen talking to a lady
+journalist_.  MEPHISTOPHELES, _disguised as a Protectionist Member of
+Parliament, is in earnest conversation with_ LORD WALPURGE.  FOOTMAN
+_announcing the guests: The Bishop of Hereford, Mr. Maldonado, Mr. Andrew
+Undershaft, Mr. Harold Hodge, Mrs. Gorringe, Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey
+Tanqueray, &c_.
+
+LADY WALPURGE (_archly_).  Ah, Mr. Tanqueray, you never forwarded me my
+photographs; it is nearly three weeks ago since I sent you a cheque for
+them.
+
+TANQUERAY.  Labby has been poisoning your mind against me.  You shall
+have a proof to-morrow!
+
+FOOTMAN.  Mr. Gillow Waring.
+
+LADY WALPURGE.  I was so afraid you were not coming.  My husband thought
+you would give us the slip.
+
+WARING.  How charming your decorations are!  You must give me some ideas
+for my new yacht, you have such perfect taste.
+
+MALDONADO.  Walpurge! what will you take for that Reynolds?  Or will you
+swap it for my Velasquez?
+
+WALPURGE.  My dear Maldo, I always do my deals through--
+
+FOOTMAN.  Mr. Walter Dowdeswell.
+
+WALPURGE.  Through Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell; and you, my dear Maldo, if
+you want to get rid of your Velasquez, ought to join the National Art
+Collections Fund, or go and see--
+
+FOOTMAN.  Mr. Lockett Agnew.  'Er 'Ighness the Princess Swami.
+
+_Enter the_ PRINCESS SALOME.
+
+LADY JOURNALIST.  Fancy having that woman here.  She is not recognised in
+any decent society, she is nothing but an adventuress; talks such bad
+French, too.  Have you ever seen her, Doctor Faustus?
+
+FAUST.  Yes, I have met her very often in Germany.  Though the Emperor
+would not receive her at first, she is much admired in Europe.
+
+LADY JOURNALIST (_hedging_).  I wonder where she gets her frocks?  They
+must be worth a good deal.
+
+FAUST.  From Ricketts and Shannon, if you want to know.
+
+LADY JOURNALIST.  Dear Doctor, you know everything!  Let me see: Ricketts
+and Shannon is that new place in Regent Street, rather like Lewis and
+Allenby's, I suppose?
+
+FAUST.  Yes, only different.
+
+IRISH PEER (_to_ FAUST).  Do you think Lady Walpurge will ever get into
+Society?
+
+FAUST.  Not if she gives her guests such wretched coffee.
+
+LADY JOURNALIST.  It's nothing to her tea.  I've never had such bad tea.
+Besides, she cannot get actors or actresses to come to her house.
+
+LADY WALPURGE (_overhearing_).  I expect _Sir Herbert and Lady Beerbohm
+Tree_ here to-night, and perhaps VIOLA.  (_Sensation_.)
+
+[_Enter, hurriedly_, MR. C. T. H. HELMSLEY.]  Mr. Alexander, a moment
+with you!  A most important telegram has just arrived.
+
+FAUST (_reading_).  'Handed in at Greba Castle, 10.15.  Reply paid.  Do
+not close with Stephen Phillips until you have seen my play of
+_Gretchen_, same subject, five acts and twelve tableaux.--HALL CAINE.'
+Where is Mr. Stephen Phillips?  [STEPHEN PHILLIPS _advances_.]  My dear
+Phillips, I think we will put up _Harold Hodge_ instead.  'The Last of
+the Anglo-Saxon Editors,' by the last Anglo-Saxon poet.
+
+CURTAIN.
+
+(1906.)
+
+_To_ W. BARCLAY SQUIRE, ESQ.
+
+
+
+
+SHAVIANS FROM SUPERMAN.
+
+
+DONNA ANA _has vanished to sup her man at the Savoy; the_ DEVIL _and the_
+STATUE _are descending through trap, when a voice is heard crying, 'Stop,
+stop'; the mechanism is arrested and there appears in the empyrean_ MR.
+CHARLES HAZELWOOD SHANNON, _the artist, with halo_.
+
+THE DEVIL (_while Shannon regains his breath_).  Really, Mr. Shannon,
+this is a great pleasure and _quite_ unexpected.  I am truly honoured.  No
+quarrel I hope with the International?  Pennell quite well?  How is the
+Whistler memorial getting on?
+
+SHANNON.  So-so.  To be quite frank I had no time to prepare for Heaven,
+and earth has become intolerable for me.  (_Seeing the Statue_.)  Is that
+a Rodin you have there?
+
+THE DEVIL.  Oh! I forgot, let me introduce you.  Commander!  Mr. C. H.
+Shannon, a most distinguished painter, the English Velasquez, the Irish
+Titian, the Scotch Giorgione, all in one.  Mr. Shannon, his Excellency
+the Commander.
+
+SHANNON.  Delighted, I am sure.  The real reason for my coming here is
+that I could stand Ricketts no longer.  Ricketts the artist I adore.
+Ricketts the causeur is delightful.  Ricketts the enemy, entrancing.
+Ricketts the friend, one of the best.  But Ricketts, when designing
+dresses for the Court, Trench, and other productions, is not very
+amiable.
+
+THE STATUE (_sighing_).  Ah! yes, I know Ricketts.
+
+THE DEVIL (_sighing_).  We all know Ricketts.  Never mind, he shall not
+come here.  I shall give special orders to Charon.  Come on to the trap
+and we can start for the palace.
+
+SHANNON.  Ah! yes.  I heard you were moving to the Savoy.  Think it will
+be a success?
+
+[_They descend and no reply is heard.  Whisk!  Mr. Frank Richardson on
+this occasion does not appear; void and emptiness; the fireproof curtain
+may be lowered here in accordance with the County Council regulations;
+moving portraits of deceased, and living dramatic critics can be thrown
+without risk of ignition on the curtain by magic lantern_.  _The point of
+this travesty will be entirely lost to those who have not read 'Man and
+Superman.'  It is the first masterpiece in the English literature of the
+twentieth century.  It is also necessary to have read the dramatic
+criticisms in the daily press, and to have some acquaintance with the
+Court management, the Stage Society, and certain unlicensed plays; and to
+know that Mr. Ricketts designs scenery.  This being thoroughly explained,
+the Curtain may rise; discovering a large Gothic Hall, decorated in the
+1880 taste.  Allegories by Watts on the wall_--'_Time cutting the corns
+of Eternity,' 'Love whistling down the ear of Life,' 'Youth catching
+Crabs,' &c.  Windows by Burne-Jones and Morris.  A Peacock Blue Hungarian
+Band playing music on Dolmetsch instruments by Purcell, Byrde, Bull,
+Bear, Palestrina, and Wagner, &c.  Various well-known people crowd the
+Stage.  Among the_ LIVING _may be mentioned Mr. George Street; Mr. Max
+Beerbohm and his brother; Mr. Albert Rothenstein and his brother, &c.  The
+company is intellectual and artistic; not in any way smart.  The Savile
+and Athenaeum Clubs are well represented, but not the Garrick, the
+Gardenia, nor any of the establishments in the vicinity of Leicester
+Square.  The Princess Salome is greeting some of the arrivals_--_The
+Warden of Keble, The President of Magdalen Coll., Oxford, and others--who
+stare at her in a bewildered fashion_.
+
+THE DEVIL.  Silence, please, ladies and gentlemen, for his Excellency the
+Commander.  (_A yellowish pallor moves over the audience; effect by
+Gordon Craig_.)
+
+THE STATUE.  It was my intention this evening to make a few observations
+on flogging in the Navy, Vaccination, the Censor, Vivisection, the Fabian
+Society, the Royal Academy, Compound Chinese Labour, Style, Simple
+Prohibition, Vulgar Fractions, and other kindred subjects.  But as I
+opened the paper this morning, my eye caught these headlines: 'Future of
+the House of Lords,' 'Mr. Edmund Gosse at home,' 'The Nerves of Lord
+Northcliffe,' 'Interview with Mr. Winston Churchill,' 'Reported
+Indisposition of Miss Edna May.'  A problem was thus presented to me.
+Will I, shall I, ought I to speak to my friends _here_--ahem!--and
+elsewhere, on the subject about which they came to hear me speak.
+(_Applause_.)  No.  I said; the bounders must be disappointed; otherwise
+they will know what to expect.  You must always surprise your audience.
+When it has been advertised (sufficiently) that I am going to speak about
+the truth, for example, the audience comes here expecting me to speak
+about fiction.  The only way to surprise them is to speak the truth and
+that I always do.  Nothing surprises English people more than truth; they
+don't like it; they don't pay any attention to those (such as my friend
+Mr. H. G. Wells and myself) who _trade_ in truth; but they listen and go
+away saying, 'How very whimsical and paradoxical it all is,' and 'What a
+clever adventurer the fellow is, to be sure.'  'That was a good joke
+about duty and beauty being the same thing'--that was a joke I did _not_
+make.  It is not my kind of joke--but when people begin ascribing to you
+the jokes of other people, you become a living--I was going to say
+statue--but I mean a living classic.
+
+THE DEVIL.  I thought you disliked anything classic?
+
+THE STATUE.  Ahem! only _dead_ classics--especially when they are
+employed to protect romanticism.  Dead classics are the protective
+tariffs put on all realism and truth by bloated idealism.  In a country
+of plutocrats, idealism keeps out truth: idealism is more expensive, and
+therefore more in demand.  In America, there are more plutocrats, and
+therefore more idealists . . . as Mr. Pember Reeves has pointed out in
+New Zealand . . .
+
+THE DEVIL.  But I say, is this drama?
+
+THE STATUE.  Certainly not.  It is a discussion taking place at a
+theatre.  It is no more drama than a music-hall entertainment, or a comic
+opera, or a cinematograph, or a hospital operation, all of which things
+take place in theatres.  But surely it is more entertaining to come to a
+discussion charmingly mounted by Ricketts--discussion too, in which every
+one knows what he is going to say--than to flaccid plays in which the
+audience always knows what the actors _are_ going to say better often
+than the actors.  The sort of balderdash which Mr. --- serves up to us
+for plays.
+
+THE DEVIL (_peevish and old-fashioned_).  I wish you would define drama.
+
+HANKIN (_advancing_).  Won't you have tea, Commander?  It's not bad tea.
+
+THE STATUE.  I was afraid you were going to talk idealism.
+
+HANKIN (_aside_).  Excuse my interrupting, but I want you to be
+particularly nice to the Princess Salome.  You know she was jilted by the
+Censor.  She has brought her music.
+
+THE DEVIL.  You might introduce her to Mrs. Warren.  But I am afraid the
+Princess has taken rather too much upon herself this evening.
+
+THE STATUE.  Yes, she has taken too much; I am sure she has taken too
+much.
+
+A JOURNALIST.  Is that the Princess Salome who has Mexican opals in her
+teeth, and red eyebrows and green hair, and curious rock-crystal breasts?
+
+THE DEVIL.  Yes, that is the Princess Salome.
+
+SHANNON.  I know the Princess quite well.  Ricketts makes her frocks.
+Shall I ask her to dance?
+
+THE DEVIL.  Yes, anything to distract her attention from the guests.
+These artistic English people are so easily shocked.  They don't
+understand Strauss, nor indeed anything until it is quite out of date.  I
+want to make Hell at least as attractive as it is painted; a _place_ as
+well as a _condition_ within the meaning of the Act.  Full of wit,
+beauty, pleasure, freedom--
+
+THE STATUE.  Ugh--ugh.
+
+SHANNON.  Will you dance for us, Princess?
+
+SALOME.  Anything for you, dear Mr. Shannon, only my ankles are a little
+sore to-night.  How is dear Ricketts?  I want new dresses so badly.
+
+SHANNON.  I suppose by this time he is in Heaven.  But won't you dance
+just to make things go?  And then the Commander will lecture on super-
+maniacs later on!
