THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
.J- 
 

MINIATURES 
 AND MOODS 
 
A II rights reserved 
 
MINIATURES 
 
 AND 
 
 MOODS 
 
 BY 
 
 G. S. STREET 
 
 LONDON 
 
 Published by DAVID NUTT 
 
 in the Strand 
 
 1893 
 
4,037 
 
 NOTE 
 
 These are miniatures which are mainly the outcome 
 of a mood and moods which are indicated in miniature. 
 They were published in ' The National Observer,' 
 and are republished by the editor's kind permission, 
 and with a few trifling alterations. The writer hopes 
 they have consistency of criticism and coherence of 
 thought enough to acquit him of impertinence in 
 collecting them. 
 
 519547 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Miniatures 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. AN OLD REPROBATE, .... 3 
 
 2. ZIMRI THE WRITER, .... 8 
 
 3. 'THAT DEIL o' DUNDEE/ . . . 15 
 
 4. ROCHESTER, . . . . . . 22 
 
 5- MY LORD JUDAS, ..... 28 
 
 6. ETHEREGE, ...... 34 
 
 7. A VICE-QUEEN, 4<D 
 
 8. THE ATALANTIS, ..... 44 
 
 9. 'LORD FANNY,' ..... 50 
 IO. ' DEAR GEORGE,' ..... 57 
 
 Moods 
 
 1. THE PORTRAIT ON THE STAIRS, . . 67 
 
 2. MATTER AND FORM, . . . . 71 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3- INSOMNIA, .... 78 
 
 4. NATURE'S GREATEST MISTAKE, . . 82 
 
 5- CRUELTY, ...... 88 
 
 6. THE CURSE OF CLEVERNESS, . . . Q2 
 
 7. THE ETERNAL SUBJECT, ... 96 
 
 8. A MODERN VERSION, .... IOI 
 
 9. THE PATH OF REJECTION, . . . IO8 
 
MINIATURES 
 
AN OLD REPROBATE 
 
 HE gospel of hard work, the 
 half-crown start, laborious days, 
 comfortable preferment finally 
 or popular acclamation these 
 things are complacently recorded 
 by elderly mediocrities in many a hulking 
 tome. There are other things in life, and it 
 may be you sometimes pause in your painful 
 striving after perfection to think of them. 
 Then are your thanks due to the wicked and 
 garrulous Chevalier Grammont, who observed 
 the ways of your fathers when a merry monarch 
 was scandalous and poor ; to the accomplished 
 Anthony Hamilton, who recorded his observa- 
 tions ; to Sir Walter (needing no epithet), who 
 edited a translation of them ; and to the ser- 
 viceable Bohn, by whom or in whose spirit a 
 revised edition has been issued. 
 
 The revision need not trouble you. Very 
 like you do not care though ' the prettiest and 
 worst actress in the kingdom/ Rochester's 
 protegee, is found to have been Sarah Cooke 
 and not Mrs. Barry. Your limitations shall be 
 
4 MINIATURES 
 
 cared for ; we will keep more or less to the 
 theme. And, indeed, if we were to follow our 
 Chevalier very closely, reasons other than the 
 quality of your complaisance would bar the way. 
 Alas, and alack-a-day ! It is well known the 
 book is not virginibus puerisque. A persecuted 
 poet complained twenty -five years ago of the 
 casting from the library of ' all that cannot be 
 ' lisped in the nursery or fingered in the school- 
 ' room ' : let his arguments absolve the service- 
 able Bohn ; as for you and me, excursions and 
 alarums give us headaches. Yet is it permitted 
 to observe that apart from details the com- 
 plete lack of morals in the tone of Grammont 
 has a refreshing quality such as Lamb found 
 in Wycherley and Congreve. Thus, when the 
 jealous Lord Chesterfield, who had been edu- 
 cated in the South, carried off his wife from 
 a dangerous Court, ' This/ says Grammont, 
 ' made all the mothers vow to God that none 
 ' of their sons should ever set a foot in Italy.' 
 And when the lady summoned her lover 
 Hamilton (not Anthony, you are pleased to 
 remark) to her country house, only to laugh 
 at him for his pains, the Chevalier is indig- 
 nant. It is merely a harmless affectation ; to 
 talk of the hypocrisy of cynicism is an unsea- 
 sonable heaviness. And it is good to remem- 
 ber that the end of all the Chevalier's errors 
 was that he won to honourable marriage the 
 
AN OLD REPROBATE 5 
 
 beautiful Mistress Hamilton (this edition com- 
 mits the detestable anachronism of ' Miss'), 
 and lived to a good old unrepentant age. 
 
 There are points in this book for patriotic 
 pride. To begin with, it was written by a 
 Briton (he was Scots by his father's, Irish by 
 his mother's, side) in a style of French that 
 won Voltaire's praise. Next, Grammont, versed 
 in the ways of the Court of Louis xiv., and 
 long restored to it, speaks still in his old age 
 with enthusiasm of the Court of Charles u. 
 We are over ready to think of that time as one 
 of disgrace merely in our annals ; we can spare 
 a word, now and then, for its wit and its art. 
 Of the politeness of the Court, the fineness of 
 the town, and above all the charms of the 
 women, Grammont, even if you allow for 
 Anthony's patriotism, is an honest eulogist. 
 Mrs. Hyde she was sister-in-law to the 
 Duchess of York, and 'little Jermyn' made 
 her famous had ' a foot surprisingly beautiful 
 ' even in England.' And Frances Stewart 
 ' possedoit cet air de parure . . . qu'on n'atlrape 
 ' guere a mains que de I' avoir pris en France de.i 
 ' sajeunesse' ; still Frances Stewart was not a 
 Frenchwoman. Her story, by the way, is a 
 puzzle to the sagacious (our dear Chevalier sets 
 an example of discursiveness). She was for 
 long a pre-eminent, but say the historians 
 an innocent beauty of the Court, and then she 
 
6 MINIATURES 
 
 married the Duke of Richmond, whose scene 
 with Charles is famous. The erudite Edmund 
 Lodge is enthusiastic about her virtues ; and 
 yet she seems to have taken advantage of an 
 amorous but not tyrannical master, to have 
 calculated on the death of a kind mistress 
 (whereby she might have been who knows ? 
 Queen in her stead), and more than another 
 to have broken that Queen's heart. Very 
 likely she was virtuous ; but may one not 
 prefer poor Nelly ? Many a curious picture is 
 given here. My Lord of Rochester, banished 
 from court, sets up in Tower Street as a famous 
 ' German doctor,' and establishes a thriving 
 practice. How two maids-of-honour, disguised 
 as orange wenches, went in search of this 
 famous doctor, and what befell them by the 
 way, let our author tell. He is immoral, 
 trivial, and as himself said of Buckingham 
 the father and mother of scandal. Yet he is 
 worth reading. His intellect is various. For 
 a while he trifles ; then he gives you an 
 example of his insight, saying of Arlington 
 that ' his great earnestness passed for busi- 
 ness, his impenetrable stupidity for secrecy ' ; 
 anon he assures you easily, like Tacitus, that 
 ' the public grows familiar with everything by 
 ' habit.' Assuredly it had need in those days. 
 You read here with interest the gay stories of 
 Charles and his friends ; you frown, but the 
 
AN OLD REPROBATE 7 
 
 taste is not altogether bad. Granted the tone 
 of these men and women was vicious, and the 
 lives of them useless. Yet they had wit among 
 them, and a more general love of art than has 
 been known often at Court, and a love of sport. 
 Beneath some complexity of manner there 
 was great simplicity of essence. You loved, 
 and were accepted altogether or rejected. 
 You married, and your wife was faithful or 
 not. A time of decisive blows, to die of or 
 recover from. You have an idea that such 
 things as the Chevalier relates ' hurt not the 
 heart nor the brain.' They did not then 
 analyse and curse their birth in corners. Com- 
 plexity is development, some tell us ; but there 
 is happiness of a kind in this simplicity which 
 you find, at the bottom, in Grammont, with 
 much wit and food for more reflection. 
 
ZIMRI THE WRITER 
 
 'E have it from one who had 
 scant reason to love him that 
 George Villiers was ' all man- 
 kind's epitome.' But with 
 Buckingham, the builder, che- 
 mist, art-patron, epicure, man-killer, woman- 
 killer, musician, politician, we are not here 
 concerned. Our theme is Buckingham the 
 writer. 
 
 You think, or ought to think, at once of The 
 Rehearsal. Reading it to-day, one feels of 
 course a slowness and slightness of apprecia- 
 tion ; for who has read The Lost Lady, Pandora, 
 The Slighted Maid, and the rest of the plays it 
 caricatures, even though some six of them (as 
 Granada, Marriage-d-la-Mode, and Love in a 
 Nunnery") were Dryden's own ? The key may 
 help you to understand the parody of the 
 letter; but it was the spirit of the heroic 
 drama that Buckingham set out to laugh away, 
 and that is evaporated. He was writing for a 
 small audience, mostly of inveterate playgoers ; 
 
ZIMRI THE WRITER 9 
 
 an audience saturated with this spirit and 
 quick to take his points. But the early de- 
 mand for a key shows that the allusions easily 
 became obscure. One's enjoyment of The 
 Critic is far more facile, though Sheridan's 
 play has less body and wit than this one, and 
 Puff is a more shadowy creation than Mr. 
 Bayes. And yet Bayes is made up of two 
 originals ; a fact explained by a somewhat 
 curious circumstance. It is said that The 
 Rehearsal took ten years to write (and, by the 
 way, that the Duke's was not the only hand 
 in it) ; and in the beginning d' Avenant, Poet 
 Laureate, and chief of the Duke of York's 
 Company, was to hand for ridicule ; and the 
 incident of the patched nose is clearly a relic 
 of the first conception : you remember d'Ave- 
 nant's nose in Woodstock ? But Dryden, whose 
 light was shining high before the ten years 
 were out, was a worthier object, and so the 
 part was altered to fit him, and Buckingham 
 was careful to instruct Lacy the player in per- 
 sonal imitation. The effect of fretful vanity 
 and fatuous complacency is admirable. And 
 though Buckingham was attacking a man 
 whose poetic little finger was thicker than 
 his own loins, his particular intent was sane. 
 Those luckless Puritans may have been respon- 
 sible (as Dryden affirms) for the inception of 
 the heroic plays, but the fustian and bad art 
 
10 MINIATURES 
 
 of these are at least as remarkable as their 
 poetry. One can understand that their itera- 
 tion was a nuisance. Unfortunately, satire is 
 rarely discriminating, and some of the passages 
 parodied were a credit to their authors. Such 
 incidents, on the other hand, as the caricature 
 of the two letters in The Virgin Widow by 
 the two boots are in the true vein. For 
 the rest, The Rehearsal is curiously minute, 
 robust, and pleasant, a remorseless study of 
 cheap effects. And one only remembers, as 
 a rule, the 'two Kings of Brentford/ who 
 are a slight and unessential part of its 
 mechanism. 
 
 The Rehearsal, then, is a thing apart, appeal- 
 ing to an accidental but a special experience, 
 and hard to be otherwise appraised, as is all 
 caricature, from Aristophanes his Frogs to the 
 fun they made t'other day of Mr. Oscar Wilde, 
 between which two one may place it for 
 obscurity and wit. The other plays have one 
 general characteristic : they bear the marks of 
 work done by a man of great ability who was 
 unpractised in his medium. They are some- 
 what crude, that is, and somewhat fine ; there 
 is much of the amateur in them and nothing 
 of the fool. The sum of indecency in them, 
 as in the few poems we have, is small ; they 
 are rather frank than gross. Surely (this by 
 the way) only a race essentially indelicate 
 
ZIMRI THE WRITER 11 
 
 could have invented a delicacy that consists 
 merely in ignoring the common facts of phy- 
 sical existence a delicacy to be acquired with 
 ease by the coarsest and most vulgar mind 
 in the world, and one that is in itself a mode 
 of coarseness. Buckingham was of a society 
 indubitably refined in some directions, and as 
 indubitably free-spoken ; and as, when he 
 wrote, he kept what we call indecency in 
 natural perspective and due proportion, he is, 
 therefore, blameless in that respect. There 
 is some brightness in The Chances. ' To the 
 ' King's house to see The Chances. A good 
 ' play I find it, and the actors most good in it. 
 ' And pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play 
 ' very properly " All night I weepe "; and sung 
 ' it admirably. The whole play pleases me 
 ' well : and most of all, the sight of many fine 
 ' ladies : among others . . .' Mr. Pepys was 
 an impressionist critic. The blank verse of 
 The Hestauration : or Right will take place ; A 
 Tragi-Comedy, is for the most part indefensible. 
 Now and again the sentiment impresses : 
 ' (death) is but the giving up a Game which 
 ' must be lost ' is one of those commonplaces 
 that wisdom feels and cleverness contemns ; 
 and in another place the old idea of Canute 
 and the waves is admirably expressed. The 
 view of tragi-comedy is indeed more primi- 
 tive than Mr. Meredith's, the comedians and 
 
12 MINIATURES 
 
 tragedians being distinct ; yet nor tragedy nor 
 comedy is below a fair level. Sedgmoor and 
 The Militant Couple need not detain you ; the 
 one is a slight personal squib, the other a 
 study of unhappy tempers in action before 
 analysis was familiar. The poems are more 
 interesting. There is no poetry in them, 
 none ; but there is a pertinent, a full-blooded 
 kind of wit that a man should relish. The 
 Instalment trivial in subject is spirited from 
 beginning to end, and so are most of the 
 others. The Consolatory Epistle to Captain 
 Julian the Muses' Newsmonger is a faint fore- 
 shadow of The Dunciad, though a world less 
 malignant. 
 
 ' Thus while our Bards are famished by their 
 
 Wit, 
 Thou, who hast none at all, yet thriv'st by it,' 
 
 was worth the quoting, for the story is as new 
 as it was old. A line in another set of verses 
 'All True Love is grounded on Esteem' 
 comes passing queerly (to let Buckingham the 
 man intrude) from him whose mistress held 
 his horse while he killed her husband ; but 
 that emotion plays ancient tricks yet with our 
 intellects. 
 