+
+SALOME.  Senor Diavolo, what will you give me if I dance to-night?
+
+THE DEVIL.  Anything you like, Salome.  I swear by the dramatic critics.
+
+HANKIN (_correcting_).  You mean the Styx.
+
+THE DEVIL.  Same thing.  Dance without any further nonsense, Salome.
+Forget that you are in England.  This is an unlicensed house.
+
+[SALOME _dances the dance of the Seven Censors_.
+
+THE DEVIL (_applauding_).  She is charming.  She is quite charming.
+Salome, what shall I do for you?  You who are like a purple patch in some
+one else's prose.  You who are like a black patch on some one else's
+face.  You are like an Imperialist in a Radical Cabinet.  You are like a
+Tariff Reformer in a Liberal-Unionist Administration.  You are like the
+Rokeby Velasquez in St. Paul's Cathedral.  What can I do for you who are
+fairer than--
+
+SALOME.  This sort of thing has been tried on me before.  Let us come to
+business.  I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab.
+
+THE DEVIL.  No, not that.  You must not ask that.  I will give you
+Walkley's head.  He has one of the best heads.  He is not ignorant.  He
+really knows what he is talking about.
+
+SALOME.  I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab.
+
+THE DEVIL.  Salome, listen to me.  Be reasonable.  Do not interrupt me.  I
+will give you William Archer's head.  He is charming--a cultivated,
+liberal-minded critic.  He is too liberal.  He admires Stephen Phillips.
+I will give you his dear head if you release me from my oath.
+
+SALOME.  I want Mr. Redford's head on the top of a four-wheel cab.
+Remember your oath!
+
+THE DEVIL.  I remember I swore _at_--I mean _by_--the dramatic critics.
+Well, I am offering them to you.  Exquisite and darling Salome, I will
+give you the head of Max Beerbohm.  It is unusually large, but it is full
+of good things.  What a charming ornament for your mantelpiece!  You will
+be in the movement.  How every one will envy you!  People will call upon
+you who never used to call.  Others will send you invitations.  You will
+at last get into English society.
+
+SALOME.  I want Mr. Redford's head on the top of a four-wheel cab.
+
+THE DEVIL.  Salome, come hither.  Have you ever looked at the _Daily
+Mirror_?  Only in the _Daily Mirror_ should one look.  For it tells the
+truth sometimes.  Well, I will give you the head of Hamilton Fyfe.  He is
+my best friend.  No critic is so fond of the drama as Hamilton Fyfe.
+(_Huskily_.)  Salome, I will give you W. L. Courtney's head.  I will give
+you all their heads.
+
+SALOME.  I have the scalps of most critics.  I want Mr. Redford's head on
+a four-wheel cab.
+
+THE DEVIL.  Salome!  You do not know what you ask.  Mr. Redford is a kind
+of religion.  He represents the Lord Chamberlain.  You know the dear Lord
+Chamberlain.  You would not harm one of his servants, especially when
+they are not insured.  It would be cruel.  It would be irreligious.  It
+would be in bad taste.  It would not be respectable.  Listen to me; I
+will give you all Herod's Stores . . . Salome.  Shannon was right.  You
+HAVE taken too much, or you would not ask this thing.  See, I will give
+you Mr. Redford's body, but not his head.  Not that, not that, my child.
+
+SALOME.  I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab.
+
+THE DEVIL.  Salome, I must tell you a secret.  It is terrible for me to
+have to tell the truth.  The Commander said that I would have to tell the
+truth.  MR. REDFORD HAS NO HEAD!
+
+[_The audience long before this have begun to put on their cloaks, and
+the dramatic critics have gone away to describe the cold reception with
+which the play has been greeted.  All the people on the stage cover their
+heads except the_ STATUE, _who has become during the action of the piece
+more and more like Mr. Bernard Shaw.  Curtain descends slowly_.
+
+(1907.)
+
+_To_ ARTHUR CLIFTON, ESQ.
+
+
+
+
+SOME DOCTORED DILEMMA.
+
+
+A NEW EPILOGUE FOR THE LAST PERFORMANCE OF MR. SHAW'S PLAY.
+
+Though Mr. Bernard Shaw has set the fashion in prologues for modern
+plays, his admirers were not altogether satisfied with the epilogue to
+_The Doctor's Dilemma_.  It is far too short; and leaves us in the dark
+as to whom 'Jennifer Dubedat' married.  Epilogues, as students of English
+drama remember, were often composed by other authors.  The following
+experiment ought to have come from the hand of Mr. St. John Hankin, that
+master of Dramatic Sequels, but his work on the 'Cassilis Engagement'
+deprived Mr. Shaw of the only possible collaborator.
+
+[SCENE: _A Bury Street Picture Gallery_--MESSRS. GERSAINT & CO.  _The
+clock strikes ten, and_ SIR COLENSO RIDGEON _is seen going out rather
+crestfallen by centre door_.  MR. GERSAINT, _the manager, is nailing up a
+notice_ ('_All works of art, for art's sake or sale; prices on
+application.  Catalogue_ 1_s_.).  MR. JACK STEPNEY, _the secretary, is
+receiving the private view cards from the visitors who are trooping in;
+some sneak catalogues as they enter, and on being asked for payment
+protest and produce visiting cards and press vouchers instead of
+shillings.  Artists, Royal Academicians_, MR. EDMUND GOSSE, _and other
+members of the House of Lords discovered; men of letters, art critics,
+connoisseurs, journalists, collectors, dealers, private viewers,
+impostors, dramatic critics, poets, pickpockets, politicians crowd the
+stage.  From time to time_ JACK STEPNEY _places a red star on the picture
+frames in the course of the action_.]
+
+J. STEPNEY.  I thought all the pictures had been bought by Dr.
+Schutzmacher.
+
+GERSAINT.  So they were, my boy, but he has wired saying they are all to
+be put up for sale at double the price; capital business, you see we
+shall get two commissions.
+
+J. STEPNEY.  Yes, sir.  It is fortunate Mrs. Dubedat did not have the
+prices marked in the Catalogue.
+
+GERSAINT.  You mean Mrs. Schutzmacher.  (_Drives in last nail_).
+
+J. STEPNEY.  Yes, sir.
+
+_Enter a striking-looking-man, not unlike a Holbein drawing, at a
+distance: but on nearer inspection, as he comes within range of the
+footlights, he is more like an Isaac Oliver or Nicholas Lucidel.  He
+examines the notice and sniffs_.
+
+S.L.M.N.U.H.D.  Which are the works of Art?
+
+EDMUND GOSSE.  Can you tell me who that is?  He is one of the few people
+I don't know by sight.  A celebrity of course; and do point out any
+obscurities.  Every one is so distinguished.  It is rather confusing.
+
+GERSAINT.  That is the Holland Park Wonder, so-called because he lives at
+the top of a tower in Holland Park--the greatest Art Connoisseur in
+England.  Mr. Charles Ricketts, the greatest--
+
+EDMUND GOSSE.  Thank you; thank you.
+
+MR. FREDERICK WEDMORE (_interrupting_).  Can you tell me whether the
+frames are included in the prices of the pictures?
+
+J. STEPNEY.  No, sir.  They are stock frames, the property of the
+Gallery, and are only lent for the occasion.
+
+MR. FREDERICK WEDMORE.  Then I fear I cannot buy; a naked picture without
+a frame is useless to me.
+
+CHARLES RICKETTS.  Do you think I could buy a frame without a picture?
+
+JOSEPH PENNELL.  I say Ricketts, it seems a beastly shame we didn't get
+this show for the International.  It would have been good 'ad.'  What's
+the use of Backers?  I see they're selling well.
+
+CHARLES RICKETTS.  But, my dear Pennell, you're doing the _Life_, aren't
+you?--the real Dubedat?
+
+JOSEPH PENNELL.  Oh, yes, but the family have injuncted Heinemann from
+publishing the letters: Mr. Justice Kekewich will probably change his
+opinion when the weather gets warmer.  It is only an interim injunction.
+
+CHARLES RICKETTS.  A sort of Clapham Injunction.
+
+SIR WILLIAM RICHMOND, K.C.B., R.A.  If I had known what a stupendous
+genius Dubedat was, I should have given him part of the 'New Bailey' to
+decorate.
+
+D. S. MACCOLL.  Let us be thankful he's as dead as Bill Bailey.
+
+SIR CHARLES HOLROYD (_smoothing things over_).  I think we ought to have
+an example for the Tate.  (MACCOLL _winces_.)  The Chantrey
+Bequest--(MACCOLL _winces again_)--might do something; and I must write
+to Lord Balcarres.  The National Arts Collections Fund may have something
+over from the subscriptions to the Rokeby Velasquez; but I want to see
+what Colvin is going to choose for the British Museum.
+
+SIDNEY COLVIN.  I think we might have this drawing; it stands on its
+legs.  A most interesting fellow Dubedat.  He reminds me of Con--
+
+GEORGE MOORE.  Not Stevenson, though _he_ had no talent whatever.  My
+dear Mr. Colvin, have you ever read 'Vailima Letters'?  I have read parts
+of them.
+
+SIDNEY COLVIN (_coldly_).  Ah, really!  Did you suffer very much?
+
+SIR HUGH P. LANE.  Do you think, Mr. Gersaint, the artist's widow would
+give me one of the pictures for the Dublin Gallery?  We have no money at
+all.  _I have no money_, but all the artists are giving pictures:
+Sargent, Shannon, Lavery, Frank Dicksee; and Rodin is giving a plaster
+cast.
+
+GERSAINT.  How charming and insinuating you are, Sir Hugh.  We can make
+special reductions for the Dublin Gallery, but you can hardly expect
+charitable bequests from picture dealers.
+
+SIR HUGH P. LANE.  Oh! but Dowdeswell, Agnew, Sulley, Wertheimer, P. and
+D. Colnaghi, and Humphry Ward are all giving me pictures.  Now, look
+here, I'll buy these five drawings, and you can give me these two.  I'll
+give you a Gainsborough drawing in exchange for them.  It has a very good
+history.  First it belonged to Ricketts, then to Rothenstein, then Wilson
+Steer, and then to the Carfax Gallery, and . . . then it came into my
+possession, and all that in three months.  (_Bargain concluded_.)
+
+MR. PFFUNGST (_aside_).  But is there any evidence that it belonged to
+Gainsborough?
+
+SIR HUGH P. LANE (_turning to a titled lady_).  Oh, do come to tea next
+Saturday.  I want to show you my new Titian which I _have just bought
+for_ 2100_l_.
+
+TITLED LADY.  Sir Hugh, _can_ you tell me who Mrs. Dubedat is now?
+
+SIR HUGH P. LANE.  Oh, yes.  She married Dr. Schutzmacher, the specialist
+on bigamy only this morning.
+
+TITLED LADY.  How interesting.  I should like to meet her.  Dresses
+divinely, I'm told.
+
+SIR HUGH P. LANE.  She's coming to tea next Saturday; such good tea, too!
+
+TITLED LADY.  That will be delightful.
+
+ST. JOHN HANKIN (_loftily_).  Can you tell me whether this charmian
+artist is pronounced Dubedat or Dubedat?
+
+W. P. KER (_in deep Scotch_).  Non Dubitat.  (_He does not speak again_.)
+
+P. G. KONODY.  Oh, Mr. Phillips, do tell me _exactly_ what _you_ think of
+this artist!
+
+CLAUDE PHILLIPS.  I think he wanted a good smacking.
+
+P. G. KONODY.  Ah, yes, his art _has_ a smack about it.  (_Aside_.)  Good
+heading for the _Daily Mail_, 'Art with a smack.'  (_Writes in
+catalogue_.)
+
+WILL ROTHENSTEIN.  When I see pictures of this kind, my dear Gersaint,
+they seem to me to explain your existence.  An artist without a
+conscience . . . (_Sees_ ROGER FRY.)  My dear Fry, what are _you_ doing
+here?  Buying for New York? (_Laughs meaningly_.)