 The fantastic imagination that spoiled in a 
 worldly sense George Villiers' active life and 
 excited the groundlings' widest gape plays, 
 
ZIMRI THE WRITER 13 
 
 you see, an insignificant part in his literary 
 remains. And when you come to read his 
 speeches in Parliament and a few of his letters 
 you are struck with their clear reasoning and 
 business-like plainness. They are put forcibly, 
 of course ; but there are no inapposite flights 
 of fancy. In matters of policy he was all for 
 logic, and his failure as an artist therein is 
 merely that logic is of all things detested by 
 the average politician : his assumption of 
 untrue premises was only a part of the game. 
 And in matters of faith he was all for reason : 
 ' . . . when the first heat (of the Reformation) 
 ' was over, and considering Men began to 
 ' reflect, that the Reformation offered nothing 
 ' but words . . . they saw no satisfactory 
 ' motive for quitting their old Mumsimus for a 
 ' new Sumsimus, and could find no real advan- 
 ' tage in withdrawing from Father Peter to 
 ' Father Martin, and Father John, since tho' 
 ' these disclaimed the Infallibility the others 
 ' usurpt, yet they still, without that Guard, 
 ' demanded our Belief of their Doctrines, tho' 
 ' not less absurd and ridiculous/ It sounds 
 trite nowadays, but serves to show his range 
 as a writer, various in that as in all things. In 
 fine, one cannot reckon his merits as writer 
 without a glance at the rest of him. It is 
 poor philosophy, for many an author known 
 for his authorship alone has dissipated his 
 
14 MINIATURES 
 
 energies in a hundred other directions. But 
 you cannot choose but say that Buckingham, 
 as a writer virile, witty, immature, is great 
 among statesmen and wastrels who have 
 written. 
 
'THAT DEIL O' DUNDEE' 
 
 HERE are few more pleasant or 
 more bracing emotions than 
 honest indignation, and it can be 
 enjoyed in double measure by 
 whoso will carefully study the fate 
 of John Graham of Claverhouse. Not his fate 
 in the flesh, for that was glorious : if his service 
 was toilsome, it was rewarded as he wished; 
 he played the game, and knew not the bitter- 
 ness of losing it. But his fate, as he has fared 
 at the hands of historians, is otherwise and 
 very curious to follow. You may first read 
 Macaulay with his extracts from his Covenant- 
 ing authorities (Walker and Wodrow and the 
 rest), and enjoy your first possession of wrath ; 
 you pity the poor Covenanters and rail at the 
 cruelties of their wicked oppressor, who ' shed 
 the blood of the saints like water/ And 
 then you may read Napier's Memorials and 
 Letters, and rejoice worthily at the exposure 
 of the fanatics who calumniated a hero, and of 
 the illustrious and popular historian who copied 
 with gleeful facility those lies about a man, his 
 
 15 
 
16 MINIATURES 
 
 equal (very probably) in intellect, and vastly 
 his superior in most other things. 
 
 It is all old history now. Truth is great and 
 has prevailed over Lord Macaulay, whose word 
 nobody would now take by itself. But the 
 matter is still worth a few sentences. In the 
 first place, Napier's book is excellent good 
 reading. He writes frankly as a hater of the 
 side he is attacking, as an amateur, and, one 
 may say, as a sportsman. He does not affect 
 to be cool ; his indignation is roused, and he 
 rouses yours inevitably in stating a case whose 
 strength is not in the remarks of a hot partisan 
 (as we may fairly call him) but in the nature 
 of things and in authentic documents. It is 
 very pleasant to follow him as he exposes, 
 indignantly but humorously, the deliberate 
 ignorance of Macaulay, and makes sport of the 
 crazy reveries of Wodrow and Patrick the 
 Pedlar and the rest of the saintly historians, 
 and proves to you the cowardly maliciousness 
 of Bishop Burnet. And he is ever careful and 
 ready with his evidence ; in fact, he is a whole- 
 some corrector of ' that rapid, dazzling, and 
 ' dramatic history, which so often delights us 
 'in Lord Macaulay and the Christmas panto- 
 ' mimes.' In the second place, truth has had 
 in this instance a weightier adversary than the 
 Whig champion. For tens that have read 
 Napier, hundreds have read Macaulay, but 
 
THAT DEIL O' DUNDEE 17 
 
 thousands Old Mortality. That Sir Walter 
 with his Tory principles and his Cavalier sym- 
 pathies should have painted Claverhouse, the 
 hero of Killiecrankie, blacker than he was, is 
 strange indeed. But we must remember that 
 the Covenanters, their piety and pathos and 
 saintliness and sufferings, were become a sort 
 of national myth, whose influence was hard 
 to withstand. The result is one of his few 
 failures, a character that merely as a creation 
 of fiction is impossible. None of us is wholly 
 black or white ; all are grey, as we know. But 
 this Claverhouse in Old Mortality combines 
 qualities that may hardly co-exist : a gentle- 
 man cannot be deliberately cruel towards 
 inoffensive people. Either the character is 
 impossible, or one must say that, as Sir Walter 
 draws it, his eulogistic remarks are, on 
 analysis, valueless. But in truth he was think- 
 ing of the ' Christian Carrier/ The story of 
 this worthy, how he was peaceably gardening, 
 when ' bloody Clavers ' came upon him, and 
 for no particular reason, except that he (Brown 
 was his name) was virtuous, shot him with his 
 own hand, and went on to gibe at his widow, 
 who had seen the ghastly outrage this, all 
 this is told with the greatest unction by Peter 
 the Pedlar. Sir Walter had seen the account, 
 and had not seen a then unpublished letter, 
 which shows that Brown was a rebel, in hiding 
 
18 MINIATURES 
 
 since Bothvvell Bridge and engaged in foment- 
 ing sedition ; that he was found in possession 
 of arms, and executed by the ordinary law of 
 the time. One feels sure there was something 
 shady about a person called 'the Christian 
 Carrier.' Pity Sir Walter accepted the story. 
 He wrote afterwards: '. . . the beastly 
 ' Covenanters, against whom he (Dundee) acted, 
 ' hardly had any claim to be called men unless 
 'what was founded on their walking upon 
 'their hind feet. You can hardly conceive 
 ' the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of these 
 ' people, according to the accounts they have 
 'themselves preserved/ Still, he leaves his 
 Claverhouse a cross between the 'bloody 
 Clavers ' of the Covenanters and the ' Bonnie 
 Dundee' of his own immortal song; and he 
 can scarce have seen those letters which the 
 Duke of Buccleuch allowed Napier to publish. 
 The fact, of course, is that the Covenanters 
 were impossible citizens, whom the Govern- 
 ment of Charles n. (it may be at least argued) 
 was justified in suppressing. It was all very well 
 to call it tyranny to prevent their ' worshipping 
 God in their own way,' but that way included, 
 among other things, the murder of an old 
 archbishop in the arms of his daughter a more 
 authentic person than the Christian Carrier's 
 widow. The Government and their worthiest 
 instrument determined to crush them once 
 
'THAT DEIL O' DUNDEE' 19 
 
 and for all. Claverhouse could not have liked 
 the work ; but, as he writes, ' I am as sorry to 
 ' see a man die, even a Whig, as any of them- 
 ' selves; but when one dies justly for his own 
 ' faults, and may save a hundred to fall in 
 ' the like, I have no scruple.' He was severe, 
 then, terribly severe by our idea, and was 
 perhaps the executant of a bad policy; but 
 severity is not cruelty. His stirring life was 
 of the kind to call out a man's working 
 virtues. In his prosecution of the Covenanters 
 he showed unequalled energy and vigilance ; 
 at Court tact and fascination ; at the fall of 
 James statesmanship and genius in war; and 
 throughout his life, in his early service with 
 the Prince of Orange in his youth as at Killie- 
 crankie, unqualified personal courage. These 
 qualities one may predicate of him for certain. 
 They raise some questions : he was almost the 
 only bold and loyal adviser near James's per- 
 son when William landed, and one wonders 
 if, had James listened, he would then, or 
 later in Scotland, have driven the Dutchmen 
 into the sea. It was quite possible. But still 
 better for his fame and for posthumous sym- 
 pathy to die as he died. ' One named John- 
 ' ston told the deponent that he had catched 
 ' the Viscount as he fell from his horse, after 
 ( his being shot, at the said fight ; the Viscount 
 'then asking the said Johnston how the day 
 
20 MINIATURES 
 
 'went, and that he answered the day went 
 f well for the King meaning King' James, 
 ' but that he was sorry for his lordship ; and 
 ' that the Viscount replied it was the less 
 ' matter for him, seeing the day went well for 
 ' his Master.' Dulce et decorum est. But these 
 qualities do not exhaust his character. He 
 was polished, of course, and that rapid success 
 at Court of a country gentleman who had passed 
 his life in the field is sufficiently impressive ; 
 but he had learning as well. His spelling is 
 that of his time, but his expression is ready, 
 and shows at least a clear head and a capable 
 intellect. With every beauty, he was not 
 amatory. In spite of his writing once that he 
 would take a certain lady ' in her Smoak '- 
 she was not to be taken one may say he was 
 somewhat cold in this relation, and, if even his 
 Covenanting critics had not borne witness to 
 his morals, that he had gone fast and was 
 tired. Being in treaty for the daughter of a 
 Presbyterian house, he writes to one who 
 feared bad influences for him : ' It is not in the 
 ' power of love, nor any other folly, to alter 
 ' my loyalty/ Poor man, he was sorely tried : 
 having to leave his wife on his wedding-day to 
 go and suppress a conventicle or some such 
 meeting ; and he allowed himself a rare expres- 
 sion of irritation : ' I shall be revenged some 
 ' time or other of this unseasonable trouble 
 
'THAT DEIL O' DUNDEE' 21 
 
 ' those dogs give me. They might have let 
 ' Tuesday pass.' Loyalty was his passion, and 
 his passion, as that of others like him, has often 
 been written of as though there were some- 
 thing stupid and wrong-headed about its per- 
 sistence. But it may be that in his day loyalty 
 to King James was the creed of an enlightened 
 statesman ; that the stupidity was, if anywhere, 
 with those who would call in a foreigner to 
 prevent an universal toleration. 
 
 One takes his leave of Dundee with ad- 
 miration : a strong, capable, masculine man, 
 severe even to extremity in the interests of 
 what he thought just and conducive to the 
 nation's happiness ; planning his own advan- 
 tage as an honest man may ; clear-headed at 
 the supreme crisis, daring and loyal to death. 
 It is worth noting that, a few fanatics apart, 
 the counsel for the other side is only Bishop 
 Burnet, who cringed to the powers that were 
 and told lies about them when they were not 
 him and none other. For Macaulay took his 
 lies ready-made. 
 
ROCHESTER 
 
 I O a certain order of mind the con- 
 templation of a laborious and 
 useful life, ending full of years 
 and deserved honours, though 
 that life be coloured by com- 
 manding abilities, has less of attraction in it 
 than the memory of a genius on whom, after a 
 brief period of fitful dazzling, the gods have 
 put the seal of their love. It is odd, then, 
 that Rochester, who died in his thirty-fourth 
 year, confessed pre-eminent in wit by the 
 universal judgment of his time, and eulogised 
 for it by a critic so antipathetic to his failings 
 as Dr. Johnson Rochester, the hero of so 
 many adventures desperately wicked should 
 be known to most readers to-day only for a 
 couple of moderate epigrams on Charles the 
 Second. His coarseness occurs at once to 
 your mind ; but that can be matched in many 
 a well-known author in Catullus, for example, 
 read in schools and furnished with one of the 
 most elaborate and learned commentaries in 
 the record of English scholarship. In the 
 
 22 
 
ROCHESTER 23 
 
 matter of circumstantial excursions on for 
 bidden ground Rabelais beats him to nothing- 
 ness. Not mere coarseness is the reason, but 
 the fact that Rochester chooses almost invari- 
 ably as his material subjects whose mention is 
 offensive to our manners. Had he but smeared 
 a page with ribaldry here and there, a common 
 pair of scissors had secured him permanence. 
 But in truth be it that an obsession of such 
 things was the cause, or an enjoyment of 
 amused deprecation, or (but this is not likely) 
 a lower pride in his daring effects and motives 
 on which we have agreed to silence are his 
 usual themes ; so that if you remove the 
 coarseness you leave nothing behind or rather 
 his poem upon Nothing (and one or two more), 
 which Johnson calls his strongest effort. 
 There one may suppose with deference that 
 the Doctor was misled by his chaste mind ; 
 for, in spite of some well-sounding lines, the 
 thing is but a frigid result of easy ingenuity. 
 It is rather in some of his least fastidious 
 attempts that you find exceeding good wit, 
 sense, and pungency ; and should there come 
 a time when all natural things shall be free of 
 mysterious evil and reproach, so that pruriency 
 shall be impossible and coarseness motiveless, 
 a time when most like it will never be all 
 fields shall be playgrounds for art without 
 exception, then the dog will have his day. 
 
24 MINIATURES 
 
 For ' in all his works,' says Johnson, ' there is 
 ' spriteliness and vigour, and everywhere may 
 ' be found tokens of a mind which study might 
 ' have carried to excellence.' It is not, of 
 course, merely a tolerance which will allow 
 any subject to be mentioned that is required 
 of him who would read this author, but one 
 which will grant any subject to laughter and 
 gibes ; an absolute equality of subjects must 
 be premised. Now and again there is a note 
 of self-mocking pathos, and sometimes of a 
 sceva indignatio that reads curiously real, as in 
 the Satire on Charles, ' for which he was 
 banished the Court.' And in some of his 
 attacks on his enemies there is a quite refresh- 
 ing power of abuse. But do not run to read 
 Rochester, for he is beyond all conception 
 ribald. By the way, he is hard to get at, and 
 the authenticity of some of the poems even in 
 the early editions is doubtful. Even in his 
 own day, says Bishop Burnet, anything extra- 
 ordinary in the way of satire was laid at his 
 door. 
 
 The man's life is of more interest than his 
 writings. Even his friends in those merry 
 times deplored his excesses. In preaching 
 his funeral sermon, a sort of composition not 
 over exact as a rule, the worthy clergyman 
 remarks: ' From the breasts of his Mother, 
 ' the University, he first sucked those Perfec- 
 
ROCHESTER 25 
 
 ' tions of Wit, Eloquence, and Poetry, which 
 ' afterwards by his own corrupt Stomach or 
 ' some ill Juices after, were turned into Poison, 
 ' to himself and others.' St.-Evremond in that 
 letter to the Duchess of Mazarine in which he 
 places Rochester above Boileau as ' nearest the 
 ancients in Satire/ yet, remarking that he 
 was born in the year of Charles the First's 
 martyrdom, adds the unkind reflection : ( The 
 ' King was fitter for the world to which he 
 ' went from the Scaffold than his Lordship for 
 ' that he entered into from his Mother's 
 ' Womb.' As for our friends Evelyn and 
 Pepys, the one calls him 'a. very prophane 
 wit,' the other ' an idle rogue.' (You may 
 dig out of the last-named gossip a story of 
 how my lord ran away with and married Mis- 
 tress Mallet, ' the great beauty and fortune of 
 the North.' ' A melancholy heiress,' Gram- 
 mont calls her, but says nothing of the elope- 
 ment.) And Johnson finishes him with 
 customary thunder : ' Thus in a course of 
 ' drunken gaiety and gross sensuality, with 
 ' intervals of study perhaps yet more criminal ' 
 surely that is passing hard ' with an avowed 
 ' contempt of all decency and order, a total 
 ' disregard to every moral and a resolute 
 ' denial of every religious obligation, he lived 
 ' worthless and useless, and blazed out his 
 ' youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness.' 
 
26 MINIATURES 
 
 In truth he was a mass of contradictories. 
 Distinguished for personal bravery in the 
 Dutch war at Bergen he took a message from 
 one ship to another in an open boat, hotly 
 fired on the while he lived to gain a reputa- 
 tion for cowardice in private quarrels. It is 
 just possible that a life to undermine the 
 nerves may not have been the reason for this 
 so much as a contempt for public opinion 
 pushed to an extreme ; in the spirit of his own 
 saying that ' every man would be a coward if 
 he durst.' Again, he was often indifferent 
 to the advances of Court beauties, but he 
 would go to an infinity of trouble (as in the 
 famous Newmarket story) for a low amourette. 
 And one is almost sorry for it he affords 
 the common spectacle of the rake repentant 
 on his death-bed, if one may trust Dr. Burnet, 
 who to be sure had something to gain by the 
 conversion of so notorious a sinner. He showed 
 then that moral weakness which attributes 
 vices to unhappy opinions : declaring, accord- 
 ing to Parsons, that he owed his undoing to 
 Hobbes' philosophy ! 
 
 But neither these deploring clergymen nor 
 his eulogistic friends appear to have found the 
 secret of his life. It was the passion for acting. 
 The stories of his strange disguises, his habit 
 of going among all classes, speaking their 
 language and adopting their manners, and 
 
ROCHESTER 27 
 
 above all his grand coup of setting up as a 
 quack-doctor ('Alexander Bendo's speech' 
 is excellent reading) show the histrionic in- 
 stinct. Now he would be a brave soldier, and 
 now the sturdy patriot, lashing the vices of 
 the Court and hurling his satires and epigrams 
 at the King's mistresses at Portsmouth and 
 Cleveland who deserved them, at Mrs. Gwynn 
 who did not. And, by the way, he was gener- 
 ally, says St.-Evremond, 'in contradiction to 
 the Town' in his dramatic judgment; 'and 
 ' in that, perhaps, he was generally in the 
 ' right, for of all audiences in polite nations 
 ' perhaps there is not one that judges so very 
 ' falsely of the Drama as the English/ Good 
 St.-Evremond, had you but lived to-day ! 
 
 No, you can hardly tell the secret of this 
 complex life. Perhaps it was an insatiable 
 curiosity : the man, for no earthly reason you 
 can think of, set detectives to note him the 
 indiscretions of the Court. Perhaps perhaps 
 the artificial elegy on him of Mistress Behn 
 was all he deserved : 
 
 ' Mourn, mourn ye Muses all ; your loss deplore : 
 The young, the noble Strephon is no more'; 
 
 and so forth. But Rochester was a man of 
 genius, was (he said) drunk for years together, 
 and died of old age at thirty-three. And yet 
 there is no cult of his memory. 
 
MY LORD JUDAS 
 
 OOM for a rogue ! It should be 
 accorded readily, for rogues are 
 mostly an interesting folk, and 
 this one's roguery was naturally 
 daring and persistent, and per- 
 fected by art withal. And yet, to be frank, 
 there is that in the story of the second Lord 
 Sunderland from which one turns repelled and 
 sickened. For, making a conventional dis- 
 tinction between common honesty and tradi- 
 tional honour, one may affirm of the amiably 
 disposed that, while offences against the former 
 may amuse them, they cannot away with a 
 violation of the latter code. You would, for 
 example, consent to listen to the experiences 
 of a capable rascal sentenced for forgery, or at 
 least to read them; but would not your interest 
 in human nature need great strength to repress 
 the protest of your instinct, were you required 
 to study -say a Denzil Somers who took a 
 pension of Sir Austin and bullied Lady Feverel? 
 The natural history of such an one is unpleasant, 
 but sometimes wholesome to set forth. 
 
 28 
 
MY LORD JUDAS 29 
 
 As thus : if we believe certain evidence 
 against him, my Lord Sunderland's failings 
 were lying, ingratitude, and treachery. But 
 this evidence has been treated very discreetly, 
 lest it cast a shadow on the glories of the 
 Revolution ; for without a treacherous Minister 
 (our subject) at Whitehall and a treacherous 
 Minister (his uncle, Henry Sidney) at the 
 Hague, the path of the knot of intriguers who 
 upset the second James had been thorny, 
 possibly even to despair. And so it is related 
 by Lodge that when Addison suggested to 
 Edmund Smith a history of the Revolution, the 
 complacent essayist and Whig secretary was 
 vastly disturbed by the question : ' What shall 
 I do with the character of Lord Sunderland ? ' 
 It disposed of the scheme, for only one answer 
 was given by facts known to all the world. 
 Nobody could deny that Sunderland, then 
 professing Roman Catholicism, had been the 
 chief abettor, and probably instigator, of James 
 in that treatment of the Church of England 
 which was the lever used for his expulsion ; 
 that he was not dismissed from office until 
 William had set sail ; that he had taken refuge 
 in Holland, of all places, from asserted fear of 
 the new king ; and that, returning presently 
 to England, he was only kept out of office by 
 the disgust of popular opinion and jealousy 
 of rivals. It seems likely enough that while 
 
30 MINIATURES 
 
 James's Minister, being in correspondence, 
 through his uncle, with William, he had de- 
 liberately encouraged his master in a course 
 that he knew would end in his ruin. James 
 was, as has been shown, since Macaulay's day, 
 an enlightened and intelligent man ; but he 
 was altogether unappreciative of the native 
 Conservatism of his subjects, and one sees 
 how his intellect and temperament were an 
 easy prey to a subtle and experienced coun- 
 sellor, who could read the signs of the times. 
 But one only appreciates the full magnificence 
 of Sunderland's treachery when one remembers 
 that he had voted for James's exclusion in 1680, 
 had turned about and fawned, and been taken 
 into favour with the Stuart incapacity for 
 long resentment honoured and caressed. Add 
 then the fact that he had been throughout 
 accepting a pension from Louis, and your com- 
 pleted picture of complex rascality will surely 
 try your power of disgusted admiration. 
 
 These are the excuses for relating facts by 
 no means obscure or in need of great research. 
 The stating of them, even though it be crambe 
 repetita to you, is in sort a homage to truth, 
 which has been little courted in this particular ; 
 and the junction of attraction by what is in- 
 tellectual with repulsion by what is moral in 
 the same acts may be possibly a curious sensa- 
 tion. As a rule, what repels is irrelevant to 
 
MY LORD JUDAS 31 
 
 what attracts the case of a wife-deserting 
 poet, for instance or else is merely an offence 
 against honesty ; here the two are apprehended 
 together. And though one would not call 
 Sunderland a genius, yet he was so eminent an 
 artist in rascality, his ingenuity was so brilliant 
 and ready, that you cannot choose but admire, 
 and wish there had been in his case some 
 element some passion of desire or revenge 
 to make him less contemptible a man. If you 
 accept the hostile version of Sunderland's con- 
 duct in the Monmouth rebellion, it is hard to 
 enjoy the grand simplicity of his plan and the 
 coolness of its execution without the intruding 
 contempt for his vile treachery. Our morality 
 will impertinently obscure artistic appreciation! 
 It was so admirable, when Monmouth had im- 
 plicated him, to assure him of pardon if he 
 should not confess, and then, having destroyed 
 his credit by making him contradict himself, 
 to intercept his letter to the king, and so get 
 him despatched with all speed. But is it, or 
 is it not, an affectation to maintain that its 
 vileness does not destroy your pleasure ? 
 
 A remark or two may be added to this 
 miniature in words. That he is said by Evelyn 
 to have impoverished himself by play is by 
 comparison to his credit. He married a 
 daughter of Digby, Earl of Bristol ; but Mr. 
 Pepys heard of an odd incident of the court- 
 
32 MINIATURES 
 
 ship. ' The wedding clothes were made, and 
 ' portion and everything agreed on and ready ; 
 ' and the other day he goes away nobody yet 
 ' knows whither, sending her the next morning 
 ' a release of his right or claim to her, and 
 ( advice to his friends not to inquire into the 
 ' reason of this doing, for he hath enough of 
 ' it ; and that he gives them liberty to say and 
 ' think what they will of him, so they do not 
 ' demand the reason of his leaving her, being 
 1 resolved never to have her.' But they were 
 well matched, she being an ambitious woman 
 and disliked of her husband's mother, the 
 gentle Sacharissa. Even so ; this was the son 
 of none other than Dorothy Sidney, the model 
 of wifely constancy and the best inspiration of 
 Waller, whose prophecies for her happiness 
 were so cruelly falsified all of them save that 
 she would live long, which, poor woman, she 
 might well have wished had not come true. It 
 was ill for Sunderland that his simple-hearted 
 and loyal father died at Newbury for his king 
 so young; one can fancy Sacharissa was not 
 the best regent for his disposition, that she 
 made him too absolute a prince. He is said 
 to have been quick at his books as a boy. and 
 to have matured his talents and accomplish- 
 ments by a lengthened stay abroad. We know 
 how he used them : to advance himself to 
 highest place, and to support him in an ex- 
 
MY LORD JUDAS S3 
 
 tremity of unscrupulous daring, and to leave 
 his memory so patently vile that the bare 
 mention of his name shocked Mr. Addison. 
 It is a comfort to reflect that he overreached 
 himself, and that William could not altogether 
 defy the opposition to his reinstatement. 
 < April 24 (1691). I visited the Earl and 
 ' Countess of Sunderland, now come to kiss 
 ' the king's hand, after his return from Hol- 
 ' land. This is a mystery. ... 1 Dec. (1695). 
 ' I dined at Lord Sunderland's, now the 
 ' great favourite and underhand politician, 
 ' but not adventuring on any character, being 
 ' obnoxious to the people for having twice 
 ' changed his religion.' So he was left to add 
 to the Al thorp Library, already famous, and 
 be employed worthily in his last days. To 
 blame is unphilosophical and to be catholic 
 the necessary quality ; but here is one whose 
 villainy somewhat jars on your sympathies, 
 and for once you will not grudge a common 
 moralist his edification. 
 
ETHEREGE 
 
 'HEN you read Wycherley, you 
 recognise a master of theatrical 
 effects, the able exponent of a 
 robustly vile humanity ; then 
 you feel a trifle sickened, and 
 anon are downright bored. He is no cynic, 
 not held by any ethical convention ; if in his 
 pages the world be a thing grotesque, obscene, 
 it is because to a modern apprehension the man 
 was even so : honest he was, as well, and, 
 therefore, with little satisfaction for a splenetic 
 mood. Congreve, of course, is pre-eminent in 
 wit and diction ; and because there is a mali- 
 cious subtlety in the wickedness of his world, 
 and his way is to see evil in everything, while 
 you are aware, all the time, that your author 
 has in reality as clear a perception of what is 
 otherwise as your own, he suits your occasional 
 spite against dull circumstance. But this con- 
 vention that there is nothing good under the 
 sun, that desire is the whole of life grows, 
 
 34 
 
ETHEREGE 35 
 
 in spite of Elia, tedious to minds that have 
 outgrown the counter convention of Puritan 
 propriety too long for constant militancy 
 against it. 
 
 If this be so with you, Etherege should find 
 place in your appreciations. If he lack the 
 scenic sense of Wycherley, he lacks also his 
 brutality ; if the wit of Congreve, Congreve's 
 conscious narrowness. He is more apt to dis- 
 tinguish than either ; the passions of his men 
 take an individual air ; his women, honest or 
 not, show degrees and differences. A most 
 readable play is his last, The Man of Mode, or 
 Sir Foplmg Flutter. It seems to show you 
 ' Gentle George's ' world, as he saw it. A 
 world gayer and more wanton than our own, 
 but not immersed in (what you would call) 
 immoral pursuits, not unknowing of the charm 
 of frank innocence and virile friendship. It 
 is an obvious criticism to say, with Lamb, that 
 the whole business of this world is intrigue. 
 But these plays are frankly of intrigue, and in 
 what age have idle young men of the town 
 not given the most of their attention to one 
 or other sort of the world of women ? The 
 Dorimant is said to be sketched from Roches- 
 ter, and it may well be the case, though it is 
 curious that a song in the play, said to be by 
 Dorimant, is by Sir Charles Sedley. Dorimant 
 is of profligate habit and ironical temper, a 
 
36 MINIATURES 
 
 'fine gentleman/ a man of parts withal, and 
 fascinating at will. ' I know he is a devil/ says 
 poor Mrs. Loveit; 'but he has something of the 
 angel yet undefac'd in him.' Now when he 
 would cast off this Mrs. Loveit a woman ' in 
 society ' it is to be noted that, vain and 
 unfeeling though he be, he yet sets about it 
 with a regard for outward decency, bears him 
 in fact more as a gentleman than in a like 
 case the hero of The Slory of the Gadslnjs. And 
 his friend Medley, ' the spirit of scandal ' 
 said to be Sedley or Etherege himself and 
 young Bellair are possible. Old Bellair would 
 be no doubt accounted coarse in his speech 
 to-day, but he is neither a brute nor a bully, 
 and his heartiness (that most difficult quality 
 to portray) has a certain engaging sincerity. 
 Sir Fopling Flutter was said by Dean Lockitt 
 to be Etherege, which can hardly be the case; 
 the foundation for the idea is that in him 
 French modes and predilections are ridiculed, 
 and Etherege had lived in Paris. He may or 
 may not be drawn from one Beau Hewit, but 
 in any case he is drawn with art, effectively. 
 Dryden can say with truth in his epilogue that 
 'Sir Fopling is a fool so nicely writ, the ladies 
 ' would mistake him for a wit.' His folly is 
 absurd but not extravagant; his conceit im- 
 mense but not abnormal. Supposed to have 
 birth and breeding, he is no clown : and be- 
 
ETHEREGE 37 
 
 cause it is comedy, the satire is not a whit less 
 mordant. The women are, one passionate and 
 reckless, one amorous and discreet, besides 
 two lightly sketched match-makers. Their 
 superficial coarseness is of the time, hardly 
 more pronounced than you find it a hundred 
 years later. 
 
 Of the other two plays, She Would if She 
 Could is merely farcical on broad lines, divert- 
 ing sometimes, sometimes wooden ; and Love 
 in a Tub is a compound of serious scenes in 
 verse, and of buffoonery dragged in by the 
 heels. They deserve a word : the ' Poems ' do 
 not, and one may pass to a general and some- 
 what noticeable consideration. The girls in 
 Etherege are commonly charming. In the 
 first play, Love in a Tub, they are on a poetical 
 plane, and, it may be, dull ; but at least you 
 must credit their author with a not ignoble 
 conception. Aurelia, who pleads with her 
 sister to accept the love of a man herself 
 loves secretly, may be unconvincing, but is 
 not, surely, the creation of a narrowly base 
 nature. This play, it is to be observed in 
 the connection, benefited the house by a 
 thousand pounds in a month. In She Would 
 if She Could are ' two young ladies ' neither 
 prudes nor hussies, neither sticks nor unna- 
 turally witty. Wild by our notions, they 
 are provocative, human, delightful. 
 