+
+ROGER FRY.  Oh, no; but I hear Gersaint has a very fine picture by the
+Maitresse of the Moulin Rouge.  Weale says it is School of Gheel
+(_pronounced Kail_).
+
+WILL ROTHENSTEIN.  Kail Yard I should think; do look at these things.
+
+ROGER FRY (_vaguely_).  Who are they by?  Oh, yes, Dubedat, of course.
+
+[FRY _and_ ROTHENSTEIN _regard picture with disdain_; _it withers under
+their glance_.  _Stage illusion by_ MASKELYNE _and_ THEODORE COOK.
+STEPNEY _places a red star on it_.
+
+GERSAINT.  Well, Mr. Bowyer Nichols, I hope we shall have a good long
+notice in the _Westminster Gazette_.  Now if there is any drawing . . .
+
+BOWYER NICHOLS (_very stiffly_).  No, there isn't.  I don't think the
+Exhibition sufficiently important; everything seems to me cribbed: most
+of the pictures look like reproductions of John, Orpen or Neville Lytton.
+
+GERSAINT.  Ah, no doubt, influenced by Neville Lytton.  That portrait of
+Mr. Cutler Walpole has a Neville Lytton feeling.  Neville Lytton in his
+earlier manner.
+
+_Enter_ SIR PATRICK CULLEN, SIR RALPH BLOOMFIELD BONNINGTON _and_ SIR
+COLENSO RIDGEON.
+
+SIR C. RIDGEON.  Ah, Sir Patrick, I have just heard that the pictures are
+for sale; now I am going to plunge a little.  I think they will rise in
+value; and by the way I want to ask your opinion as a scientific man.  If
+I treat four artists with _virus obscaenum_ for three weeks, what will be
+the condition of the remaining artists in the fourth week?
+
+SIR P. CULLEN.  Colenso, Colenso, you ought to have been a senior
+wrangler and then abolished.
+
+SIR C. RIDGEON.  What a cynic you are.  All the same I've had great
+successes, though Dubedat _was_ one of our failures.  A rather anaemic
+member of the New English Art Club come to me for treatment, and in less
+than a year he was an Associate of the Royal Academy; what do you say to
+that?
+
+SIR P. CULLEN.  Out of Phagocyte, out of mind.
+
+SIR R. B. B.  My dear Sir Patrick, how prejudiced you are.  Take
+MacColl's case: a typical instance of _morbus ferox ars nova anglicana_:
+under dear Colenso he became an official at the Tate.
+
+SIR C. RIDGEON.  Then there's Sir Charles Holroyd, you remember his high
+tempera?
+
+SIR P. CULLEN.  There has been a relapse I hear from the catalogue.
+
+SIR R. B. B.  How grossly unfair; that is a false bulletin issued by the
+former nurse: 'the evil that men do lives after them.'
+
+SIR P. CULLEN.  My dear B. B., this is not Dubedat's funeral.  Do you
+think Bernard Shaw will like the new epilogue?
+
+BERNARD SHAW.  He will; I'm shaw.
+
+L. C. C. INSPECTOR.  Excuse me, is Mr. Vedrenne here?  Ah, yes!  There is
+Mr. Vedrenne.  Will you kindly answer some of my questions?  Is that door
+on the left a real door?  In case of fire I cannot allow property doors;
+the actors might be seized with stage fright, and they must have, as Sir
+B. B. would say, 'their exits and their entrances.'
+
+VEDRENNE.  Everything at the Court Theatre, my dear sir, is real.  Ask
+Mr. Franks, he will tell you the door is not even a jar.  The art, the
+acting, the plays, even the audience is real, except a few dramatic
+critics I cannot exclude.  I admit the audience looks improbable at
+matinees; _out of Court_ is a truth in art of which we are only dimly
+beginning to understand the significance.  [_Noise outside_.
+
+_Enter_ JENNIFER, _dressed in deep mourning_.
+
+JENNIFER (_with a bright smile_).  Mr. Vedrenne, I have just had a
+telegram saying that my husband, Leo, was killed in his motor after
+leaving me at the Synagogue.  His last words were: 'Jennifer, promise me
+that you will wear mourning if I die, merely to mark the difference
+between Dubedat and myself.'  This afternoon I am going to marry
+Blenkinsop.  How are the sales going?
+
+VEDRENNE.  Well, I think we might have the catechism or the churching of
+heroines.  What is your name?
+
+JENNIFER.  Jennifer.
+
+VEDRENNE.  Where did you get that name?
+
+JENNIFER.  From Bernard Shaw in my baptism.
+
+MR. REDFORD (_Licenser of Plays_).  Mr. Shaw, I really must point out
+that this passage comes from the Anglican Prayer-book.  Are you aware of
+that?  I have a suggestion of my own for ending the play.
+
+BERNARD SHAW.  Oh, shut up!  Let us have my ten commandments.
+
+GRANVILLE BARKER.  My dear Shaw, you sent them to Wells for revision and
+he lost them in the Tube.  I can remember the first one, 'Maude spake
+these words and said: "Thou shalt have none other Shaws but me."'
+
+BERNARD SHAW.  How careless of Wells.  I remember the second: 'Do not
+indulge in craven imitation.'
+
+W. L. COURTNEY.  The third commandment runs: 'Thou shalt not covet George
+Alexander.'
+
+GRANVILLE BARKER.  One of them runs: 'Do not commit yourself to Beerbohm
+Tree, though his is His Majesty's . . . '  But we shall never get them
+right.  We must offer a reward for their recovery.  I vote that Walkley
+now says the _credo_.  That, I think, expresses every one's sentiment.
+
+A. B. WALKLEY (_reluctantly_).  I believe in Bernard Shaw, in Granville
+Barker, and (_heartily_) in _The Times_.
+
+WILLIAM ARCHER.  Plaudite, missa est.
+
+(1907.)
+
+CURTAIN.
+
+
+
+
+THE JADED INTELLECTUALS.  A DIALOGUE.
+
+
+_Scene: The Smoking-room of the Elivas Club_.
+
+_Characters_: LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS, _aetat. 54, a distinguished literary
+critic, and_ LUKE CULLUS, _a rich connoisseur of art and life.  They are
+not smoking nor drinking spirits.  One is sipping barley water, the other
+Vichy_.
+
+LUKE CULLUS.  You are a dreadful pessimist!
+
+LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS.  Alas! there is no such thing in these days.  We are
+merely disappointed optimists.  When Walter Pater died I did not realise
+that English literature expired.  Yet the event excited hardly any
+interest in the Press.  Our leading weekly, the _Spectator_, merely
+mentioned that Brasenose College, Oxford, had lost an excellent Dean.
+
+L. C.  I can hardly understand you.  Painting, I admit, is entirely a
+lost art, so far as England is concerned.  The death of Burne-Jones
+brought our tradition to an end.  I see no future for any of the arts
+except needlework, of which, I am told, there is a hopeful revival.  But
+in your fields of literature, what a number of great names!  How I envy
+you!
+
+L. T.  Who is there?
+
+L. C.  Well, to take the novelists first: you have the great Thomas
+Hardy, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Maurice Hewlett . . . I
+can't remember the names of any others just at present.  Then take the
+poets: Austin Dobson, my own special favourite; and among the younger
+men, A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman, Yeats, Arthur Symons, Laurence
+Binyon, William Watson--
+
+L. T. (_interrupting_).  Who always keeps one foot in Wordsworth's grave.
+But all the men you mention, my dear Cullus, belong to the last century.
+They have done their best work.  Hardy has become mummy, and Henry James
+is sold in Balham.  Except Hardy, they have become unintelligible.  The
+theory that 'to be intelligible is to be found out' seems to have
+frightened them.  The books they issue are a series of 'not-at-home'
+cards--sort of P.P.C.'s on posterity.  And the younger poets, too, belong
+to the last century, or they stand in the same relation to their
+immediate predecessors, to borrow one of your metaphors, as _l'art
+nouveau_ does to Chippendale.  Oh, for the days of Byron, Keats, and
+Shelley!
+
+L. C.  All of whom died before they were matured.  You seem to resent
+development.  In literature I am a mere _dilettante_.  A fastidious
+reader, but not an expert.  I know what I don't like; but I never know
+what I shall like.  At least twice a year I come across a book which
+gives me much pleasure.  As it comes from the lending library it is never
+quite new.  That is an added charm.  If it happens to have made a
+sensation, the sensation is all over by the time it reaches me.  The book
+has matured.  A quite new book is always a little crude.  It suggests an
+evening paper.  There at least you will agree.  But to come across a work
+which Henry James published, say, last year, is, I assure you, like
+finding a Hubert Van Eyck in the Brompton Road.
+
+L. T.  I wish I could share your enthusiasm, or that I could change
+places with you.  Every year the personality of a new artist is revealed
+to you.  I know you only pretend not to admire the modern school of
+painting.  You find it a convenient pose.  Your flora and your fauna are
+always receiving additions; while my garden is withered; my zoo is out of
+repair.  The bars are broken; the tanks have run dry.  There is hardly a
+trace of life except in the snake-house, and, as I mentioned, the last
+giraffe is dead.
+
+L. C.  Our friend, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, is fortunately able to give us
+a different account of the institution in Regent's Park.  You are quite
+wrong about modern painting.  None of the younger men can paint at all.  A
+few of them can draw, I admit.  It is all they can do.  The death of
+Charles Furse blasted all my hopes of English art.  Whistler is dead;
+Sargent is an American.
+
+L. T.  Well, so is Henry James, if it comes to that.  And so _was_
+Whistler.  But I have seen the works of several young artists who I
+understand are carrying out the great traditions of painting.  Ricketts,
+Shannon, Wilson Steer, Rothenstein, Orpen, Nicholson, Augustus John are
+surely worthy successors to Turner, Alfred Stevens, and the
+Pre-Raphaelites.
+
+L. C.  They are merely connoisseurs gifted with expressing their
+appreciation of the past in paint.  They appeal to you as a literary man.
+You like to detect in every stroke of their brushes an echo of the past.
+Their pictures have been _heard_, not _seen_.  All the younger artists
+are committing burglary on the old masters.
+
+L. T.  It is you who are a disappointed optimist.
+
+L. C.  Not about literature or the drama.  I seem to hear, with Ibsen's
+'Master Builder,' the younger generation knocking at the door.
+
+L. T.  It comes in without knocking in my experience; and generally has
+_fig_-leaves in its hair--a decided advance on the coiffure of Hedda
+Gabler's lover.
+
+L. C.  But look at Bernard Shaw.
+
+L. T.  Why should I look at Bernard Shaw?  I read his plays and am more
+than ever convinced that he has gone on the wrong lines.  His was the
+opportunity.  He made _il gran refuto_.  Some one said that George
+Saintsbury never got over the first night of _Hernani_.  Shaw never
+recovered the _premiere_ of _Ghosts_.  He roofed our Thespian temple with
+Irish slate.  His disciples found English drama solid brick and leave it
+plaster of Paris.  Yet Shaw might have been another Congreve.
+
+L. C.  _Troja fuit_.  We do not want another.  I am sure you never went
+to the Court at all.
+
+L. T.  Oh, yes, I attended the last _levee_.  But the drama is too large
+a subject, or, in England, too small a subject to discuss.  We live, as
+Professor Mahaffy has reminded us, in an Alexandrian age.  We are wounded
+with archaeology and exquisite scholarship, and must drag our slow length
+along . . . We were talking about literature.  Where are the essayists,
+the Lambs, and the Hazlitts?  I know you are going to say Andrew Lang; I
+say it every day; it is like an Amen in the Prayer-book; it occurs quite
+as frequently in periodical literature.  He _was_ my favourite essayist,
+during the _last_ fifteen years of the _last_ century.  What is he now?
+An historian, a folk-lorist, an archaeologist, a controversialist.  I
+believe he is an expert on portraits of Mary Stuart.  You were going on
+to say G. K. Chesterton--
+
+L. C.  No.  I was going to say Max Beerbohm.  Some of his essays I put
+beside Lamb's, and above Hazlitt's.  He has style; but then I am
+prejudiced because he is the only modern artist I really admire.  He is a
+superb draughtsman and our only caricaturist.  Then there is George
+Moore.  I don't care for his novels, but his essays are delightful.
+George Moore really counts.  Few people know so little about art; yet how
+delightfully he writes about it.  Everything comes to him as a surprise.
+He gives you the same sort of enjoyment as you would derive from hearing
+a nun preach on the sins of smart society.
+
+L. T.  Moore is one of many literary Acteons who have mistaken Diana for
+Aphrodite.
+
+L. C.  You mean he is great dear; but he gets hold of the right end of
+the stick.
+
+L. T.  And he generally soils it.  But you know nothing about literature.
+The age requires blood and Kipling gave it Condy's Fluid (_drinks barley
+water_).  The age requires life, and Moore gave us a gallantee show from
+Montmartre (_drinks barley water_).  Even I require life.  To-morrow I am
+off to Aix.
+
+L. C.--les Bains?
+
+L. T.  No, la-Chapelle!
+
+L. C.  Oh, then we shall probably meet.  Thanks.  I can get on my own
+overcoat.  I shall probably be there myself in a few weeks.
+
+
+
+
+ABBEY THOUGHTS.
+
+
+Shall some memorial of Herbert Spencer be erected in the Abbey, or rather
+in what journalists love to call the 'National Valhalla,' the 'English
+Pantheon,' or the 'venerable edifice,' where, as Macaulay says, the dust
+of the illustrious accusers, _et cetera_----?  The question was once
+agitated in a daily paper.  It seems that the Dean, when approached on
+the subject, acted like one of his predecessors in the case of Byron.  The
+Dean is in a very difficult position, because any decision of his must be
+severely criticised from one quarter or another.  The Abbey retains, I
+understand, some of its pre-Reformation privileges, and is not under the
+jurisdiction of Bishop or Archbishop.  Yet no one who has ever visited
+the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor on October 13th, the festival of
+his translation, can accuse the Abbey authorities of bigotry or narrow-
+mindedness.  Only a few years ago I fought my way, with other Popish
+pilgrims, to the shrine of our patron Saint (as he _was_, until
+superseded by Saint George in the thirteenth century), and there I
+indulged in overt acts of superstition violating Article XXII. of 'the
+Church of England by law established.'  A verger, with some colonial
+tourists, arrived during our devotions, but his voice was lowered out of
+regard for our feelings.  Indeed, both he and the tourists adopted
+towards us an attitude of respectful curiosity (not altogether
+unpleasant), which was in striking contrast to the methods of the
+continental _Suisse_ routing out worshippers from a side chapel of a
+Catholic church in order to show Baedeker-ridden sightseers an
+altar-piece by Rotto Rotinelli.
+
+Thoughts of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley irresistibly mingled with my
+devotions.  What had the poor fellows burnt for, after all?  Here we were
+ostentatiously ignoring English history and the adjacent Houses of
+Parliament; outraging the rubrics by ritual observations for which poor
+curates in the East End are often suspended, and before now have been
+imprisoned.  I could not help thinking that the Archbishop of Westminster
+would hardly care to return these hospitalities, by permitting, on August
+24th, a memorial service for Admiral Coligny in Westminster Cathedral. . . .
+I rose from my knees a new Luther, with something like a Protestant
+feeling, and scrutinised severely the tombs in Poets' Corner.  Even there
+I found myself confronted with an almost irritating liberalism.  Here was
+Alexander Pope, who rejected all the overtures of Swift and Atterbury to
+embrace the Protestant faith.  And there was Dryden, not, perhaps, a
+great ornament to my persuasion, but still a Catholic at the last.  Dean
+Panther had not grudged poet Hind his niche in the National Valhalla (I
+knew I should be reduced to that periphrasis).  And here was the mighty
+Charles Darwin, about whose reception into the English Pantheon (I have
+fallen again) I remember there was some trouble.  Well, if precedent
+embalms a principle, I venture to raise a thin small voice, and plead for
+Herbert Spencer.  'The English people,' said a friendly French critic,
+'do not admire their great men because they were great, but because they
+reflect credit on themselves.'  So on the score of national vanity I
+claim space for Herbert Spencer.  Very few Englishmen have exercised such
+extraordinary influence on continental opinion, which Beaconsfield said
+was the verdict of posterity.  On the news of his death, the Italian
+Chamber passed a vote of condolence with the English people.  I suppose
+that does not seem a great honour to Englishmen, but to me, an enemy of
+United Italy, it seemed a great honour, not only to the dead but to the
+English people.  Can you imagine the Swiss Federal Council sending us a
+vote of condolence on the death of Mr. Hall Caine or Mr. Robert Hichens?
+
+Again, though it is ungrateful of me to mention the fact after my
+experiences of October 13th, the Abbey was not built nor endowed by
+people who anticipated the Anglican form of worship being celebrated
+within its walls, though I admit it has been _restored_ by the adherents
+of that communion.  The image of Milton, to take only one instance, would
+have been quite as objectionable to Henry III. or Abbot Islip as those of
+Darwin or Spencer.  The emoluments bequeathed by Henry VII. and others
+for requiem masses are now devoted to the education of Deans' daughters
+and Canons' sons.  Where incensed altars used to stand, hideous monuments
+of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries wound the Gothic
+air with their monstrous ornaments and inapposite epitaphs.  St. Paul's
+may fairly be held sacred to Anglicanism, and I do not think any one
+would claim sepulture within its precincts for one who was avowedly
+hostile to Christian or Anglican sentiment.  But I think the Abbey has
+now passed into the category of museums, and might well be declared a
+national monument under control of the State.  The choir, and possibly
+the nave, should, of course, be severely preserved for whatever the State
+religion might be at the time.  Catholics need not mourn the
+secularisation of the transepts and chapels, because Leo XIII. renounced
+officially all claims on the ancient shrines of the Catholic faith, and
+High Churchmen might console themselves by recalling the fact that Abbots
+were originally laymen.
+
+My whole scheme would be a return to the practice of the Primitive
+Church, when priests were only allowed on sufferance inside abbeys at
+all.  The Low Church party need not be considered, because they can have
+no sentiment about what they regard as relics of superstition and Broad
+Churchmen could hardly complain at the logical development of their own
+principle.  The Nonconformists, the backbone of the nation, could not be
+otherwise than grateful.  The decision about admitting busts, statues, or
+bodies into the national and sacred 'musee des morts' (as the
+anti-clerical French might call it under the new constitution) would rest
+with the Home Secretary.  This would be an added interest to the duties
+of a painstaking official, forming pleasant interludes between
+considering the remission of sentences on popular criminals: it would
+relieve the Dean and Chapter at all events from grave responsibility.  The
+Home Secretary would always be called the Abbot of Westminster.  How
+picturesque at the formation of a new Cabinet--'_Home Secretary and Abbot
+of Westminster_, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.'  The first duty of the
+Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of
+hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice: nothing prior to 1700
+coming under its consideration.  A small tablet would recall what has
+been taken away.  Herbert Spencer's claim to a statue would be duly
+considered, and, I hope, by a unanimous vote some of the other glaring
+gaps would be filled up.  If the Abbey is full of obscurities, very dim
+religious lights, many of the illustrious names in our literature have
+been omitted: Byron, Shelley, Keats--to mention only these.  There is no
+monument to Chatterton, one of the more powerful influences in the
+romantic movement, nor to William Blake, whose boyish inspiration was
+actually nourished amid that 'Gothic supineness,' as Mr. MacColl has
+finely said of him.  Of all our poets and painters Blake surely deserves
+a monument in the grey church which became to him what St. Mary Redcliffe
+was to Chatterton.  A window adapted from the book of Job (with the
+marvellous design of the Morning Stars) was, I am told, actually offered
+to, and rejected by, the late Dean.  To Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the
+wonderful movement of which he was the dynamic force there should also be
+a worthy memorial; to Water Pater, the superb aside of English prose; to
+Cardinal Manning, _the_ Ecclesiastic of the nineteenth century; and
+Professor Huxley, that master of dialectics.
+
+A young actor of my acquaintance, who bore the honoured name of Siddons,
+was invited to take part in the funeral service of the late Sir Henry
+Irving.  His step-father was connected by marriage with the great
+actress, and he was very proud of his physical resemblance to her
+portrait by Reynolds.  He had played with great success the part of
+Fortinbras in the provinces, and Mr. Alexander has assured me that he was
+the ideal impersonator of Rosencrantz.  It was an open secret that he had
+refused Mr. Arthur Bourchier's offer of that _role_ in a proposed revival
+of _Hamlet_ at the Garrick.  Since the burial of Sir Henry Irving in the
+Abbey, _he has never been seen_: though I saw him myself in the funeral
+_cortege_.  All his friends remember the curious exaltation in his manner
+a few days before the ceremony, and I cannot help thinking that in a
+moment of enthusiasm, realising that this was his only chance of burial
+in the Abbey, he took advantage of the bowed unobservant heads during the
+prayer of Committal and crept beneath the pall into the great actor's
+tomb.  What his feelings were at the time, or afterwards when the vault
+was bricked up, would require the introspective pen of Mr. Henry James
+and the curious imagination of Mr. H. G. Wells to describe.  I have been
+assured by the vergers that mysterious sounds were heard for some days
+after this historical occasion.  Distressed by the loss of my friend, I
+applied to the Dean of Westminster and finally to Scotland Yard.  I need
+not say that I was met with sacerdotal indifference on the one hand and
+with callous officialism on the other.  I hope that under the Royal
+Commission which I have appointed the mystery will be cleared up.  Not
+that I begrudge poor Siddons a niche with Garrick and Irving.
+
+(1906.)
+
+_To_ PROFESSOR JAMES MAYOR, _Toronto University_.
+
+
+
+
+THE ELETHIAN MUSE.
+
+
+After chaperoning into Fleet Street the eleventh Muse, the rather
+Batavian lady who is not to be found in that Greek peerage, Lempriere's
+Dictionary, an obliging correspondent from Edinburgh (an eminent writer
+to the Signet in our northern Thebes) inquired if there were any more
+muses who had escaped the students of comparative mythology.  It is in
+response to his letter that I now present, as Mr. Charles Frohman would
+say, the thirteenth, the Elethian Muse.
+
+Yet I can fancy people asking, Where is the twelfth, and over what art or
+science does she preside?  According to Apollodorus (in a recently
+recovered fragment from Oxyrynchus), Jupiter, suffering from the chronic
+headaches consequent on his acrimonious conversations with Athena,
+decided to consult Vulcan, AEsculapius having come to be regarded as a
+quack.  Mulciber (as we must now call him, having used the name Vulcan
+once), suggested an extraordinary remedy, one of the earliest records of
+a homoeopathic expedient.  He prescribed that the king of gods and men
+should keep his ambrosial tongue in the side of his cheek for half an
+hour three times a day.  The operation produced violent retching in the
+Capitoline stomach.  And on the ninth day, from his mouth, quite unarmed,
+sprang the twelfth muse.  The other goddesses were very disgusted; and
+even the gods declined to have any communication with the new arrival.
+Apollo, however, was more tolerant, and offered her an asylum on the top
+shelf of the celestial library.  Ever afterwards Musagetes used to be
+heard laughing immoderately, even for a librarian to the then House of
+Lords.  Jupiter, incensed at this irregularity, paid him a surprise visit
+one day in order to discover the cause.  He stayed, however, quite a long
+time; and the other deities soon contracted the habit of taking their
+nectar into the library.  With the decline of manners, the twelfth muse
+began to be invited to dessert, after Juno and the more reputable
+goddesses had retired.  To cut a long story short, when Pan died, in the
+Olympian sense very shortly afterwards, all the gods, as we know, took
+refuge on earth.  Jupiter retired to Iceland, Aphrodite to Germany,
+Apollo to Picardy, but the twelfth muse wandered all over Europe, and
+found that she was really more appreciated than her sisters.  The castle,
+the abbey, the inn, the lone ale-house on the Berkshire moors, all made
+her welcome.  Finally she settled in Ireland, where, according to a
+protestant libel, she took the black veil in a nunnery.