38 MINIATURES 
 
 ' This is sly and pretty, 
 
 ' And this is wild and witty ; 
 
 ' If either staid 
 
 ' 'Till she dy'd a maid, 
 
 ' I' faith 'twould be great pity. ' 
 
 And you feel, as you read, that the catch is in 
 the right. And Harriet, in the best play, is 
 likewise natural and frank and charming. All 
 are unaffectedly aware of the lives of their 
 suitors, but they are open with their know- 
 ledge, and sin not with innuendo or pretence. 
 And the writers who can show, convincingly, 
 innocence which is not mere ignorance are 
 sufficiently uncommon. 
 
 Etherege, then, has distinction as a writer. 
 He is fanciful, life-like, and sometimes even 
 fine, and is further notable among his contem- 
 poraries for an effective restraint in satire. A 
 touch of feeling here and there and a sugges- 
 tion of romance come pleasantly upon you. 
 His grossness ah, there we come on an old 
 friend in this connection. ' Chastity/ says 
 Sterne, ' by nature the gentlest of the affections, 
 ' give it but its head 'tis like a ramping and 
 ' a roaring lion.' But it must really spare this 
 lamb without the argumentative interference 
 of a champion. Of Etherege the man our 
 ramping lion has better right to make a meal. 
 Horace Walpole tells a tale of a king's mistress 
 discarded, who was insulted by the rabble. 
 
ETHEREGE 39 
 
 1 Messieurs,' she said, 'puis-que vous me connoissez, 
 priez Dieu pour moi.' Etherege was the friend 
 of Rochester, and had to retire with my lord 
 from the public eye. Sent to the Hague by 
 Charles, and to Ratisbon by James, he was a 
 scandalous ambassador given to gaming and 
 other vice. But he had the grace to be ruined 
 by the Revolutions which ruined his master. 
 Priez Dieu pour lui, though he himself would 
 not have thanked you. 
 
A VICE-QUEEN 
 
 REAMS will fashion you a con- 
 crete result of your knowledge, 
 plain and inferential, that shall 
 exceed in vividness and in con- 
 vincing truth the utmost imagin- 
 ings of your waking hours. Should a fairy 
 take you in sleep to England as it was two 
 hundred and a few more years ago, beg that 
 you may talk with her who was Barbara 
 Villiers, Mrs. Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine., 
 and Duchess of Cleveland ; for to value her 
 duly you will have to rid you of many pre- 
 possessions and associations, not so much of 
 morality as of the accidents of our refinement. 
 If you hunt her through Grammont and the 
 rest, and allow yourself the while to think of 
 the sort of people you know who lead the life 
 of her and her associates, you will fall short 
 of the truth. Much of a wanton will be your 
 verdict, and something of a shrew a vulgar 
 verdict, be assured. But remember their life 
 was not a revolt against the spirit of society ; 
 it was that spirit itself. It is imbecile to 
 
 40 
 
A VICE-QUEEN 41 
 
 doubt (yet a book has been writ to prove) that 
 necessary virtues of the beaver pattern co- 
 existed with that spirit with the frank offer- 
 ings of wit and gaiety to the garden-god. But 
 here was the very essence of the interlude in 
 England, and the fact lends a dignity and a 
 different colour to the Court and its Vice- 
 Queen. 
 
 One thinks of her as the presiding goddess 
 of what was essential in that Court and makes 
 it memorable in our history. The spirit then 
 ministered clearly to the flesh, and her beauty 
 was fittingly voluptuous. She had beauty and 
 readiness and a sustained gaiety ; she was 
 imperious and fearless in self-pleasing. Every 
 atom of delight that life could give her she 
 would have, and have it there and then. And 
 since woman, as we are told, is ' the practical 
 animal/ [it is notable when she throws aside 
 every consideration of prudence for pleasure, 
 and keeps the rewards of prudence until old 
 age. Whatever attracted her she would have. 
 Beauty attracted her, and she made Marl- 
 borough. Wit attracted her, and she was the 
 friend of Wycherley and (they said) of Hart, 
 the player. Oddity and spirit attracted her, 
 and she nearly ruined herself for young Jermin. 
 But through it all, power attracted her, and 
 Charles the Second was her slave. She would 
 have all that attracted her, and would there- 
 
42 MINIATURES 
 
 fore deny herself nothing to please him ; but 
 if one reads of quarrels and jealousies, one 
 reads always of reconciliations. In truth her 
 sway over Charles was for long almost illimit- 
 able ' she hath nearly hectored him out of 
 his wits,' reports Mr. Pepys. One must 
 argue, therefore, a quality of distinctive per- 
 sonality in her, that would not be gainsaid 
 that rare quality by reason of which some 
 women if once supreme can never be forgotten 
 for Charles, creature of habit though no 
 doubt he was, was yet of all men easily content 
 with a present impression on his senses, and 
 she had rivals innumerable in that fleshly 
 heart. 
 
 Her later amours afford a sight of middle- 
 aged passion as it worked, and that (by the 
 novelist's leave) is more interesting than most 
 young persons' cooing and fluttering. It is 
 then that passion, known for what it is, and 
 not bedecked with deceits about communion 
 of spirit and the like (natural enough to boys 
 and girls, but not, after youth, to the enlight- 
 ened, for there is a line between passion and 
 affection, though one may sink or rise into the 
 other), it is then that passion is sincere and 
 worthy. ' I love your body, not your soul/ 
 said a middle-aged poet ; if this woman was 
 loved for something beside her body, no lover 
 thought the soul angelic. 
 
A VICE-QUEEN 43 
 
 You see how, in trying to depict her, the 
 pen runs here and there. A few bald epithets 
 are not enough, and the details in the autho- 
 rities are not worth repeating. (The respect- 
 able Evelyn had strong disapproval for her, 
 and Mr. Pepys uplifted his mildly inflammable 
 and honest little soul, and 'loved her very 
 much.') But you see the thoughts that play 
 round the image one has of her. There 
 remains to be said, as memorable, that of the 
 three dukes, her sons, one was a strong man, a 
 good sailor and commander, courageous and 
 decided, of great personal beauty, which he 
 bequeathed from his mother to his line. She 
 died in esteem a quarter of a century after 
 Charles had made his last apology. She stands 
 for her time ; selfish, reckless, and full of the 
 joy of living, she looked life in the face and 
 lived one of its lessons. 
 
THE ATALANTIS 
 
 >T is to be said of Mary Manley 
 that she was the second English- 
 woman who lived by writing, 
 competing professionally with 
 men. The first was, of course, 
 Aphra Behn, her predecessor by not very many 
 years. The outward difference between them 
 is that Mrs. Behn, though a female politician, 
 was one merely of the ancient order of spies, 
 and is remembered as a writer (in biographies 
 and cyclopaedias) for her plays and novels, 
 while Mrs. Manley was essentially a political 
 writer, and her memorable Alalanlis a collection 
 of the fiercest of partisan attacks and eulogies. 
 This fact does, perhaps, decrease her interest 
 for psychology. A woman's intellect differs 
 from a man's in so far as her emotions are dis- 
 tinctively feminine, and in so far as theycolourit; 
 and in political writing of that time the whole- 
 hearted love and hatred (that we are told are 
 characteristic of feminine women) had, if he or 
 she did not possess them, to be simulated by 
 man and woman alike. You cannot, therefore, 
 
 44 
 
THE ATALANTIS 45 
 
 say that you detect the woman when she hits 
 unscrupulously and unmercifully, and praises 
 with almost ludicrous forgetfulness. More- 
 over, politics apart, the Alalantis is not peculi- 
 arly feminine. It is not so much indecent (as 
 you may have read) as sensual, and it appeals 
 to the masculine and feminine sensualist pretty 
 evenly. But if you cannot trace the woman in 
 Mrs. Manley's work as a whole, her life was 
 that of many of Eve's daughters in an imperfect 
 society. She loved, and was abandoned, and 
 then she abandoned herself. Whether in a 
 perfect society the former abandonment will 
 be unheard of, or the latter not an almost 
 necessary consequence, who shall say ? Mary 
 Manley was left by her father, Sir Robert, to 
 the protection of her cousin, a very villain of 
 melodrama, who went through a form of 
 marriage with her (his wife being alive) and 
 deserted her, having spent her fortune. This is 
 her own account, and she says : ' I had married 
 ' him, only because I thought he loved me; those 
 ' that knew his person will easily believe that 
 ' I was not in love with him.' You need 
 hardly divest yourself of the moral attitude of 
 your time to forgive this poor lady, if she lived 
 afterwards more for pleasure than for virtue. 
 Indeed, you would have no business with her 
 virtue, were it not that the story may help you 
 to see her as she was. 
 
46 MINIATURES 
 
 The 'Secret Memoirs and Manners of 
 ' Several Persons of Quality of both Sexes from 
 c the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediter- 
 ' ranean,' consists for the most part of a series 
 of outrages on the Duke of Marlborough and 
 his party, interrupted by an occasional passage 
 in praise of her own party Harley, for in- 
 stance, or Mrs. Masham. The machinery of 
 the thing is in the beginning elaborate and 
 somewhat clumsy, and is changed for a clumsier 
 in the third volume ; but except the necessary 
 change of names there is no attempt to conceal 
 identities, or rather there is every effort to 
 make them known. It would be too long a 
 task, and one probably ungrateful, to take you 
 through her merely political onslaughts ; but 
 one must note that on Marlborough, for you 
 can hardly find a more thorough and pitiless 
 exposure. Every one of the wretched incidents 
 of his rise to fortune is painted with every 
 touch malignity could suggest. She is always 
 careful to make her stories interesting and 
 amusing on their merits as stories, and so in 
 this attack, and in that on the Earl of Portland, 
 there is every picturesque detail to stimulate 
 imagination. It will interest you more to be 
 told that when she speaks of her colleagues 
 in letters, she is able to lay aside her politics 
 to the extent of extolling Addison, with, of 
 course, a lament for his evil ways. But you 
 
THE ATALANTIS 47 
 
 wonder to hear her praise is for his verse ! 
 Prior shall ' live for ever in his peculiar strain, 
 his own immortal numbers.' Of poor Mrs. 
 Behn : ' . . . Sapho ' so she spells it ' the 
 ' Younger . . . tho' when living was owner 
 ' of a soul as amorous as the Elder, yet wanted 
 ' much of that delicacy, and all that nice, yet 
 ' daring spirit (of which hers is but a faint 
 ' imitation), so applauded in Phaon's Mistress.' 
 There are tributes to Wycherley and Congreve, 
 and a glowing one to Betterton, the player. 
 ' Roscius, a sincere friend and man of honour ; 
 ' not to be corrupted, even by the way of living 
 ' and manners of those whom he hourly con- 
 ' versed with ; Roscius, born for everything 
 ' that he thinks fit to undertake, has wit and 
 ' morality, fire and judgment, sound sense and 
 ' good nature.' Only on Dick Steele she 
 pours untempered vitriol. You know his por- 
 trait, as it was drawn by Dennis the critic ? 
 It is honey, compared with Mrs. Manley's. 'O 
 1 let me ease my Spleen ! ' one must keep 
 her capitals in this passage ' I shall burst with 
 ' laughter ; these are prosperous Times for 
 ' Vice. D' ye see that black Beau (stuck up 
 ' in a pert Chariot), thick-set, his Eyes lost in 
 ' his Head, hanging Eye-brows, broad Face, 
 ' and tallow Complexion? . . . He's called 
 ' Monsieur le Ingrat, he shapes his Manners 
 ' to his Name, and is exquisitely so in all he 
 
48 MINIATURES 
 
 ' does ; has an inexhaustible fund of dissimula- 
 ' tion, and does not bely the county he was 
 ' born in, which is famed for Falsehood and 
 ' Insincerity.' Follows some appreciation of 
 the writer, with a touch of right criticism : 
 ' Tho' he 's a most incorrect writer, he 
 ' pleases in spight of the faults we see and own. 
 ' Whether application might not burnish the 
 ' defect, or if those very defects were bright- 
 ' ened, whether the genuine spirit will not fly 
 'off, are queries not so easily resolv'd.' 'I 
 ' remember him almost t' other day, but a 
 1 wretched common Trooper. . . . His morals 
 ' were loose, his principles nothing but pre- 
 ' tence, and a firm resolution of making his 
 ' fortune, at what rate soever.' . . . But we 
 have taken Dick out of the pillory long ago. 
 
 Swift writes to Stella (June 30, 1711) how 
 he met Mrs. Manley at ' my lord Peterborow's,' 
 from whom she was soliciting a pension 'for 
 ' her service in the cause, by writing of her 
 ' Atalantis, and prosecution upon it,' and Sir 
 Walter Scott has a note on the passage. It 
 seems that she came to the rescue of her 
 printer, appeared before the Court of King's 
 Bench, and took all the blame upon herself. 
 The work was all invention. Lord Sunderland, 
 who examined her, pointed out particulars for 
 which coincidence could hardly account. It 
 must have been inspiration, said the lady. One 
 
THE ATALANTIS 49 
 
 imagines his lordship smiled as he suggested 
 that inspiration was hardly associated with 
 such scandal. There are evil angels as well as 
 good, said the indomitable Mrs. Manley. She 
 was not imprisoned, and, the Tories coming 
 presently into power, was rewarded. She 
 succeeded the Dean in the conduct of the 
 Examiner. 
 
 It has been said you cannot trace the woman 
 in her works, as a whole ; but in places you 
 can. The portrait of Captain Steele gave rise 
 to a pretty quarrel in the Taller, and she finally 
 took refuge in her womanhood and his want of 
 gallantry. And when she has given, as Delia, 
 her relation of her misfortunes, she makes her 
 plaint in what some would think a modern 
 vein. ' The world, truly inexorable, is never 
 ' reconciled ! Unequal distribution ! Why are 
 ' your sex so partially distinguished ? Why is 
 ' it in your power, after accumulated crimes, to 
 ' regain opinion ; when ours, too oftentimes 
 ' guilty but in appearance, are irretrievably 
 'lost?' 
 
 One collects the portrait of a woman, witty, 
 observant ; true to party, and relentless to its 
 enemies ; frail and indomitable, implacable and 
 warm-hearted. And one wishes she were to 
 know alive ; for than a strong intellect in a 
 woman's weak nature there is no more inter- 
 esting thing under heaven. 
 