+
+She is older than the chestnuts of Vallombrosa.  Perhaps of all the
+ancient goddesses time has chilled her least.  Her unfathomable smile
+wears a touch of something sinister in it, but she has a new meaning for
+every generation.  And yet for Aretino there was some further magic of
+crimson on her lips and cheeks, lost for us.  She is a solecism for the
+convalescent, and has given consolation to the brave.  She has been a
+diver in rather deep seas and a climber in somewhat steep places.  Her
+censers are the smoking-rooms of clubs; and her presence-lamps are
+schoolboys' lanterns.  Though held the friend of liars and brutes, she
+has lived on the indelicacies of kings, and has made even pontiffs laugh.
+Her mysteries are told in the night-time, and in low whispers to the
+garish day.  She lingers over the stable-yard (no doubt called _mews_ for
+that reason).  Her costly breviaries, embellished with strange
+illuminations, are prohibited under Lord Campbell's Act.  Stars mark the
+places where she has been.  Sometimes a scholar's fallacy, a sworn foe to
+Dr. Bowdler, she is Notre Dame de Milet, our Lady of Limerick.
+
+* * * * *
+
+But it is of her sister I would speak, the thirteenth sister, who was
+created to keep the eleventh in countenance.  She presides over the
+absurdities of prose.  She is responsible for the stylistic flights of
+Pegasus when, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the Hon. Stephen
+Coleridge, his bearing-rein has been abolished, and he kicks over the
+traces.
+
+It was the Elethian Muse who inspired that Oxford undergraduate's
+peroration to his essay on the Characteristics of St. John's Gospel--
+
+   'Furthermore, we may add that St. John's Gospel is characterised by a
+   tone of fervent piety which is totally wanting in those of the other
+   Evangelists'--
+
+and she hovered over the journalist who, writing for a paper which we
+need not name, referred to Bacchus as
+
+   'that deity whose identity in Greek and Roman mythology is inseparably
+   connected with the over-indulgence of intoxicating liquors.'
+
+There are prose beauties, Elethian jewels, hidden away in Baedeker's
+mines of pregnant information and barren fact.  I know it is fashionable
+to sneer at Baedeker, especially when you are writing little rhapsodies
+about remoter parts of Italy, where you have found his knowledge
+indispensable, if exiguous.  You must always kick away the ladder when
+you arrive at literary distinction.  I, who am still climbing and still
+clinging, can afford to be more generous.  Let me, therefore, crown
+Baedeker with an essayist's parsley, or an academic laurel, ere I too
+become selfish, forgetful, egoistical, and famous.
+
+In _Southern France_, 1891 edition, p. 137, you find--
+
+   To the Pic de Nere, 3.75 hrs. from Luz, there and back 6.5 hrs.; a
+   delightful excursion, which can be made on horseback part of the way:
+   guide 12, horse 10 fr.; _adders abound_.
+
+For synthetic prose you will have to go to Tacitus to find the equal of
+that passage.  No more is heard of the excursion.  'We leave Luz by the
+Barege road,' the text goes on to say.  Reflections and picturesque word-
+painting are left for Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Mr. Arthur Symons, and Murray.
+
+In _Southern Italy_, Baedeker yields to softer and more Virgilian
+influences.  The purple patches are longer and more frequent.  On page 99
+we learn not only how to get to Baiae, but that
+
+   Luxury and profligacy, however, soon took up their abode at Baiae, and
+   the desolate ruins, which now alone encounter the eye, point the usual
+   moral!
+
+And from the preface to the same guide we obtain this remarkable advice:--
+
+   The traveller should adopt the Neapolitan custom of rejecting fish
+   that are not quite fresh.
+
+But it is certain educational works, popular in my childhood, that have
+yielded the more exotic Elethian blossoms for my Anthology.  There are
+passages I would not willingly let die.  In one of these books general
+knowledge was imparted after the manner of Magnall: 'What is the world?
+The earth on which we live.'  'Who was Raphael?'  'How is rice made?'
+After such desultory interrogatives, without any warning, came Question
+15: 'Give the character of Prince Potemki':--
+
+   Sordidly mean, ostentatiously prodigal, filthily intemperate and
+   affectedly refined.  Disgustingly licentious and extravagantly
+   superstitious, a brute in appetite, vigorous though vacillating in
+   action.
+
+Until I went to the University, a great many years afterwards, I never
+learnt who Potemki was.  At the age of seven he stood to me for what
+'Timberio' still is for Capriote children.  My teacher obviously did not
+know.  She always evaded my inquiries by saying, 'You will know when you
+are older, darling.'  Suspecting her ignorance, I became pertinacious.
+'When I am as old as you?' was my ungallant rejoinder.  I had to write
+the character out a hundred times.  Then one Christmas Day I ventured to
+ask my father, who said I would find out about him in Gibbon.  But I knew
+he was not speaking the truth, because he laughed in a nervous, peculiar
+way, and added that since I was so fond of history I must go to Oxford
+when I was older.  I loathed history, and inwardly resolved that
+Cambridge should be my University.  My mother admitted entire ignorance
+of Potemki's identity; and on my sketching his character (for I was proud
+of the knowledge), said he was obviously a 'horrid' man.  His personality
+shadowed my childhood with a deadly fascination, which has not entirely
+worn away; producing the same sort of effect on me as an imaginary
+portrait by Pater.
+
+In a semi-geographical work called _Near Home; or, Europe Described_,
+published by Hatchards in the fifties (though my friend, Mr. Arthur
+Humphreys, denies all knowledge of it), I can recall many stereos of
+dialectic cast in a Socratic mould:--
+
+   _Q_.  What is the religion of the Italians?  _A_.  They are Roman
+   Catholics.
+
+   _Q_.  What do the Roman Catholics worship?  _A_.  Idols and a piece of
+   bread.
+
+   _Q_.  Would not God be very angry if He knew the Italians worshipped
+   idols and a piece of bread?  _A_.  God IS very angry.
+
+Mr. Augustine Birrell, if still interested in educational phenomena, will
+not be surprised to learn that when I reached to man's estate I 'embraced
+the errors of Rome,' as my historical manual would have phrased it.
+
+I pity the child who did not learn universal history from Collier.  How
+tame are the periods of Lord Acton, the Rev. William Hunt, Froude,
+Freeman, Oman, Round, even Macaulay, and little Arthur, beside the rich
+Elethian periods of William Francis Collier.  Not Berenson, not Byron,
+not Beerbohm, have given us such a picture of Venice as Collier in
+describing the Council of Ten:--
+
+   The ten were terrible; but still more terrible were the three
+   inquisitors--two black, one red--appointed in 1454.  Deep mystery hung
+   over the three.  They were elected by the ten; none else knew their
+   names.  Their great work was to kill; and no man--doge, councillor, or
+   inquisitor--was beyond their reach.  Secretly they pronounced a doom;
+   and ere long the stiletto or the poison cup had done its work, or the
+   dark waters of the lagoon had closed over a life.  The spy was
+   everywhere.  No man dared to speak out, for his most intimate
+   companions might be on the watch to betray him.  Bronze vases, shaped
+   like a lion's mouth, gaped at the corner of every square to receive
+   the names of suspected persons.  Gloom and suspicion haunted gondola
+   and hearth!!
+
+It is owing to Collier that I know at least one fact about the Goths who
+took Rome, 'having reduced the citizens to feed on mice and nettles, A.D.
+546,' a diet to which many of the hotel proprietors in the imperial city
+still treat their clients.
+
+But let _Bellows' Dictionary_, a friend and instructor of riper years,
+close my list of great examples and my theme.  The criticism is apposite
+to myself, and its only oddity--its Elethian quality, if I may say so--is
+its presence in that marvellous miniature whose ingenious author you
+would never suspect could have found room for such portentous
+observations in the small duodecimo to which he confined himself:--
+
+   Unaffected language is the inseparable accompaniment of natural
+   refinement; but that affectation which would make up for paucity of
+   thought by overstrained expression is a mark of vulgarity from which
+   no accident of social position can redeem those who are guilty of it.
+
+_To_ MORE ADEY, ESQ.
+
+
+
+
+THERE IS NO DECAY.
+
+
+_A Lecture delivered in the Old Bluecoat School, Liverpool, on February
+12th, 1908_.
+
+   'In every age there is some question raised as to its wants and
+   powers, its strength and weakness, its great or small worth and work;
+   and in every age that question is waste of time and speech.  To a
+   small soul the age which has borne it can appear only as an age of
+   small souls; the pigmy brain and emasculate spirit can perceive in its
+   own time nothing but dwarfishness and emasculation.  Each century has
+   seemed to some of its children an epoch of decadence and decline in
+   national life and spiritual, in moral or material glory; each alike
+   has heard the cry of degeneracy raised against it, the wave of emulous
+   impotence set up against the weakness of the age.'--SWINBURNE.
+
+Before the invention of printing, or let me say before the cheapening of
+printing, the lecturer was in a more fortunate position than he is to-
+day; because, if a learned man, he was able to give his audience certain
+pieces of information which he could be fairly sure _some_ of his
+listeners had never heard before.  The arrival in town or city of
+Abelard, Paracelsus, or Erasmus, to take the first instances occurring to
+me, must have been a great event, the importance of which we can scarcely
+appreciate at the present day.  It must have excited our forefathers, at
+least as much as the arrival of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in any large
+city, excites I imagine, all of us to-day.  But multiplication of books
+has really rendered lecturers, as instructors, mere intellectual
+Othellos; their occupation is gone; the erudition of the ages is now
+within reach of all; though educational books were fairly expensive
+within living memory.  You owe, therefore, a debt of gratitude to the
+_Times_ and the _Daily Mail_ for bringing Encyclopaedias of all kinds
+into the range of the shallowest purse and in contact with the shallowest
+heads in the community.
+
+But in case your learned professors have not contributed all their hidden
+lore and scholarship to the cheap Encyclopaedias, and still allow their
+learning to leak out at lectures, you may have come expecting instruction
+from me on some neglected subject.  If that is so, I must confess myself
+at once an impostor.  I have no information to give you.  I assume your
+erudition to compensate for my own lack of it.  There are no facts which
+I might bring before you that you cannot find stated more clearly in
+valuable manuals or works of reference, if you have not mastered them
+already.  There is no scientific or philosophic theory which I might
+propound that you could not hear with greater benefit from others.
+
+Briefly, I have no orange up my sleeve.
+
+Let there be no deception or disappointment.  I want you to play with an
+idea as children play at ball--not football--but the old game of catch.
+And out of this discussion, for I trust that you will all differ, if not
+with me, at least with each other, trains of thought may be quickened;
+mental grassland ploughed up; hidden perspectives unveiled.  Above all, I
+would stimulate you to an appreciation of your contemporaries and of
+contemporary literature, contemporary drama, and contemporary art.
+
+Every few years distinguished men lift their voices, and tell us that all
+is over, _decay has begun_.  The obscure and the anonymous echo the
+sentiment in the London Press.  With the fall of any Government its
+supporters prophesy the rapid decomposition of the Empire; in the pulpit
+eloquent preachers of every sect and communion, thundering against the
+vices of Society, declare that Society is breaking up.  Of course, not
+being in Society, I am hardly in a position to judge; and the vices I
+know only at second-hand--from the preachers.  Yet I see no outward signs
+of decay in Society; it dresses quite as well, in some ways better than,
+it did.  Society eats as much, judging from the size and number of new
+restaurants; its patronises as usual the silliest plays in London, and
+buys in larger quantities than ever the idiotic novels provided for it.
+Have you ever been to a bazaar in aid of Our Dumb Friends' League?  Well,
+you see Society _there_, I can tell you; it is not dumb.  And the
+conversation sounds no less vapid and no less brilliant than we are told
+it was in the eighteenth century; the dresses and faces are quite as
+pretty.  But much as I should like to discuss the decay of English
+Society and the English nation, I feel that such lofty themes are beyond
+my reach.  I am concerned only with the so-called decay of humbler
+things, the abstract manifestations of the human intellect, the Arts and
+Sciences.  And lest, weary at the end of my discourse, you forget the
+argument or miss it, let me state at once what I wish to suggest, nay,
+what I wish to assert, _there is no such thing as decay_.  Decay is an
+intellectual Mrs. Harris, a highly useful entity wherewith the
+journalistic Gamps try to frighten Betsy Prig.  Of course an obvious
+objection to my assertion is the truism that everything has a life; and
+that towards the end of that natural life we are correct in speaking of
+approaching decay.  With physical phenomena, however, I am not dealing,
+though I may say, by the way, that there are many examples of human
+intellect maturing in middle life or extreme old age.  William Blake's
+masterpiece, the illustrations to the Book of Job, were executed when he
+was sixty-eight, a few years before his death.  The late Lord Kelvin is
+an example of an unimpaired intellect.  Still, it must be admitted that
+while nations may be destroyed by conquest, or by conquering too much and
+becoming absorbed by the conquered, and that ancient buildings may be
+pulled down or restored, so, too, conventions in literature and schools
+of art have been brought to an end by war, plague, or death--ostensibly
+brought to an end.  But it is an error to suppose that art or literature,
+because their development was artificially arrested, were in a state of
+decay.
+
+The favourite object-lesson of our childhood was the Roman Empire.
+'Here's richness,' as Mr. Squeers said, here was decline, and Gibbon
+wrote his prose epic from that point of view.  I hardly dare to differ
+with the greatest of English historians, but if we approach his work in
+the scientific spirit with which we should always regard history, we
+shall find that Gibbon draws false deductions from the undisputed facts,
+the unchallenged assertions of his history.  Commencing with the Roman
+Empire almost in its cradle, he sees in every twist of the infant limbs
+prognostications of premature decline in a dispensation which by his own
+computation lasted over fourteen hundred years.  It is safe enough to
+prophesy about the past.  Everything I admit has a life, but I do not
+consider old age decay any more than I think exuberant youth immature
+childhood; death may be only arrested development and life itself an
+exhausted convention.  Have you ever tried to count the number of reasons
+Gibbon gives (each one is a principal reason) for the cause of Roman
+decline?  His philosophy reminds me of Flaubert's hero, who observed that
+if Napoleon had been content to remain a simple soldier in the barracks
+at Marseilles, he might still be on the throne of France.  If we really
+accept Gibbon's view of history, I am not surprised that any one should
+be nervous about the British Empire.  The great intellectual idea of the
+Roman dominion, arrested indeed by barbarian invasion, philosophically
+never decayed.  Some of it was embalmed in Byzantium--particularly its
+artistic and literary sides; its religious forces were absorbed by the
+Roman Church, as Hobbes pointed out in a very wonderful passage; its
+humanism and polity became the common property of the European nations of
+to-day.  Gibbon's work should have been called 'The Rise and Progress of
+Greco-Roman Civilisation.'  That is not such a good title, but it would
+have been more accurate.  And if you compare critically the history of
+any manifestation of the human intellect, religion, literature, painting,
+architecture, or science, you will find that the development of one
+expressive force has been momentarily arrested while some other
+manifestation is asserting itself synchronously with the supposed decay
+in a manifestation whose particular history you are studying.  Always
+regard the deductions of the historian with the same scepticism that you
+regard the deductions of fiscal politicians.
+
+Every one knows the charming books by writers more learned than I can
+pretend to be, where the history of Italian art is traced from Giotto
+downwards; the story of Giotto and the little lamb, now, alas! entirely
+exploded; of Cimabue's Madonna being carried about in processions, and
+now discovered to have been painted by some one else!  Then on to
+Massaccio through the delightful fifteenth century until you see in the
+text-book in large print, like the flashes of harbour lights after a bad
+Channel crossing, RAPHAEL, MICHAEL ANGELO, DA VINCI.  But when you come
+to the seventeenth century, Guido Reni, the Carracci, and other painters
+(for the present moment out of fashion), painters whose work fetches
+little at Christie's, the art critic and historian begin to snivel about
+decay; not only of Italian art, but of the Italian peninsula; and their
+sobs will hardly ever allow them to get as far as Longhi, Piazetta, and
+Tiepolo, those great masters of the eighteenth century.
+
+But we know, painters certainly must know if they look at old masters at
+all, that Tiepolo, if he was the last of the old masters, was also the
+first of the moderns; it was his painting in Spain which influenced Goya,
+and Goya is not only a deceased Spanish master, he is a European master
+of to-day.  You can trace his influence through all the great French
+figure-painters of the nineteenth century down to those of the New
+English Art Club, though they may not have actually known they were under
+his influence.  Painting commences with a childish naturalism, such as
+you see on the walls of pre-historic caves; that is why savages always
+prefer photographs to any work of art, and why photographers are always
+so savage about works of art.  Gradually this childish naturalism
+develops into decoration; it becomes stylistic.  The decoration becomes
+perfected and sterile; then there arises a more sophisticated generation,
+longing for naturalism, for pictorial _vraisemblance_, without the
+childishness of the cave pictures.  And their new art develops at the
+expense of decoration; it becomes perfect and sterile.  What is commonly
+called decay is merely stylistic development.  The exquisite art of
+Byzantium was wrongly considered as the debasement of Greco-Roman art.  It
+was really the decorative expansion of it; the conventionalising of
+exaggerated realism.  The same might have happened in Europe after the
+Baroque and Rococo fashions had their day; politics and commerce
+interfered.  The intensely artificial painting of France, to which
+Diderot objected so much, had become perfect and sterile.  Then (happily
+or unhappily, in whichever direction your tastes lie) the French
+Revolution, by a pathetic misunderstanding of classical ideals, paved the
+way for the naturalism of the misnamed Romantic school.  We were told, a
+short time ago, that Sienese painting anticipated by a few years the
+Florentine manifestations of Cimabue and Giotto, but Mr. Berenson has
+pointed out that Sienese art is not the beginning but the end of an
+exquisite convention, the quintessence of Byzantium.  In the Roscoe
+collection at Liverpool you have one of the most superb and precious
+examples of this delicate, impeccable and decadent art: 'Christ found in
+the Temple,' by Simone di Martini.
+
+In Egyptian art, again, compare the pure naturalism of the wonderful
+Egyptian scribe of the Louvre, belonging, I am told, to the fifth or
+sixth dynasty, with the hieratic and conventional art of the twelfth
+dynasty; while in the eighteenth dynasty you get a reversion to realism,
+which critics have the audacity to call a 'revival of art.'  But you
+might just as well call it decayed, as indeed they do call some of the
+most magnificent Ptolemaean remains, simply because they happen to belong
+to a certain date which, by Egyptian reckoning, may be regarded as very
+recent.  Just now we very foolishly talk in accents of scorn about the
+early Victorian art, of which I venture to remind you Turner was not the
+least ornament.  Of course commercial and political events often
+interrupt the gestation of the arts, or break our idols in pieces.
+Another generation picks up the fragments and puts them together in the
+wrong way, and that is why it is so confusing and interesting; but there
+is no reason to be depressed about it.  Only iconoclasm need annoy us.  In
+histories of English literature too often you find the same attitude when
+the writer comes to a period which he dislikes.  Restoration Comedy is
+often said to be a period of debasement, and with Tennyson the young
+student is given to understand that English literature ceased altogether.
+But perhaps there are more modern text-books where the outlook is less
+gloomy.  If, instead of reading the history of literature, you read the
+literature itself, you will find plenty of instances of writers at the
+most brilliant periods complaining of decay.
+
+George Putman, in the _Art of English Poesy_, published in 1589, when
+English poetry was starting on a particularly glorious period, says, 'In
+these days all poets and poesy are despised, they are subject to scorn
+and derision,' and 'this proceeds through the barbarous ignorance of the
+time--in _other ages it was not so_.'  Then Jonson, in his 'Discoveries,'
+lamenting the decline of literature, says, 'It is the disease of the age,
+and no wonder if the world, growing old, begins to be infirm.'  There are
+hundreds of others which will immediately occur to you, from Chaucer to
+Tennyson, though Pope made noble protests on behalf of his
+contemporaries.  You have only got to compare these lachrymose
+observations with the summary of the year's literature in any
+newspaper--'literary output' is the detestable expression always used--and
+you will find the same note of depression.  'The year has not produced a
+single masterpiece.  Glad as we have been to welcome Mr. Blank's verse,
+"Larkspurs" cannot be compared with his first delicious volume,
+"Tealeaves," published thirty years ago.'  Then turn to the review in the
+same paper of 'Tealeaves' thirty years ago.  'Coarse animalism draped in
+the most seductive hues of art and romance, we will not analyse these
+poems, we will not even pretend to give the reasons on which our opinion
+is based.'  Or read the incisive 'Musings without Method,' in
+_Blackwood's Magazine_, on contemporary literature and contemporary
+things generally.
+
+Again, every painter is told that his work is not as good as last year,
+and that we have no one like Titian or Velasquez.  The Royal Academy is
+always said to be worse than usual.  I have known the summer exhibitions
+at Burlington House for twenty years.  Let me assure you throughout that
+period they have always been quite as bad as they are now.  But we do not
+want painters like Titian or Velasquez; we want something else.  If
+painters were like Titian or Velasquez they would not be artists at all.
+When Velasquez went to Rome he was told he ought to imitate Raphael; had
+he done so should we regard him as the greatest painter in the world?  If
+Rossetti had merely been another Fra Angelico or one of the early artists
+from whom he derived such noble inspiration, should we regard him as we
+do, as even the fierce young modern art student does, as one of the
+greatest figures in English art of the nineteenth century?  In the latter
+part of that century I think he is the greatest force in English
+painting.  I would reserve for him the largest print in my manual of
+English art.  But have we declined since the death of Rossetti?  On the
+contrary, I think we have advanced and are advancing.  You must not think
+I am depreciating the past.  The past is one of my witnesses.  The past
+was very like our present; it nearly always depreciated itself
+intellectually and materially.
+
+We all of us think of Athens in the fifth century as a golden period of
+great men, when every genius was appreciated, but you know that they put
+Pheidias in prison.  And take the instance of Euripides.  The majority of
+his countrymen said he was nothing to the late Aeschylus.  He was chiefly
+appreciated by foreigners, as you will remember if you are able to read
+'Balaustion's Adventure' (so much more difficult than Euripides in the
+original Greek).  Listen to what Professor Murray says:--
+
+   His contemporary public denounced him as dull, because he tortured
+   them with personal problems; as malignant, because he made them see
+   truths they wished not to see; as blasphemous and foul-minded, because
+   he made demands on their religious and spiritual natures which they
+   could neither satisfy nor overlook.  They did not know whether he was
+   too wildly imaginative or too realistic, too romantic or too prosaic,
+   too childishly simple or too philosophical--Aristophanes says he was
+   all these things at once.  They only knew that he made them angry and
+   that they could not help listening to him.
+
+Does not that remind you a little of what was said all over England of
+Mr. Bernard Shaw?  Of what is still said about him in many London houses
+to-day?  If some one praises him, the majority of people will tell you
+that he is overrated.  Does it not remind you of the reception which
+Ibsen's plays met when they were first produced here: when they gave an
+impetus to that new English drama which I understand is decaying, though
+it seems to me to be only beginning--the new English Drama of Mr.
+Granville Barker, Mr. Housman, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Galsworthy, and
+Mr. Masefield?