'LORD FANNY' 
 
 T is not half-a-century since the 
 memoirs of John, Lord Hervey, 
 were given to the world ; they 
 have become a recognised autho- 
 rity for the early years of George 
 the Second, but one doubts if they are as well 
 known as they should be to them that read 
 for pleasure. For you have in them as close 
 and clever an exposition of the seamy side of 
 human nature as was ever made; of human 
 nature as it was observed by a man with per- 
 fect opportunities for observation at close 
 quarters in high places, a man whose intel- 
 lectual powers were great, raising him to a 
 clear eminence above those he criticised and 
 above his active self. He was well aware of 
 the value of his ' dirty little politics/ as Horace 
 Walpole described them, and well aware of the 
 quality of his memoirs. But one must do some- 
 thing, and politics and Court intrigues were 
 vastly entertaining, and some of us must write 
 something, and ' I am very sensible what mere 
 ' trifles several things are in themselves which 
 
 50 
 
'LORD FANNY' 51 
 
 ' I have related, but as I know that I myself 
 ' have had a pleasure in looking at William 
 ' Rufus's rusty stirrup ... I content myself 
 ' with only relating facts just as I see them, 
 ' without pretending to impute the effects of 
 ' chance to design, or to account for the great 
 ' actions of great people always by great 
 ' causes. . . . The intrigues of Courts and 
 ' private families are still the same game and 
 ' played with the same cards.' In other words, 
 it was human nature that took his fancy, and 
 he deals with it in a pleasant way ; with some 
 of the superficial philosophy of his century, 
 but with more of the unmalicious malice of the 
 man of the world, always pointed and bright 
 and intellectually delicate. The Herveys were 
 a notable family, and it is pretty certain we 
 may count Horace Walpole one of them : 
 Carr, Lord Hervey, who predeceased John his 
 brother, was his father. Uncle and nephew 
 have an immense deal in common, and the 
 difference is for the most part just that be- 
 tween a valetudinarian and a real sufferer, 
 who had perforce to paint his ' coffin-face ' 
 that it might not shock his acquaintance to 
 the great disgust of Thackeray. 
 
 Eloquence apart, one marvels that The Four 
 Georges could have been written by the writer 
 of Esmond ; that Thackeray was content in them 
 to sink, if not the artist, at least the impartial 
 
52 MINIATURES 
 
 historian, in the semi-clerical moralist. ' There 
 ' is John Hervey, with his deadly smile and 
 ' ghastly painted face I hate him/ Why ? He 
 was a good friend and the most patient servant 
 of his Queen, and is of the choicest company of 
 book-acquaintances. ' The man who wrote the 
 ' story' of the Queen's death 'had some- 
 ' thing diabolical about him.' A mountain of 
 a molehill : if the King, in the midst of his 
 grief, showed his persistent weakness, if he 
 had said, ' J'aurai des maitresses,' and she had 
 answered, ' Cela n'empeche pas,' was there 
 aught diabolical in recording it, and need one 
 suppose the recorder did not feel ? ' The 
 ' terrible verses which Pope wrote respecting 
 ' Hervey, in one of his own moods of almost 
 ' fiendish malignity, I fear are true.' Never 
 was fear more misplaced. The terrible verses 
 charge Hervey with the common sins of a 
 courtier, with the diet fear of epilepsy com- 
 pelled, and with being effeminate ' Sporus,' 
 in fact, or ' Lord Fanny ' ; Hervey who Avon 
 the ' beautiful Molly Lepell,' who worsted the 
 Prince of Wales in a lady's favours, who went 
 out with Pulteney for ' the silly received laws 
 of customary honour,' as he thought them, 
 and was nearly killed for his pains. ' His wit 
 all see-saw between that and this ' is in the 
 fact the only true line in the whole : he revels 
 in antitheses which he probably moulded on 
 
'LORD FANNY' 53 
 
 Tacitus, whom he loves to quote. How the 
 quarrel began nobody knows ; but Hervey was 
 the intimate friend of Lady Mary Wortley, and 
 Pope had written on her the foulest lines 
 addressed to a woman since Catullus fell out 
 with Clodia. One wishes Hervey had been 
 more his equal in the war of words. 
 
 Since mention has been made of a modern 
 critic of the memoirs, one cannot choose but 
 say something of the excellent and right 
 honourable John Wilson Croker, to whose zeal 
 we owe their disinterment from Ickworth. A 
 sagacious and painstaking man ; but it is amus- 
 ing to observe his disqualification, his invete- 
 rate application of the standards of his own 
 more highly respectable period to the people 
 of another age. Not having seen the MS., one 
 does not know how much is left out of our 
 text ; very like it is grossness merely, which 
 may be spared. Dealing with Pope's accusa- 
 tions, ' That more serious defect,' says he, 
 ' which might have been really charged upon 
 ' him laxity of moral and religious principle ' 
 of which he, Mr. Croker, was a bulwark, ' has 
 ' here altogether or nearly so escaped the 
 ' censure of the satirist.' It is very unfortu- 
 nate, but Pope knew better. As for morals, 
 Hervey' s were those of his friends, but he used 
 his wife well, and remained in the affection of 
 his really pious father. Sir Robert Walpole's 
 
54 MINIATURES 
 
 call more loudly for comment, and are indeed 
 interesting ; he was as indifferent to the follies 
 of his women folk as he was to the notoriety 
 of his own, and you may have read in these 
 memoirs a very curious relation of his attitude 
 towards the probably untrue scandal about Sir 
 George Oxenden, curious in itself and for 
 Hervey's satanic little comment. And as for 
 religion, he held the views of Bolingbroke and 
 Walpole and Queen Caroline. A discussion of 
 them would be truly superfluous to-day, and 
 Hervey's ironical way when he refers to such 
 things is quite inoffensive. He must have 
 enjoyed the scene where ' some wise, some 
 ' pious, and a great many busy, meddling, 
 ' impertinent people about the Court,' when 
 the Queen was dying, ' asked in whispers every- 
 ' body they met whether the Queen had had 
 ' anybody to pray by her,' and Sir Robert broke 
 out, to their dismay, with : ' Let this farce be 
 ' played : the Archbishop will act it very 
 ' well.' ' A parcel of black, canting, hypo- 
 critical rascals,' was his sacred Majesty's obiter 
 dictum on bishops. 
 
 There are two completed portraits in the 
 memoirs, one of Queen Caroline, the other of 
 Sir Robert Walpole the hero and heroine, 
 one may say, of the time. Thackeray has 
 made the world familiar with the outline of 
 her story a prolonged patience, as he tells 
 
'LORD FANNY' 55 
 
 it, under the vagaries and bullyings of her 
 shrewd and common little lord. He thinks it 
 was all for love of his vulgar little person, and 
 you dissent. The reason is clear ; she was 
 consumed with love of power, and power she 
 had, being regarded of all men as the chief 
 fount of favour from her husband's accession 
 to her death. She knew the way to lead an 
 obstinate temper and a lower intellect is by 
 nominal compliance, and that it should become 
 a habit, potent even in her last suffering, was 
 natural. She was, for the rest, a woman who 
 could inspire affection or awe at will, liking 
 her position and aware of its artificial quality. 
 A touch or two shows us that : c Je pris mon 
 ' grand ton de Reine,' she says of her bearing 
 towards an unruly subject ; and of another 
 occasion, ' Giving oneself all this trouble is 
 une bonne grimace pour le publique.' Her 
 frank hatred of the Prince of Wales, of whom 
 our author writes with confessed animus, may 
 be horrible, but its expression is curiously re- 
 freshing to read. Her chief distinction, how- 
 ever, must be that she was a woman to whom 
 her husband would write long letters about 
 his troubles with Madame Walmoden even 
 telling her to consult about them 'ce gros 
 1 homme [Sir Robert], qui a plus d'experience, 
 ' ma chere Caroline, que vous dans ces affaires' 
 could write thus, and remain essentially under 
 
56 MINIATURES 
 
 her dominion. And ' ce gros homme ' himself 
 is a portent on whose political sagacity it were 
 impertinent to remark to you. But the tre- 
 mendous difficulties of his position are beyond 
 exaggeration his position between a bitter 
 and powerful opposition and a troublesome and 
 lukewarm support at Court. It is wonderful, 
 that sheer force of intellect that could take a 
 man of broad country tastes and simple vanity, 
 ' an ill-bred ' man too, by Hervey's standard, 
 safely and triumphantly for so long through 
 all the disaffection on one side and finessing 
 on the other that hemmed him in. But when 
 the Queen died, he began to totter. 
 
 There are these two portraits and a multitude 
 of lively sketches of a despised king and a 
 people's rude wit on him, of wooden-headed 
 dukes and gay Court ladies, of pitiful squabbles 
 and pitiless passions, of human nature with its 
 polish ever wearing off. And through them 
 all moves John, Lord Hervey, beautiful and 
 sick, but not ' diabolical/ knowing himself and 
 impassively observant, polite, and hated by the 
 thick-witted, as such men are, with a bitter 
 tongue for his enemies and good counsel for 
 his friends. He should be more widely read. 
 
DEAR GEORGE' 
 
 fELWYN was 'my dear George' 
 to nearly all his world. The 
 fact may seem trivial, but of 
 such matter it is that one's 
 knowledge of him is compact. 
 This knowledge is only to be gained in an 
 unusual fashion. We have a few stories and 
 jokes of him, a very few letters written by 
 him, and a many addressed to him ; and yet 
 from these latter we know him far better than 
 we know the most of them that have written 
 and inspired the writing of tomes and tomes. 
 And the knowledge is exceeding pleasant, for 
 there are points of character that enable us to 
 reconstruct a man. 
 
 Many people, perhaps, think of Selwyn as 
 Thackeray thought before them : as some one 
 fond of cakes and ale, indifferent to everything, 
 affable to everybody. The first quality belongs 
 to that crude picture of ' the fine gentleman,' so 
 astonishing in The Four Georges. There is no 
 hard line to be drawn between business and 
 pleasure; methods of pursuit and the qualities 
 
 57 
 
58 MINIATURES 
 
 of the pursuer are the important matters. 
 ' Old Q.' worked at his horse-racing as hard 
 as his jockeys or his trainers ; George Selwyn 
 gave as much attention to his friends' per- 
 plexities as any lawyer to his briefs. He cer- 
 tainly was not idle ; that account of his day in 
 town, which his friend Lord Carlisle wrote 
 (Thackeray quotes it as a genuine description), 
 is the merest banter. His love of cakes and 
 ale was proper and not remarkable ; and for 
 his gambling Heaven help us if we feel a 
 witless superiority about that \ He was embar- 
 rassed by it, as is shown by his friends' amus- 
 ingly lugubrious appeals for settlement; and 
 finding it consumed 'too much time, money 
 and thought,' he quietly gave it up. . . . 
 Indifference to some things is a condition of 
 deep interest in others. Selwyn's was partly 
 an effect of manner ; his waking from apparent 
 sleep to say a good thing was a standing 
 entertainment at White's. But indubitably 
 politics bored him (this word was beginning 
 its vogue in his day), and he snored in the 
 House as loudly as Lord North. Yet he was 
 by no means without patriotism; there are 
 answers from comparative strangers to whom 
 he had written as likely to have knowledge of 
 the war with France and the American Colo- 
 nies. His sleepiness concealed an acute sen- 
 sitiveness on some points. At Oxford he ran 
 
'DEAR GEORGE' 59 
 
 into debt in the ancient Oxonian way, and his 
 distress at his father's ensuing coldness reads 
 genuine. And when, for a freak of irreverence 
 that sounds trivial to-day, Oxford expelled 
 him, while his friends in town ' damned ' the 
 University and welcomed him back to his clubs, 
 Selwyn showed evidently the greatest anxiety 
 for reparation of an injustice. And there are 
 several instances later of chafing under mis- 
 understanding : which is not a sign of phleg- 
 matic indolence. As to general affability, 
 Selwyn understood that the habit of a gentle- 
 man is nowhere to give pain if pain can be 
 avoided, and to give pleasure whenever plea- 
 sure can be reasonably bestowed ; but his was 
 by no means that worthless affection which is 
 wasted on all the world alike. Rather the 
 opposite. He could hate heartily, as Sheridan 
 knew ; ' and I do not agree with you,' writes 
 Gilly Williams, f in your constant declarations 
 1 that, except three or four people, the rest 
 ' are indifferent to you. Jew or Gentile, in 
 ' all probability you will live among them, and, 
 ' I hope a great while hence, will die among 
 ' them ; therefore, for God's sake, live upon as 
 ' good terms as you can, and since you must 
 ' sail in the ship, do not contrive to make 
 ' ninety-nine out of a hundred of the crew, 
 ' your enemies.' There was a strain of melan- 
 choly in Selwyn that this passage illustrates, 
 
60 MINIATURES 
 
 perhaps ; it came out in a curiously morbid 
 way, which is notorious. That keen interest 
 in criminals, executions, and all the details of 
 crime and justice (an odd feature) may possibly 
 be explained in part by a certain weariness of 
 the common elements of life, its stereotyped 
 proprieties and misdemeanours, of 'low life 
 above stairs/ as he said when he went to see 
 High Life Below Stairs. ' There is a noble 
 ' miscreant/ writes our friend Williams again, 
 ' in the Coop at Worcester. He has only 
 ' robbed his uncle, who kept him out of charity; 
 ' then fired his house, when the whole family 
 ' was asleep, and ran away with three damsels 
 ' by the light of it.' Truly it is refreshing. 
 Connected with this trait, perhaps, but not to 
 be confounded with it, was Selwyn's interest 
 in death for death's sake, and in tombs and 
 monuments. Of the many stories on this 
 head, you need not grudge to have one 
 repeated ; for it shows not merely George's 
 tastes, but also a man who could die pleasantly. 
 ' The next time Mr. Selwyn calls/ said Lord 
 Holland on his death-bed, ' show him up : if I 
 ' am alive I shall be delighted to see him, and 
 ' if I am dead he will be glad to see me.' 
 
 Surely only a superficial observer could find 
 this melancholy, with all its oddity, greatly 
 inconsistent with Selwyn's intense affection 
 for children. It is indeed ever the melancholy, 
 
'DEAR GEORGE' 61 
 
 as distinguished from the merely cross-grained, 
 nature that is most attracted by unstudied 
 gaiety and fondness. The children of Maria 
 Gunning, the beautiful Lady Coventry, were 
 at one time his favourites ; at another the 
 children of Lord Carlisle ; and very pleasant 
 are the full and careful accounts of them his 
 correspondents sent him. But who was Mdlle. 
 Fagniani ? Jesse, who had seen all the papers 
 extant, could not tell : the Duke of Queens- 
 berry and Selwyn each, he thought, believed 
 himself her father. How Selwyn brought 
 her up at first, how the Marchioness Fagniani 
 and her husband took her from him, how he 
 went through infinite trouble and put up with 
 endless slights and ingratitude on her ac- 
 count, and how she was finally restored to him ; 
 these things are sometimes painful even now, 
 but deeply interesting to read. It should 
 be remembered, however, that ' Old Q.' was 
 thought very like her in face, and was, in fact, 
 accepted as her father by more than one of 
 Selwyn's own friends. The Rev. Dr. Warner, 
 in particular, is disgusted with the Duke's 
 coldness and want of paternal affection ; but 
 he left her 150,000, and one may put the 
 coldness down to jealousy of Selwyn. Mie 
 Mie's is indeed a curious story. 
 
 It is only left to say that the delicacy of 
 Selwyn's friendship must have deserved the 
 
62 MINIATURES 
 
 confidences he received. Lord Carlisle's letters 
 have been compared, somewhat casually, to 
 Byron's. They have not a tithe of his kins- 
 man's wit and power are, in fact, merely 
 bright and affectionate and sincere. But the 
 writer was clearly a man of character and self- 
 control, and we have him confiding to Selwyn 
 a very intimate emotion. He had a passion 
 for a married woman (he always leaves the 
 name blank, but there is no harm in saying 
 she was Lady Sarah Bunbury, George the 
 Third's Lady Sarah), and, being an honourable 
 man who could accept facts, he went abroad 
 until he could meet her in simple friendship. 
 In letter after letter he begs Selwyn for news 
 of her, and (somewhat shyly) to know if she 
 ever mentioned himself. He married not long 
 afterwards, and, let us hope, preserved the 
 friendship. And Selwyn never married. His 
 friends deride him very freely indeed on 
 the subject of his indifference to women ; 
 but that is a mystery a hundred years past 
 solving. 
 
 And so much for his character. It would 
 be very superfluous to remark on the grace of 
 the letters, and on their scope ; how they tell 
 of Charles Fox, and the bigamous Duchess of 
 Kingston, and the murdered Miss Ray. They 
 are chiefly charming, perhaps, for their tone 
 of courteous intimacy ; especially when the 
 
'DEAR GEORGE' 63 
 
 writers are women, who begin ' Dear Sir/ as 
 the custom was, but are absolutely free from 
 bourgeois stiffness. But it may be a good deed 
 to clear Dr. Warner from the amusing, admir- 
 ably coloured, and wholly unfounded character 
 of him drawn by Thackeray : ' He is a boister- 
 ' ous, uproarious parasite, licks his master's 
 ' shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning 
 ' smack and gusto, and likes the taste of that 
 ' blacking as much as the best claret in " Old 
 ' Q.'s " cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace 
 ' at his greasy fingers' ends/ etc. etc. The 
 poor man has been dead a century, and his 
 reputation signifies little ; it matters more that 
 Thackeray, in carelessness or for effect, perpe- 
 trated a literary outrage. His notion of a ' fine 
 gentleman' as a curious beast apart made 
 him unable to see that in all essentials Warner 
 was the equal and familiar friend of Selwyn. 
 He was Selwyn's junior by fifteen years, and 
 Selwyn was over fifty when their connection 
 began ; it is, therefore, natural he should be 
 respectful. But his tone is frank and manly ; 
 he did Selwyn's errands, as Selwyn did every- 
 body's, but he does not scruple to censure his 
 conduct at times, or his choice of friends, of 
 Queensberry himself. Says a contemporary : 
 ' His attachment to literature was unbounded ; 
 ' he was moderate to an extreme at the table, 
 and equally abstemious at the bottle ; a book, 
 
64 MINIATURES 
 
 ' a pipe,, and a cheerful conversation, in which 
 ' he eminently excelled, were his supreme 
 ' delight.' He had Horace, and many another 
 classic, at his fingers' ends : but his fingers 
 were not greasy. 
 
MOODS 
 
THE PORTRAIT ON THE 
 STAIRS 
 
 HIS was a picture I had to pass 
 when I would go to or from my 
 room. Most of the rooms were 
 approached by another staircase, 
 so that I had in some measure 
 an exclusive pleasure in it. There was many 
 another, but at this one I never failed to glance 
 a moment, and increased gradually the time of 
 my contemplation. Then I would think on 
 the meaning of its look, and the story of its 
 subject, as I lay awake o' nights. There were 
 charming people and things in that house, but 
 the picture and I had a relation apart ; and it 
 welcomed me, flickering in the candle-light, to 
 dreams at night-time, and bade me good-bye 
 every morrow in the light of the sun. So I 
 came to an intimate acquaintance with this 
 lady, and now we have made our account with 
 one another, she and I. My knowledge is not 
 obscured by facts. For it happened 'that 
 although I was told of many other portraits in 
 the house, this one was not mentioned to me, 
 
 67 
 
68 MOODS 
 
 and I had the wisdom not to ask. I might 
 have heard she was a good wife and excellent 
 mother, and no more ; and this would not have 
 pained me, for it is with her secret history I 
 hold converse. But I might have heard she 
 was discarded and died unhappy, and this 
 would have been a discord in the harmony 
 of spiritual realities ; for a selfish woman, as I 
 am sure she was, should have lived prosper- 
 ously. Of irrelevant facts, then, I have only 
 to tell you these : that she lived in Stuart 
 times, and was painted by a good hand. 
 
 The oval of the frame suits her. Her fea- 
 tures have not regularity, which often bespeaks 
 stupidity ; and you could not, perhaps, have 
 called her beautiful. Her eyes are big and 
 blue-grey, her cheeks have a healthy colour, 
 her mouth is full and red, light brown hair 
 waves in curls above her clear forehead. I do 
 not regret she is only a head and shoulders, for 
 the hands would probably have been painted 
 to a convention. See how facts of any sort 
 at once lead you astray. She is no bouncing 
 woman ; her eyes are wide, but not bold ; they 
 do not even smile on you, but contemplate 
 merely; not with obvious indifference, again, 
 but with the untroubled readiness of good 
 breeding. If she be amused at your bearing or 
 despise your words, she does not show it ; if 
 she be interested in you well, she has seen 
 
many things in her life, and cannot be effusive ; 
 if she love you, you may look on her mouth 
 and wait, but she will not show that either to 
 the eye of the world. The mouth is sensuous, 
 but your grand passions are not for this lady of 
 the picture. 
 
 When she lived in our world, she was of it, 
 wholly. And she was pleased it should be on 
 her side not in primness or. timidity but 
 because it ministered to her pleasure. She 
 neither despised nor feared it ; she took it for 
 its worth, and enjoyed and used it. Of this 
 world she was, and had no heed of any other. 
 Religion was to her simply one of this world's 
 forces and conveniences ; she might have per- 
 secuted an unbeliever, but always in conscious 
 consideration of her private aims. And as for 
 all manner of yearning, it was far from her. It 
 were pleasant to have seen her reception of 
 some soul-searcher, born before his day, who 
 thought to cozen from her sympathy for his 
 mewlings. Her friends were men; and though 
 her intelligence excused them from being 
 prime figures in the puppet show, she demanded 
 manhood of them. For intelligence she had, 
 and humour too, and they, I confess, were first 
 her attraction for me ; they are both in the 
 big grey eyes, which, I said, contemplate 
 merely, for mere contemplation must needs be 
 ironical. But I fear you would not have called 
 
70 MOODS 
 
 her intellectual. Like the great Duchess 
 Sarah's, her books were men and cards, and 
 she would talk wittily and with discernment 
 of her readings of them : of the intrigues, 
 and passions, and aspirations, and rebuffs of 
 her acquaintance : her listener pluming him- 
 self, belike, with the useless explanations of 
 philosophy. 
 
 And the pivot of her life was sense. She 
 did not rave, nor, on the other hand, did she 
 exquisitely philander. Her front was sedate ; 
 but beneath it the old motor of the world was 
 strong in her, and at its behest she was un- 
 scrupulous. Her cai'riage had the immobility 
 and polish that society demanded ; but her 
 heart was simple and direct, and knew not to 
 torture itself with misgivings. But, as I told 
 you, she was not made for grand passions ; it 
 was bargain for bargain with her ; power and 
 the other good things of life she would not 
 throw away when address might keep them. 
 For the rest, selfishness did not exclude kind- 
 ness, for gratitude is pleasant to hear; her 
 dependants found her a considerate despot, 
 her friends an attentive counsellor. I should 
 like to have known this lady in the flesh ; but 
 the knowledge I have is surer. 
 
MATTER AND FORM 
 
 'E are suffering from a mental 
 plethora. The statement is 
 made with a full consciousness 
 of the ease of the retort that 
 such a plethora is not obvious 
 in the most of us ; and the reply is as easy, 
 that excess is relative to capacity for assimila- 
 tion. But perhaps it is safer to place the very 
 average person on one side, and to direct such 
 criticism as occurs to an outsider to the im- 
 mense host, growing out of all proportion to 
 our increase in population, of people in these 
 islands who call themselves, or are called of 
 their acquaintance, intellectual. The habit of 
 these is to snatch with avidity at any utterance 
 possessing the semblance of novelty in its sub- 
 stance substance is emphatic at the dinner- 
 table, in the theatre, in the drawing-room, to 
 make a fraction of it their own, and to repro- 
 duce it presently with a fine air of thoughtful 
 innovation. 
 
 Now, ' to eat or drink,' says Aristotle of the 
 body, 'whatever be your fare, until you be 
 
 71 
 
72 MOODS 
 
 ' more than filled, is to exceed the natural 
 ' limit in quantity/ and he goes on to pass a 
 moral censure on them that thus exceed. One 
 would apply his proposition to mental gour- 
 mands, and, omitting the moral censure in the 
 temporary lack of a determined moral standard, 
 proceed to mark the consequences : a barren 
 capping of so-called new theories in conversa- 
 tion and a detrimental confusion of half-ideas 
 in the rare intervals of thought. These among 
 others ; but if you be satisfied of the truth of 
 a dubious doctrine that superficiality is bad, 
 you may add that consequence also. Some- 
 times there is a considerable capacity for 
 assimilation, which in the process of exceeding 
 demands upon it fails ; most often, however, 
 the whole mental life of these erring brothers 
 and sisters is as if a man wholly ignorant of 
 mechanical science should spend his days in an 
 engine-room, gazing blankly there at revolving 
 wheels. 
 
 Handbooks, summaries, and the like do 
 greatly encourage to this habit, and facilitate in 
 these people a tedious affectation of omniscience 
 and a most mean avoidance of the common- 
 place. Intellectual affectation has been seen 
 before under the sun, and so it is desirable to 
 distinguish. It is suggested, then, that whereas 
 the pretty wits of other days sought as a rule 
 to amuse or render envious their acquaintance 
 
MATTER AND FORM 73 
 
 with new conceits of words new similes, it 
 might be, or puns your earnest intellects of 
 these sadder times seek to astonish you with 
 new conclusions, depending on new premises, 
 or a new assemblage thereof. It may be 
 thought that a futile contrast is made here of 
 two types having nothing in common. In 
 truth, they are essentially the same ; both are 
 innocent of real thinking, both possess mediocre 
 powers of thought, and both seek an easy repu- 
 tation for thought. The method it is that is 
 all the difference ; and with a convenient 
 crudity, defiant of metaphysics, let us say that 
 the one studies matter, the other studied form, 
 in their achievements. 
 
 Some advantage, at least, had the latter. A 
 new phrase is a new phrase, a new form is a 
 new form. The idea conveyed may be the 
 tritest of commonplaces ; but novelty of ex- 
 pression is novelty, and the achievement is 
 within the reach of many. Whereas only one 
 here and there may hope to produce a new 
 general idea, the rest can only say what has 
 been said before. Accordingly, when the 
 novel idea has been considered a while, it is 
 found very old ; and the expression of it being 
 by hypothesis careless, what remains ? Any 
 contradiction there may be in this position is 
 concentrated here for the convenience of the 
 critical eye. But the critical eye may be left 
 
74 MOODS 
 
 to see that between a soi-disant new idea, ex- 
 pressed any way and discovered subsequently 
 to be old, and the bright phrasing of a candid 
 commonplace, there is all the difference in 
 the world. 
 
 The essence of the question being thus set 
 forth, it seems profitable to reflect on the 
 modes, or some of the modes, in which 
 this craze for new matter is indulged at 
 the expense of form. Carelessness of form 
 is perhaps the most obvious feature in modern 
 manners. That it characterises society, espe- 
 cially in Jeames's acceptance of that term, 
 we are informed ad nauseam in exaggerated 
 deliveries by more or less adequately qualified 
 judges. They find its cause in the rush after 
 wealth, and all that ; but may be you would 
 place it more truly in the craze for intellectual 
 novelty. For the many women dowered with 
 fine intellect and great learning whom this 
 country has possessed and possesses we are 
 abundantly thankful. Yet the social function 
 of most women has been, above all things, one 
 of form ; to preserve a quality of gracious con- 
 sideration for small things small in the sage's 
 list to which even the insincere little cor- 
 dialities and irrational little formalities of the 
 shallowest mondaine contribute their part. Be 
 it said that this grace has been often, and is 
 often, conserved more truly by women of fine 
 
MATTER AND FORM 75 
 
 intellects than by others. But in the rage of 
 the unfit for new ideas all this tends to disap- 
 pear ; and the prospect is somewhat mono- 
 tonous to view. 
 
 The excursions and alarums on the subject 
 of the ' British Stage/ with which a curious 
 mind is fairly bewildered nowadays, afford 
 another and perhaps fortunate instance of the 
 truth of a proposition which may as yet be 
 obscure. One would gladly number himself 
 among those militant apostles who are desirous 
 of replacing the clap-trap heroics, stereotyped 
 pathos, and dull clowning, oppressive to our 
 spirits these many years, with some attempt at 
 a drama less damaging to nerves and brains. 
 But most of them, forgetful of the complexity 
 of our modem lives and thought, of the subtlety 
 of the change in our social conventions, and of 
 the invention of printing, would have it that 
 the stage should inform us on philosophy, social 
 and other. There is a playwright of a fine 
 dramatic instinct : they hail him a prophet. 
 Picture to yourself the mental condition of a 
 person who finds in the doctrine that the sins 
 of the fathers are visited upon the children a 
 novel theory. No doubt such an one has heard 
 of the Bible and Weismann by this time ; but 
 he will serve. The cry is for new ideas. And 
 lesser men rush in, and one is weary of 
 crude presentations of social problems, of self- 
 
76 MOODS 
 
 conscious and ineffectual philosophising. Is 
 not a new comedy of manners chiefly to seek ? 
 Sophocles ! But we live under different con- 
 ditions from those of the ancient Athenians, 
 and the mode of our studies does not incite us 
 to enjoy the motives of such plays as the 
 (Edipus Rex for two hours after dinner. You 
 see, specialism is the transitory phase in the 
 learned, and therefore Nemesis must be 
 studied in laboratories or bulky products 
 thereof. A pamphlet drama can only appeal 
 to use a convenient and invidious phrase 
 to the pit and the gallery. Said the Wise 
 Youth : ' All wisdom is mournful. 'Tis there- 
 ' fore, coz, that the wise do love the Comic 
 ' Muse. Their own high food would kill them. 
 ' You shall find great poets, rare philosophers, 
 ' night after night on the broad grin before a 
 * row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. 
 ' Why ? Because all 's dark at home. The 
 ' stage is the pastime of great minds. That's 
 ' how it comes that the stage is now down. 
 ' An age of rampant little minds, my dear 
 ' Austin !' Surely the play-house should in- 
 vite us, as Juvenal his friend, to forget un- 
 faithful wives and ungrateful friends. This it 
 may by taking our minds from them, or by 
 presenting them with the noble frivolity of a 
 Congreve. Let bathos and imbecility be re- 
 formed away, by all means ; but not to be 
 
MATTER AND FORM 77 
 
 replaced by a superficial examination of our 
 peculiar sores. 
 