+
+Every year the patient research of scholars by the consultation of
+original documents has caused us to readjust our historical perspective.
+Those villains of our childhood, Tiberius, Richard III., Mary Tudor, and
+others, have become respectable monarchs, almost model monarchs, if you
+compare them with the popular English view of the present King of the
+Belgians, the ex-Sultan of Turkey, and the present Czar of Russia.  It is
+realised that contemporary journalism gave a somewhat twopence coloured
+impression of Kings and Queens, who were only creatures of their age,
+less admirable expressions of the individualism of their time.  And just
+as historical facts require readjustment by posterity, so our critical
+estimate of intellectual and aesthetic evolution requires strict
+revision.  We must not accept the glib statement of the historian,
+especially of the contemporary historian, that at certain periods
+intellectual activity and artistic expression were decaying or did not
+exist.  If a convention in one field of intellectual activity is said by
+the historian or chronicler to be approaching termination or to be
+decaying, as he calls it, we should test carefully his data and his
+credentials.  But, assuming he is right, there will always be found some
+compensating reaction in another sphere of intellectual activity which is
+in process of development; and through which, by some divine alchemy,
+providence, or nature, call it what you will, a new manifestation will be
+made to the world.  The arts which we suppose to have perished, of which,
+indeed, we write affecting epitaphs, are merely hibernating; the
+intellect which is necessary for their production and nutrition is simply
+otherwise employed; while, of course, you must make allowances for the
+appreciations of posterity, change of fashion and taste.  From the middle
+of the sixteenth century down to nearly the middle of the nineteenth, the
+Middle Ages were always thought of as the Dark Ages.  Scarcely any one
+could appreciate either the pictorial art or architecture of mediaevalism;
+those who did so always had to apologise for their predilection.  The
+wonders of Gothic art were furtively relished by a few antiquaries; and,
+at certain periods, by men like Beckford and Walpole, as agreeable
+drawing-room curiosities.  The Romantic movement commenced by Chatterton
+enabled us to revise a limited and narrow view, based on insufficient
+information.  It was John Ruskin, in England, who made us see what a
+splendid heritage the Middle Ages had bequeathed to us.  Ruskin and his
+disciples then fell into the error of turning the tables on the
+Renaissance, and regarded everything that deviated from Gothic convention
+as _debased_; the whole art of the eighteenth century was anathema to
+them.  The decadence began, according to Ruskin, with Raphael.  Out of
+that ingenious error, or synchronous with it, began the brilliant
+movement of the Pre-Raphaelites in the middle of the last century.  And
+when the Pre-Raphaelites appeared, every one said the end of Art had
+arrived.  Dickens openly attacked them; Thackeray ridiculed the new
+tendencies; every one, great and small, spoke of decay and decline.  The
+French word _Decadence_ had not crept into use.  However, the weary Titan
+staggered on, as Matthew Arnold said, and when Mr. Whistler's art dawned
+on the horizon, Ruskin was among the first to see in it signs of decay.
+Except the poetry of Swinburne, never has any art met with such abuse.  An
+example of the immortal painter now adorns the National Gallery of
+_British_ painting, which is cared for--oh, irony of circumstances--by
+one of the first prophets of impressionism in this country, or, rather,
+let me say, one of the first English critics--Mr. D. S. MacColl.
+
+But you will now ask how do I account for those periods when apparently
+the liberal arts are supposed not to have existed?  I maintain they did
+exist, or that human intellect was otherwise employed.  The excavations
+of prehistoric cities are evidences of my contention.  Because things are
+destroyed we must not say they have decayed; if evidences are scarce, do
+not say they never existed.  Our architecture, for example, took five
+hundred years to develop out of the splendid Norman through the various
+transitions of Gothic down to the perfection of the English country house
+in Elizabethan and Jacobean times.  If church architecture was decaying,
+domestic architecture was improving.  _Architecture is, of course, the
+first and most important of all the arts_, and when the human intellect
+is being used up for some other purpose there is a temporary cessation;
+there is never any decay of architecture.  The putting up of ugly
+buildings is merely a sign of growing stupidity, not of declining
+intellect or decaying taste.  Jerry-building is the successful
+competition of dishonesty against competency.  Do not imagine that
+because the good architects do not get commissions to put up useful or
+beautiful buildings they do not exist.  The history of stupidity and the
+history of bad taste must one day engage our serious attention.  There is
+no decay, alas, even in stupidity and bad taste.
+
+The suddenness with which the literature of the sixteenth century
+developed in England has been explained, I know, by the Reformation.  But
+you should remember the other critics of art, who ascribe the barrenness
+of our painting and the necessity of importing continental artists, also
+to the Reformation.  I suggest that the intellectual capacity of the
+nation was directed towards literature, politics and _religious_
+controversy, rather than to art and religion.  I cannot think there was
+any scarcity of the artistic germ in the English nation which had already
+expressed itself in the great Abbeys and Churches, such as Glastonbury,
+Tintern, Fountains, and York.  And you must remember that the minor art
+of embroidery, the '_opus anglicanum_' (which flourished for three
+centuries previous to the Reformation), was famous throughout Europe.
+
+In the middle of the eighteenth century, the big men, Swift, Pope, and
+Addison, having passed away, the Augustan age of English literature
+seemed exhausted.  It was a time of intellectual dyspepsia; every one was
+much too fond of ruins; people built sham ruins on their estates.  Rich
+men, who could afford the luxury, kept a dilapidated hermit in a cavern.
+Their chief pleasure on the continent was measuring ruins in the way
+described so amusingly by Goldsmith in _The Citizen of the World_.  Though
+no century was more thoroughly pleased with itself, I might almost say
+smugly self-satisfied, the men of that century were always lamenting the
+decline of the age.  The observations of Johnson and Goldsmith I need
+scarcely repeat.  But here is one which may have escaped your notice.  It
+is not a suggestion of decline, but an assertion of non-existence.  Gray,
+the poet, the cultivated connoisseur, the Professor of History, writing
+in 1763 to Count Algarrotti, says: 'Why this nation has made no advances
+hitherto in painting and sculpture it is hard to say; the fact is
+undeniable, and we have the vanity to apologise for ourselves as Virgil
+did for the Romans:
+
+   Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera,
+   Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus,
+   Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus
+   Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:
+   Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
+   Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
+   Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.
+
+'You are generous enough to wish, and sanguine enough to see that art
+shall one day flourish in England.  _I too much wish, but can hardly
+extend my hopes so far_.'  Yet in 1754 Chippendale had published his
+Cabinet Makers' Guide; and the next fifty years was to see the production
+of all that beautiful English furniture of which we are so justly proud,
+and which we forge with such surprising skill.  It was the next fifty
+years that saw the production of the beautiful English pottery which we
+prize so highly, and it was the next hundred years that was to be the
+period of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, Crome, Cotman, Alfred
+Stevens, and Turner, who died in 1851, just when the Pre-Raphaelites were
+supposed to be inaugurating the decay of that which Gray denied the
+existence, nearly one hundred years before.
+
+Though the scope of my discussion is limited to literature and art, it
+would be paltry to confine our inquiries within limited horizons.
+Painting and architecture, alas, are not the whole of life; the fine arts
+are only the flowers of existence; they are useful as humanising
+elements; but they are not indispensable.  That vague community among
+whom we arbitrarily place those with whom we disagree--the
+Philistines--get on very well without them.  But even Philistines have to
+reckon with Religion and Science, and in a lesser degree with Philosophy.
+That powerful trinity affects our every-day life.  Philosophy is so
+cloistered, so difficult to understand, that we seldom hear of its decay;
+though we are constantly told that some branch of science is being
+neglected, or owing to a religious revival that its prestige is becoming
+undermined; its truths are becoming falsehoods.  I am not a man of
+science, not even a student, only a desultory reader.  Yet I suggest
+that, as was pointed out in the case of the fine arts, certain branches
+of the divine scholarship, if I may call it so, may be arrested
+temporarily in any development they may have reached.  Let us take
+medicine.  Medicine is primarily based upon the study of anatomy or
+structure--physiology--or the scheme of structure carried out in life;
+and upon botany and chemistry as representing the vegetable and mineral
+worlds where the remedies are sought.  Anatomy soon reaches a finite
+position, when a sufficient number of careful dissections has been made;
+the other divisions used to look like promising endless development; but
+there is reason to suppose that they too, as far as medicine is
+concerned, have reached a sterile perfection.
+
+The microscope is perfected up to a point which mechanicians think cannot
+be improved upon; so that those ultimate elements of physiology which
+depend upon the observation of minute structure are known to us.  To put
+it crudely, we cannot discover any more germs, whose presence is hidden
+from us by mere minuteness, unless we can improve our machinery, and
+that, we are told, is an improbable event.  I will not labour the point
+by applying it to botany, which is very obvious, or to chemistry, where
+it is not so clear.  But it _is_ clear that owing to a feeling that not
+much more is to be got from minute observation with the tools at our
+disposal, the brightest intellects and most inventive clairvoyant work
+are shunted into more imaginative channels.  There are no men who guess
+so brilliantly as men of science, so that science, in that respect, has
+attained the dignity of Theology.  I suppose that the startling theories
+propounded by Sir Oliver Lodge and others will be taken as evidence of
+the decay of science.  But the human intellect, especially if it is
+scientific, cannot, I imagine, like actors, go on repeating or feigning
+the same emotion.  It must leave for the moment as apparently completed
+one branch of knowledge to which it may return again after developing
+some less mature branch on which the attention of the most learned
+investigators is for a time wholly concentrated.  The tree of knowledge
+is an evergreen, and in science, no more than in arts, is there any
+decay.  When Darwin published his great _Origin of Species_ which was
+hailed as a revelation, not only by scientific men, but by intelligent
+laymen, religious people became very much alarmed.  They talked about the
+decay of faith, and ascribed any falling off in the offertories to the
+shillings spent on visiting the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens.
+Younger sons and less gifted members of clever families were no longer
+destined for Holy Orders; as we were descended from apes it would have
+seemed impious.  They were sent to Cambridge to pursue a so-called
+scientific career, which was crowned by the usual aegrotat in botany
+instead of a pass in history.  The falling off in candidates for Holy
+Orders seriously alarmed some of our Bishops; and Darwin--the gentle,
+delightful Darwin--became what the Pope had been to our ancestors.  I
+need not point out how groundless these fears happily proved to be.  The
+younger intellects of the country simply became more interested for the
+moment in the cross-breeding of squirrels, than in the internecine
+difficulties of the Protestant church on Apostolic succession, the number
+of candles on the altar, and the legality of incense.  Now, I rejoice to
+say, there is a healthy revival of interest and a healthy difference of
+opinion on all these important religious questions.  We must never pay
+serious attention to the alarmists who tell us that the churches and
+sects are seeing their last days.  Macaulay has warned us never to be too
+sanguine about the Church of Rome.  The moments of her greatest trials
+produced some of her greatest men--Ignatius Loyola, Philip Neri, and
+Francis Xavier.  Do you think the Church is decaying because the
+congregations are banished from France, and the Concordat has come to an
+end?  I tell you it will only stimulate her to further conquests; it is
+the beginning of a new life for the Catholic Church in France.  If the
+Anglican Church were to be disestablished to-morrow, I would regard it as
+a Sandow exercise for the hardworking, splendid intellects of the
+Establishment.  The Nonconformists--well, they never talk about their own
+decline; of all the divisions of Christianity they always seem to me
+heartily to enjoy persecution; and like myself, I never knew them to
+admit the word _decadence_ into their vocabulary, at least about
+themselves.  I hold them up to you as examples.  Let us all be
+Nonconformists in that respect.