 But the plaint grows tedious, and a multi- 
 tude of instances may be omitted. Sincerity 
 is sometimes counted as good as truth, and at 
 least the dread is sincere that in a few years, 
 if this craze for mental novelty persist, we 
 shall have cause to be melancholy. Then with 
 ' tape ' ticking out new ideas in every room, 
 with prophets on every hearth-rug, with 
 mouths that cannot smile and brains that 
 cannot think to any purpose, we shall tremble 
 and turn and endeavour vainly to be changed. 
 
^ O drink and play the night through, 
 and become, with no interval of 
 oblivion, a sober and respectable 
 unit in the morning, had its 
 charms for boyhood. To recon- 
 cile yourself to sleeplessness and read or write 
 till they call you to breakfast has a tolerably 
 sustaining air of manly determination and 
 triumph over the brute. But to go to the 
 longed-for bed stupid with sleep, feel sleep 
 coming over you speedily, and never sleep at 
 all that is the torture of the gods. 
 
 Their instrument is that attribute of you 
 the metaphysicians make much of your 
 power to be outside and observe your sensa- 
 tions, your consciousness of past and future. 
 For as some half-dream, herald, irrelevant, and 
 grotesque, of slumber comes upon your brain, 
 you observe its approach, and are glad, and 
 are wide awake. It comes and withdraws for 
 an hour, and then you are rid of it altogether. 
 You raise yourself on your elbow and reflect. 
 Nerves ! Too much work or too much play, 
 
 78 
 
INSOMNIA 79 
 
 what matter ? What signifies your credit or 
 reproach ? Your concern is with this insuper- 
 able night ; you try again to conquer it ; but 
 your made-up dreams are futile, and again 
 you are thrown back upon realities. Then a 
 more serious vein is yours; but the paltry 
 irritation of your nerves unfits your mind from 
 dwelling on the prime and wholesome facts of 
 life, and you are not like to face the nox per- 
 petua, and what is irrevocable in your history. 
 You rather bethink yourself that the world is 
 treating you scurvily, until your vanity, which 
 rejects the picture of yourself under anybody's 
 foot, or your sense of justice, if you prefer it, 
 leads you to argue on the world's side : you 
 deserve its treatment of you ; you have had 
 your money's worth ; there are excuses for 
 this man's ingratitude, that woman's forget- 
 fulness ; he is not, after all, so unworthy of 
 your friendship, nor she of your love. You 
 feel a pressing need of contentment, and even 
 make little of your friends' follies, their witless 
 enthusiasms and ludicrous preferences. And 
 now you deem yourself contented enough for 
 sleep, which again will have none of you. 
 
 You light the gas and open the book you 
 took to bed from habit. But fatigue has 
 deprived you of emotional appreciation ; you 
 have no sympathetic terror as you read De 
 Quincey's dreams, or, if you go to the other 
 
80 INSOMNIA 
 
 pole, no delighted chuckle for Jane Austen's 
 irony. The more commonplace matter is, how- 
 ever, your better friend, and you close your 
 eyes and have a brief half-dream of yourself 
 snubbing the colossal snobbery of Emma. 
 Encouraged, you turn out the gas, compose 
 yourself carefully, and are fully conscious once 
 more. . . . 
 
 At this stage you fancy for yourself a 
 superiority over the healthy, snoring boors 
 you imagine at rest elsewhere. Then ques- 
 tioning if the unwholesomely abnormal be 
 finer than the common state, you are led to 
 philosophising on the relation of genius to 
 madness, until you feel that a devil in your 
 head has tied a rope round your brain and is 
 pulling steadily. Will your constant sleepless 
 ness end in madness or an early death ? You 
 take a dose, but your mind is stronger than 
 that amount of chloral the doctor allows you, 
 and the conviction is despair. But gradually 
 you begin again to entertain dreams, hundreds 
 of them in maddening succession. One 
 moment you are dreaming, the next you are 
 reasoning on the dream's history. The grow- 
 ing light through the curtains serenely re- 
 proaches you. At last you sleep for an hour ; 
 then healthy humanity is on your nerves again, 
 and you join it with a dazed understanding 
 and dimmed perceptions. Your mother, and 
 
INSOMNIA 81 
 
 your sisters, and your wife, they are people in 
 a dream country, until the gods cease their 
 torture and will you sleep. I pray that the 
 sea or sport may bring it to you, or that time 
 may kill some unacknowledged root of your 
 unquiet. For your sacrifices to the cruel 
 goddess Insomnia are more than a man may 
 well afford. 
 
NATURE'S GREATEST 
 MISTAKE 
 
 BY A VERY YOUNG FRIEND 
 
 |HE most uncompromising evolu- 
 ' tionist admits that species have 
 ' been developed and died out. 
 ' They have died because, al- 
 ' though the points which differ- 
 ' entiated them from the preceding species were 
 ' of temporary service, they proved at last in- 
 ' adequate to the needs of the situation. There 
 ' is a product of evolution which has been for 
 'centuries and centuries of incalculable ser- 
 'vice to its possessors, but has become, here 
 'and now, an hindrance and a curse. There- 
 ' fore must it die, though none may pen its 
 ' epitaph. For I refer to the later development 
 ' of the human intellect. 
 
 ' It is like enough that you may be uncon- 
 ' vinced by the bare assertion, may even count 
 'the writer of it among them that deal in 
 ' paradox. I am fain to answer merely : " My 
 
NATURE'S GREATEST MISTAKE 83 
 
 ' " brother, my poor broth ers, it is thus." But 
 ' having so far departed from my service to that 
 ' great religion of inaction which offers the only 
 ' possible remedy and a very uncertain of the 
 ' dissolution as to speak of it at all, I will bend 
 ' my baser nature, arguing and illustrating. 
 ' When men were not men, and were fighting 
 ' for their Helens with their teeth, the begin- 
 ( nings of the quality which was to make them 
 ' men, or something like men, in the fulness of 
 ' time, gave him in whom it coyly sprouted life 
 ' over his fellows. He hardened the end of a 
 ' stick. So, mainly in this direction did intellect 
 ' develop, until in the Mother Age (if that be 
 ' still a scientific hypothesis) it was used for 
 ' milking. There were hosts and huts. Then 
 1 come the singer and the sculptor and the 
 ' philosopher, and the beginning of our tale. 
 
 ' I propose to show that the more complex 
 ( and rarer qualities of intellect are a curse 
 ' to their possessors, and must die out. It 
 ' might, perhaps, be shown that the less com- 
 ' plex, with their Midases and industrial crises, 
 ' are not good. When these are unfit, however, 
 ' they have their punishment; submersion by 
 1 barbarians, or a revolution. But they are 
 ' perhaps seldom bad in my sense, as bringing 
 ' woe on their possessors. Your prosperous 
 ' fellow likes himself hugely, as a rule. Or if 
 ' he be anaemic and nervous, those nearest him 
 
84 MOODS 
 
 ' are happy under the sun in their way; whereas 
 ' nothing is more certain than that the people 
 ' about the children of light are irritated by 
 ' their presence. No : it is the finer intellect, 
 ' with its sense of shades, its perception of 
 ' subtle misunderstandings, its hopelessness, 
 ' which is miserable all the days of its life. 
 
 ' They say the countrymen of Plato were a 
 ' happy folk. People say this who have read 
 ' jEschylus and Sophocles read the Antigone 
 ' and Aristophanes, that mine of witty and joy- 
 ' less mirth. Men are not sad because they can 
 ' love a sad play. But the tone of these plays, 
 ' these choruses, seems surely to show that the 
 ' Greek mind perceived well enough the tragic 
 ' element in our little farce. And as surely as 
 ' we approach in temper the level of the think- 
 ' ing Athenian we perceive this tragic element 
 ' the more clearly; and when we have congratu- 
 ' lated ourselves that at last we can greet the 
 ' creeds and successes and failures of our fellows 
 ' and of ourselves with a patient smile, we are 
 ' near the sorrow that is too bitter for tears. 
 ' Congreve was an Athenian of a wit as joyless 
 ' as Aristophanes. And so the Greeks died of 
 ' their intellect ; for Greeks nowadays are on 
 ' the Stock Exchange. The cure they some of 
 ' them found was not to think so much : who 
 ' would not be Anacreon, and drink more in his 
 ' age than the young men ? 
 
NATURE'S GREATEST MISTAKE 85 
 
 'With ourselves, we can come to more de- 
 ' tailed illustration. It is on all sides, for on all 
 ' sides are perceptions and powers of reason 
 ' which know themselves blunted and wasted 
 ' amid stupid obstacles and vulgar insipidities. 
 ' Some of them are yet imbued with the Puritan 
 ' superstition that "duty" is worth all else, and 
 ' so are moderately happy. And the others ? 
 ' This one locks up his better intellect until it 
 ' dies of disuse. That one cuts off its finer edges, 
 ' and tricks it out, and brings it the gods pity 
 ' him ! into the market-place that he may eat 
 ' a piece of bread. Observing these two, we see 
 ' that to both their intellectual development is 
 ' an hindrance to happiness, and consequently a 
 ' check in the race of life. They tend, there- 
 ' fore, to die off, and die they will. And, lastly, 
 ' there is one whose intellect is backed up by 
 ' ancestral acres or brewing : what of him ? He 
 ' may avoid the blatant and the mean when the 
 ' others may not ; he may select in comparative 
 ' peace ; he may, far more than the others, 
 ' appreciate the here and now. Grant him not 
 ' to have married a dolt at twenty, and not to 
 ' have any marked physical infirmity. But he 
 ' is yet a unit. He has social instincts, and if 
 ' he lives in the desert their dissatisfaction will 
 ' render him wretched. If he goes into the 
 ' world, whoever be his friends and his "friends," 
 ' his subtle perceptions and complex imaginings 
 
86 MOODS 
 
 ' will be jarred always. This may seem to be 
 f ironical, but it is very true, and not the least 
 ' sad of human wastings. He will assuredly be 
 ' misunderstood, assuredly involved in all the 
 1 current make-beliefs and mild hypocrisies 
 ' necessary to an imperfect civilisation ; and 
 ' some will take these in him seriously. His 
 ' body, moreover, healthy by hypothesis, has 
 ' needs whose crushing and whose satisfaction 
 ' alike, among a hypocritical people, will prob- 
 ' ably blur what is best in him. He, too, is the 
 ' worse for his best. 
 
 ' " But," you say, " these three types have 
 ' " always existed. In every age there are some 
 ' " a little in advance of their generation ; in 
 ' " every succeeding age there are others." Yes, 
 ' but their subject-matter was different. The 
 ' finer intellects of our day, or most of them, no 
 ' longer wish to fight with superstitions ; they 
 ' are only sorry they do not share them. Or to 
 ' rail against prejudices : they cherish such as 
 ' they have left to them. Or to preach a new 
 ' religion : their religion, if they have one, is 
 f personal to themselves. We all have come to 
 ' know that, for " all our weeping, waking, and 
 ' " sleeping, death comes to reaping, and takes 
 ' " away." But they are convinced, emotionally 
 ' as well as intellectually, that this is all their 
 ' personal life. And of what use to tell me that 
 ' I shall be absorbed into the Universal Mind 
 
NATURE'S GREATEST MISTAKE 87 
 
 ' and live for ever ? I want my mind, with its 
 ' individual cranks and its personal affections 
 ' and hatreds. Logically I should gather roses ? 
 ' But that is not natural to the man convinced, 
 ' emotionally, that the flood is coming over the 
 1 next field.' 
 
 Thus a young friend in a time of fog and 
 trouble : I laughed with him partly, but also 
 at him, for I thought he meant one or two of 
 his remarks. 
 
CRUELTY 
 
 iES : no doubt it is a dreadful re- 
 flection that the Sunday school 
 and the penny press have not 
 eradicated all the primitive in- 
 stincts. But, you see, delight in 
 others' suffering is a very old delight indeed : 
 older than most of the hills. To say nothing 
 of lionesses and so on, cruelty was developed 
 in the first men who fought. From an ex- 
 pression of anger it passed into a settled love 
 of suffering for its own sake. Surely one may 
 dogmatise on these things ? But if you need 
 an alternative dogma, take it that cruelty may 
 be analysed into love of power. To inflict 
 pain at will is the easiest and most obvious 
 mode of showing power ; a less obvious way 
 is the way of kindnesses. Not infrequently 
 you may see both expressions of power in the 
 same person. But the thought grows sad, as 
 is all analysis. 
 
 Penny press and Sunday school are impotent 
 to eradicate primitive instincts. But they may 
 alter the outward and visible signs. They and 
 
CRUELTY 89 
 
 their like have brought it about that the most 
 cruel by nature do not bait badgers ; with 
 mouths full of pious and enlightened purposes, 
 they 'crucify hearts, not hands.' A more 
 refined and civilised occupation, surely, but 
 hardly less cruel ? You need not to occupy 
 your attention with wife -beaters and child- 
 torturers. There is much of this old cruelty, 
 no doubt, among us perhaps more than is 
 dreamed of. But as a rule it is not pure 
 cruelty, being adulterated with anger, revenge, 
 jealousy, and the like. And it is not interest- 
 ing to you, unless you be of those shallow 
 optimists who think to pull down bad passions 
 like a row of condemned cottages. There is 
 a latter-day cruelty, not of the flesh, which is 
 pure enjoyment of others' suffering. It goes 
 under many names : curiosity, justice, even its 
 old alias religion : so that those fair forms have 
 sometimes blood on their skirts. But as in 
 the middle ages Nature, smarting from the 
 ineffectual fork, impelled holy men to write 
 hymns to their Virgin which knights sang of 
 their light-o'-loves, so now may you discover, 
 while words of morality or prudence or piety 
 are in your ears, and irreproachable ugliness of 
 garments is before your eyes, the feelings of 
 your ancestors. Most often this passion has a 
 fair beginning. ' He will not,' said one peda- 
 gogue of another, ' entertain mercy while there 
 
90 MOODS 
 
 ' is room for justice' ; and this justice is not 
 seldom the excuse. Justice is for public deal- 
 ing, for ' business/ laws, what you will ; be a 
 just merchant, a just judge, a just legislator, 
 and guard yourself so against any taint of 
 sentiment; but if you be a just friend or a 
 just lover, you are bloodless or cruel ! I find 
 in you a tendency to assert this justice too 
 often and too loudly. For, mark you, it is 
 only when your friend or your mistress may 
 be hurt by justice that your attention is drawn 
 to it. So with our dear Coquette. She is 
 young and her little cruelties are charming : 
 no man, I grant you, worth his salt but loves 
 them, and no man (not an ill-bred prig) who 
 thinks they need forgiveness. But in ten 
 years' time she will be young no more, when 
 should we still find her course attended by 
 wasted boys and weeping mothers, our dear 
 Coquette will be interesting from our present 
 point of view. The more so, in that she shows 
 herself but a primitive woman, who is waiting 
 for the primitive man to bully her. Him she 
 will love well enough, and her court must 
 learn that domination or indifference not 
 submission and long service is the way to the 
 primitive woman's heart. Dear Lady Coquette ! 
 her joy in inflicting pain is cruelty, but the 
 joy she will take in suffering is the world's 
 recompense. I, for my part, have no quarrel 
 with her. 
 