+
+I do not ask you to adopt the habit against which Matthew Arnold directed
+one of his witty essays, the habit of expressing a too unctuous
+satisfaction with the age and time in which we are living.  That was the
+intellectual error of the Eighteenth Century.  There are problems of
+poverty, injustice, disease, and unhappiness, which should make the most
+prosperous and most selfish of us chafe; but I do urge that we should not
+suspect the art and literature of our time, the intellectual
+manifestations of our age, whether scientific or literary.  I urge that
+we do not sit on the counter in order to cry 'stinking fish,' and observe
+that this is merely an age of commerce.  An overweening modesty in us
+seems to persuade us that it is quite impossible we should be fortunate
+enough to be the contemporaries of great men.  The fact that we know them
+personally sometimes undermines our faith; contemporary contempt for a
+great man is too often turned on the contemporaries.  Do not let us look
+upon genius, as Schopenhauer accused some people of doing, 'as upon a
+hare which is good to eat when it has been killed and dressed up, but so
+long as it is alive only good to be shot at.'  And if our intellectuals
+are not all Brobdingnagians, they are not all Liliputians.  It seems to
+me ungenerous to make sweeping and deprecating assertions about our own
+time; it is also dangerous.  The contemporary praise of unworthy work,
+ephemeral work--there is always plenty of that, we know--is forgotten;
+and (though it does not decay) perishes with the work it extolled.  But
+unsound criticism and foolish abuse of great work is remembered to the
+confusion of the critics.  Think of the reception accorded to Wordsworth,
+Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Rossetti, and Swinburne.
+
+I remember that excellent third-rate writer, W. E. H. Lecky, making a
+speech at a dinner of the Authors' Society, in which he said that he was
+sorry to say there were no great writers alive, and no stylists to
+compare with those who had passed away.  A few paces off him sat Walter
+Pater, George Meredith, and Mr. Austin Dobson.  Tennyson, though not
+present at the banquet, was president of the Society, and Ruskin was
+still alive.  When Swinburne's 'Atalanta in Calydon' appeared, another
+third-rate writer, James Russell Lowell, assured the world that its
+author was no poet, because there was no thought in the verse.  Four
+years ago, at a provincial town in Italy, when one of the Italian
+ministers, at the opening of some public building, said that united Italy
+owed to the great English poet Swinburne a debt which it could never
+forget, the inhabitants cheered vociferously.  This was no idle
+compliment; every one in Italy knows who Swinburne was.  I will not
+hazard to guess the extent of the ovation which the names of Lowell and
+Lecky would receive, but I think the incident is a fair sign that English
+poetry has not decayed.
+
+In the _Daily Mail_ I saw once an interview with an inferior American
+black-and-white draughtsman at Berlin.  He was asked his opinion about a
+splendid exhibition of old English pictures being held there, and took
+occasion to say 'what the pictures demonstrate is not that the English
+women of the eighteenth century were conspicuously lovely, but the
+artists who painted them possessed secrets of reproduction which
+posterity has failed to inherit.'  I would like to reply 'Rot, rot, rot;'
+but that would imply a belief in decay.  I suggest to the same critic
+that he should visit one of the 'International Exhibitions,' where he
+will see the pictures of Mr. Charles Hazelwood Shannon.  Such a stupid
+view from an American is particularly amazing, because in Mr. John Singer
+Sargent, we (by _we_ I mean America and ourselves) possess an artist who
+is certainly the peer of Gainsborough and Reynolds, and personally I
+should say a much greater painter than Reynolds.  A hundred years hence,
+perhaps people at Berlin (the most critical and cultivated capital in the
+world) will be bending before the 'Three Daughters of Percy Wyndham,' the
+'Duchess of Sutherland,' the 'Marlborough Family,' and many another
+masterpiece of Mr. Sargent and Mr. Charles Shannon.  The same American
+critic says that our era of mediocrity will continue; so I am full of
+hope.  Even the existence of America does not depress me: nor do I see in
+it a symptom of decay; if it produces much that is distasteful in the way
+of tinned meat, it gave us Mr. John Sargent and Mr. Henry James, and it
+took away from England Mr. Richard Le Gallienne.
+
+I should be the last to invite you not to discriminate about the present.
+We must be cautious in estimating the very popular writers or painters of
+our time; but we must not dismiss them because they are popular.  We
+should be tall enough to worship in a crowd.  Let our criticism be
+aristocratic, our taste fastidious, and let our sympathies be democratic
+and catholic.  Dickens, I suppose, is one of the most popular writers who
+ever lived, and yet he is part of the structure of our literature; but as
+Dickens is dead, I prefer to mention the names of three living writers,
+who are also popular, and have become corner-stones of the same
+building--Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. H. G. Wells.  'There
+are at all times,' says Schopenhauer, 'two literatures in progress
+running side by side, but little known to each other; the one real, the
+other only apparent.  The former grows into permanent literature: it is
+pursued by those who live _for_ science or poetry.  The other is pursued
+by those who live _on_ science or poetry; but after a few years one asks
+where are they? where is the glory that came so soon and made so much
+clamour?'  We are happy if we can discriminate between those two
+literatures.
+
+While we should remember that there are at all times intellects whose
+work is more for posterity than for the present; work which appeals,
+perhaps, only to the few, that of artists whose work has no purchasers,
+writers whose books may have publishers but few readers, we must be
+cautious about accepting the verdict of the dove-cot.  There are many
+obscure artists and writers whose work, though admired by a select few,
+remains very properly obscure, and will always remain obscure; it is of
+no value intellectually; the world should know nothing of its inferior
+men.  Sometimes, however, it is these inferior men who are able to get
+temporary places as critics, and inform us in leading articles that ours
+is an age _of Decadence_.  Every new drama, every work of art which
+possesses individuality or gives a fresh point of view or evinces
+development of any kind, is held up as an instance of Decay.  '_L'ecole
+decadent_' was a phrase invented as a jest in 1886, I believe by Monsieur
+Bourde, a journalist in Paris.  It was eagerly adopted by the Parisians,
+and soon floated across the Channel.  Used as a term of reproach, it was
+accepted by the group of poets it was intended to ridicule.  I need not
+remind you that the master of that school was Paul Verlaine, the immortal
+poet who enlarged the scope of French verse--the poet who achieved for
+French poetry what I am told the so-called decadent philosopher Nietzsche
+has done for German prose.  Unfortunately I do not know German, and it
+seems almost impossible to add to the German language.  But Nietzsche, I
+am assured by competent authorities, has performed a similar feat to that
+of Luther on the issue of his Bible.
+
+When, therefore, we hear of decadence in literature or art, even if we
+accept Mr. Balfour's definition of its symptom--'_the employment of an
+over-wrought technique_'--we must remember that Decadence and Decay have
+now different meanings, though originally they meant the same sort of
+thing.  An over-wrought technique is characteristic of the decadent
+school of France, particularly of Mallarme, and some of our own
+decadents.  Walter Pater and Sir Thomas Browne.  The existence of writers
+adopting an over-wrought technique, however, is not (and Mr. Balfour
+would repudiate the idea) a sign of decay as commonplace moralists would
+have us believe, but of realised perfection.  Pater is the most perfect
+prose writer we ever produced.  The Euphuists of the sixteenth century
+were of course decadents, and I think you will admit that they did not
+herald any decay in our literature.
+
+The truth is that men after a certain age, if not on the crest of the
+waves themselves, become bored with counting the breakers, and decide
+that the tide is going out.  You must often have had arguments with
+friends on this subject when walking by the sea.  The water seems to be
+receding; you can see that there is an ebb; and then an unusually long
+wave comes up and wets your feet.  Great writers are guilty of a similar
+error without any intention of contriving a literary conceit (as I
+suspect many a past outcry to have been).  Even Pater declared that he
+would not disturb himself by reading any contemporary literature
+published by an author who did not exist before 1870.  He never read
+Stevenson or Kipling.  Now that is a terrible state to be in; it is a
+symptom of premature old age; not physical but mental old age.
+
+The art of the present day is not architecture, painting, or literature.
+It is the art of remaining young.  It is the art of life.  It is a
+science.  The fairer, the stronger, the better sex--shall I call its
+members our equals or our superiors?--have always realised this.  Indeed,
+they have employed ingenious mechanical contrivances for arresting the
+march of time or that physical decay of which we are all victims.
+Sometimes they may be said to have indulged in an over-wrought technique,
+which may be the reason why we are told that every woman is at heart a
+decadent.  Otto Weininger certainly thought so.  I have always regretted
+that the male sex was precluded by prejudice from following their
+example.  I regret somewhat acutely the desuetude of the periwig.
+
+So we can take an example from women--they are so often our theme, let
+them be our examples in a symbolical sense.  If we choose, we too can
+remain young intellectually, sensitive to new impressions, new impulses
+and new revelations, whether of science or art.  The Greeks of the fifth
+century, and even of the age of St. Paul, preserved their youth by
+cultivating the superb gift of curiosity, delightful anxiety about the
+present and future.  William Morris once described the Whigs as careless
+of the past, ignorant of the present, and fearful of the future.  Whatever
+your politics are, do not be like the Whigs as described by William
+Morris.  Cultivate a feminine curiosity.  I used to be told the old story
+of Blue Beard as a warning against that particular failing.  I see in it
+a much profounder moral.  It is the emancipation of woman; and asserts
+her right, if not to vote, at least to be curious.  Her curiosity rid the
+world of a monster, and in her curiosity we see the nucleus of the new
+drama.  That little blood-stained key unlocked for us the cupboard where
+the family skeleton had been left too long in the cold; it was time that
+he joined the festive board, or, at least, appeared on the boards: and
+now, I am glad to say, he has done so; and he is called new-fangled.  Do
+not let us call things 'new-fangled.'  New-fangled medicine probably
+saves fifty per cent. of the population from premature death.  Do not
+speak of the 'crudity of youth.'  Youth is sometimes crude.  It is better
+than being rude.  It is an error to mock at the single virtue a possible
+offender may possess.  I observe that men of science remain younger
+intellectually, and even physically, than artists or men of letters.  I
+believe it is because to them science is always full of surprises and
+fresh impressions.  They know there is practically no end to their
+knowledge; and that in the study of science there is no decay, whatever
+they may detect in the crust of the earth or on the face of heaven.  They
+are never satisfied with the past.  They look to youth and its
+enthusiasms for realising their own dreams and developing their own
+hypotheses.  And as there are great men of science to-day, so, too, there
+are great men of letters, great poets, and great painters, some of whose
+names you may not have heard.  But when you do hear of them I beg of you
+not to regard any of them as symptoms of decay, even if their technique
+is elaborate and over-wrought.  The _early_ work of every modern painter
+is over-elaborate and over-wrought, just as all the work of early
+painters is over-elaborate and over-wrought.  Do not greet the dawn as
+though it were a lowering sunset.  Listen, and, with William Blake, you
+may hear the sons of God shouting for joy.  If your mind is bent on
+decay, read that neglected poet, Byron.  He thought the romantic
+movement, of which he became the accidental centre, a symptom of decay.
+Read any period of history and its literature, and you will find the same
+cry reiterated.  When you have read an old book go out and buy a new one.
+When you have sold your old masters, go out and buy new masters.
+Aladdin's maid is one of the wronged characters of legend. . . . Of the
+Pierian spring there are many fountains.  Yet it is a spring which never
+runs dry; though it flows with greater freedom at one season than at
+another, with greater volume from one fountain than some other.  In the
+glens of Parnassus there are hidden flowers always blooming; though, to
+the binoculars of the tourist, the mountain seems unusually barren.  You
+will find that youth does not vanish with the rose, that you need never
+close the sweet-scented manuscript of love, science, art or literature.
+In them youth returns like daffodils that come before the swallow dares,
+and take the winds of March with beauty: or like the snapdragons which
+Cardinal Newman saw blossoming on the wall at Oxford, and which became
+for him the symbol of hope.  For us they may stand as the symbol of
+realisation and the immortality of the human intellect, in which there
+has been no decay since the days of Tubal Cain.
+
+_To_ J. G. LEGGE, ESQ.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASQUES & PHASES***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 17601.txt or 17601.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/0/17601
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+