CRUELTY 91 
 
 And need one quarrel with the tribe who 
 go about with God knows what professions 
 to hoot and howl at some detected sinner ? 
 Their ancestors threw eggs and mud at the 
 man in the stocks, wherein themselves should 
 stand in due season. Cruelty is too fine a 
 word for their quality. But it is fitted most 
 aptly to some of those who crowd to the 
 courts of justice. God forbid that I should 
 write of gladiatorial shows and arenas and 
 down-turned thumbs. The thing has been 
 used up, and is unclean. But if you look very 
 carefully round you will find some there who 
 come not to gaze upon celebrity or to listen 
 to forensic eloquence, but because they are 
 cruel, and descend to this wretched substitute 
 for bull- and bear-baiting. 
 
 These few indications of how a primitive 
 passion will persist might be multiplied many 
 times. Go with them in your mind, and analyse 
 the motives at work in the little dramas of your 
 circle. If you do so thoughtfully and painfully 
 enough, you will end as desperate a fool as I 
 am. I would not, however, have you raise 
 your hands to heaven. Cruelty is a part of 
 human economy that may not be spared. In 
 fine, it is a defect of many admirable qualities, 
 and so I take my leave of it. 
 
THE CURSE OF CLEVERNESS 
 
 HE shallow little intellect, radiat- 
 ing with acute little glances, and 
 possessed altogether by the fal- 
 lacies of strict logic, is not a 
 curse to itself. Rather, it enjoys 
 itself amid the tributes of the pachydermatous. 
 Secure in the limits of its perception, it is 
 proof against the sarcasms of its betters. But 
 O the relentless irritation and ineffable weari- 
 ness of it to you and me ! If we go up into 
 the heights of science, it is there ; if we 
 descend to the uttermost depths of the penny 
 press, it is there also. It has read a little 
 handbook, and assimilated partly a little idea ; 
 and it is prepared to crush the great gods 
 because their great ideas do not include the 
 little idea which is to be found in the little 
 handbook. 
 
 You may have blessed yourself once and 
 again that you are hearing a man who has 
 something to say. He has a thought to share. 
 It must be unprepared and therefore dim in a 
 way, and in the imperfection of divine English 
 
 92 
 
THE CURSE OF CLEVERNESS 93 
 
 the words may be inaccurate. But you see 
 the drift ; he is suggesting more than he can 
 say, and the heaven of heavens is coming into 
 view, when in steps perky Impertinence and 
 with tin-tacks of logic nails him to the plane 
 where two and two make four, and A is either 
 B or not-B. He may have had all the pathos 
 of an old intriguer, all the wisdom of a young 
 lover ; but A is either B or not-B, and so the 
 subject dropped. And Cleverness, when he is 
 gone, hints that paradoxes are tedious, and, 
 confessing a preference for intellectual con- 
 versation, starts you on the scheme for national 
 insurance. And you long for the society of an 
 idiot. 
 
 Or you may have seen a woman in a million 
 wasting her preciousness on a clever young 
 man. Without the courage to comprehend, 
 or the wit to worship, he sits smiling ever 
 complacently, and stops the essence of a life's 
 pitiful successes or fruitful failures with some 
 dictum, born dead and damned, about the 
 progress of the species. She had been tried 
 by fire, but, you see, she had not read his 
 little handbook. You need make no apology 
 for arrogance in speaking thus of attorney's 
 brains misapplied. Whatever we may think, 
 we do not say that we have broader minds and 
 keener perception. But we know our place, 
 and the fact that other men have made it 
 
94 MOODS 
 
 possible for us to exceed our betters in know- 
 ledge has not taken away from us all capacity 
 for admiration. A stupid acquiescence in an 
 older judgment (that Addison is a god, for 
 instance) is one thing ; the power to perceive 
 there is one Sir Walter is another thing. There 
 is an autograph of the First Charles in the 
 British Museum. ' If a man being freed of 
 ' superstition, grow to be profane/ asks he, 
 ' what hath he gotten ? ' 
 
 In literature you may always take of the 
 best (for you) ; in life but seldom. What 
 then ? There is a river where one may free 
 himself from cleverness, may wash and be 
 clean. It is called the Stream of Stupidity ; 
 and, floating down it in restful content, you 
 leave Cleverness gibbering on the bank. Many 
 a weary man has known the restfulness of 
 languid conversation with a thoroughly stupid 
 person. He does not perceive that you use 
 his mind as a cushioned chair. She does not 
 resent that, while you seem to hear her com- 
 ments on life, you are nursing memories. The 
 Stream of Stupidity is also the River of Dreams. 
 There is yet another reason for its place among 
 the rarest gifts of Heaven. The union of a fine 
 intellect with a great nature may be rare ; that 
 of a clever little intellect with a good nature 
 is harder to find ; but a kindly and tolerant 
 heart is often wedded to no intellect at all. 
 
THE CURSE OF CLEVERNESS 95 
 
 And among our acquaintances we sometimes 
 have need of friends. 
 
 A fine intellect is a glorious thing ; stupidity 
 is its proper and necessary balance ; but clever- 
 ness that comes between, and fills our lives 
 with irritation and dulness out upon it ! 
 
THE ETERNAL SUBJECT 
 
 so long time as men shall ex- 
 press themselves in words, they 
 must need to write largely of 
 what is at least the half of their 
 lives. Indeed, if you analyse 
 enough you will find that in civilised man 
 ' love/ as they call it, is directly or indirectly 
 the central motive of far more than the half 
 of his comedies and tragedies. The word, of 
 course, stands for the genus, and the species 
 is seldom indicated as clearly as it might be. 
 ' Love ' stands for mere desire, and sometimes 
 for strong affection, and usually for a combi- 
 nation in varying proportions of the two. 
 Anacreon sang the love that is desire and 
 appreciation of beauty, and Sappho the love 
 that is desire excited to mania ; Horace the 
 love that is desire and mild affection, and 
 Catallus love in all its phases brute desire 
 and affectionate desire and desire that goes 
 hand in hand with hate. Let us limit our 
 view and keep to the English novelist. Or 
 rather, let us be refreshed with a glance at 
 
 96 
 
THE ETERNAL SUBJECT 97 
 
 our great ones, and then turn to the little ones ; 
 for it is difficult to share another's gladness, 
 but all will lend ear to a complaint themselves 
 have surely felt. 
 
 The love which comes upon two virginal 
 hearts at once, which is pure at its foundation 
 and builds no superstructure of make-believe 
 and false sentiment on desire this love is told 
 as none else has told it in Richard Feverel. Of 
 the approach of two natures without a sexual 
 past, without regrets, without comparisons, 
 while Mother Nature showed how goodly and 
 wholesome a thing this natural impulse un- 
 defiled by sophistry may be, and how fair to 
 watch are its beginnings of emotion of this 
 phase there is hardly such an epic in prose 
 elsewhere. One remembers other phases. 
 Fielding has given us most of them in his 
 robust instinct, Richardson has displayed the 
 sentimental aspect, and Sterne has smiled on 
 the easy ardour of my Uncle Toby for the 
 Widow Wadman. Mr. Arthur Pendennis 
 illustrates several in his own worthy person ; 
 and when Henry Esmond, cheated of Beatrix, 
 fell back on the object of his boyish worship, 
 even Trix's mother, and married her, there 
 was written one of the boldest and most 
 excellent things in fiction. But an enumera- 
 tion would be impertinent. . . . All the phases 
 are illustrated by our greater novelists, or all 
 G 
 
98 MOODS 
 
 save one or two. To come to our complaint 
 of the smaller ones and to take them in the 
 lump. The plaint is not that they write of 
 love, which, as was said, is half of life, and 
 instead thereof one would not have them trace 
 the details of the hero's financial operations, 
 or concern themselves with the minutiae of 
 engines and dynamos. The grievance is, that 
 their loves are always the loves of little-hearted 
 virgins and nice young men. Even in the 
 greater masters you find a general tendency 
 to place two young persons in the limelight, 
 so that the thing is sometimes tedious. Of 
 such love as was Richard Feverel's and Lucy's, 
 no reader may complain ; but, frankly, the 
 young person whose love is always being 
 sicklied o'er with this or that fantasy or 
 mishap is wearisome. The young woman 
 for this reason. Surely we know that most 
 often she can hardly feel an intensity 
 of passion before marriage, and therefore 
 her suspicions and questionings and self- 
 deceptions are not often of constraining 
 interest. We wax weary of the damsel who 
 discards her lover for groundless jealousy, of 
 the school-girl who is for reclaiming the re- 
 pentant rake (so he said), of her who proclaims 
 her zeal to be for the cause and not the man. 
 Our little novelists, being mostly women, treat 
 of these things with tolerable accuracy ; but 
 
THE ETERNAL SUBJECT 99 
 
 the things are in themselves barren. And the 
 young male is ineffably wearisome, because, 
 our little novelists being mostly women, he 
 figures in their pages as either prig or cad. 
 The woman who can draw an amiable virile 
 man in his time of passion is a jewel indeed. 
 Even Charlotte Bronte, she who could make 
 her plain, insignificant little governesses abso- 
 lutely adorable, of how many male lovers has 
 she given the impression of manliness and 
 humanity, if you except M. Paul ? And one 
 speaks of novelists with other powers than 
 hers. 
 
 There is a minor point worth noting. 
 Granting the interest of the bloodless phil- 
 andering of young people, one finds that in 
 defiance of experience and of the best pro- 
 verb on the subject their loves are almost 
 always mutual. This either postulates that 
 the emotions of variously conditioned people 
 always develop at an equal speed, which is 
 absurd, or ignores the sad fact that neither 
 with man nor with woman does the sight of 
 passion in another stimulate a return, for there 
 is nothing to be won, and the return is often 
 the deception of self or of others. Mutual, 
 contemporaneous devotion is the gift given to 
 the very few : yet our little novelists attest it 
 the privilege of all but villains. But that 
 incessant procession of inane young persons 
 
100 MOODS 
 
 from the absurd love at first sight to the lawful 
 altar is what grieves the wise. For they tell 
 us that middle-aged passion is a sterner and 
 more fruitful thing than the rambling inclina- 
 tion of mistaken school-girls. Of course 
 our little novelists have no claim to rank as 
 artists ; they do not try to express their best, 
 but merely to supply a demand. All the more 
 reason they should list now and then to the 
 demand of the wise. For though the wise 
 read few new novels, yet when they are 
 catholic they like a touch of modernity in 
 their reading ; and when, seeking it, they find 
 but the ancient young person, they are 
 troubled. Or suppose our little novelists 
 did endeavour after art. It is true that the 
 first purpose of a work of art is not to set one 
 thinking ; but an art whose concern is with 
 the qualities of human beings must be jejune 
 if it raise no secondary question of the philo- 
 sophy of sex. The suggestions of little 
 novelists are not likely to be valuable ; in 
 point of art they must of necessity be slipshod 
 and futile. But if their love stories bore some 
 relation to their knowledge of life even to 
 theirs they would be none the less profitable 
 and a deal less annoying to read. 
 
A MODERN VERSION 
 
 I HE Youth came from Balliol to 
 the cross-ways, where stood a 
 man and a woman. The man 
 was tall, and of a firm jaw and 
 clear eyes ; straight was he and 
 square-shouldered, but to the youth there 
 seemed a clumsiness in his carriage and a lack 
 of intelligence in the shape of his forehead. 
 The woman was plump and comely and easy 
 of bearing ; she showed her white teeth to the 
 youth as she would smile, but the look in her 
 eyes was anxious. 
 
 And the man said : ' O youth, we are friends ; 
 1 I am called Duty.' 
 
 And the youth replied : ' You are indeed 
 ' called Duty by many ; but your right to the 
 ' name is at best occasional, and analysis may 
 ' show it a convention. I know you well, and 
 ' you are merely Work.' 
 
 To the woman he said : ' It is courtesy to 
 ' call you Pleasure. Yet have you no monopoly 
 ' of the title, which is sometimes to be borne 
 
 101 
 
102 MOODS 
 
 ' by Work. Often you are grievous and a very 
 ' millstone. Everything is relative, and this 
 ( matter is one of inherited impulses and 
 ' acquired habits. Let me therefore state the 
 ' personal equation, that your arguments may 
 ' be simplified. I have acquired no habit of 
 ' liking Work (frankness is the mode to-day), 
 ' and my heritage impels me to enjoy you, 
 ' who are as yet Pleasure in truth to me, as 
 ' long as I may.' 
 
 ' Come, then,' quoth she, ' and enjoy.' 
 
 ' Nay, come with me/ quoth the man, ' and 
 ' I will lead you to Heaven.' 
 
 ' Alas ! good man,' said the youth, ' the time 
 ' is gone by for such an argument. You would 
 ' say you mean something else than the tales 
 ' I was told as a boy, but the catch-words of 
 1 philosophy do not make a hypothesis philo- 
 ' sophical. Moreover, the object is grossly 
 ' utilitarian merely my own enjoyment of the 
 ' hereafter, and Pleasure will give it me now. 
 ' Tell me something less selfish.' 
 
 ' The greatest good of the greatest number,' 
 said the man. 
 
 ' You make brave strides, but are yet behind 
 ' the times. Bentham's system was not a Pig- 
 ' philosophy, as said Carlyle, and its utilitarian- 
 ' ism (unlike your heavenly theory's) is un- 
 ' selfish. But pardon my popular erudition 
 ' Green has shown it inadequate in theory, 
 
A MODERN VERSION 103 
 
 ' and I defy you to prove that in practice my 
 1 following you would promote the end you 
 ' give me.' 
 
 ' Well, then, the satisfaction of your friends.' 
 
 ' Ah ! that/ said the youth, ' is more reason- 
 ' able and human. But you surely wrong them, 
 ' if you think an irksome servitude of me to 
 ' you would satisfy them. Their chief wish for 
 1 me, I am assured, is my own satisfaction, and 
 ' I must be left to judge of that ; if their 
 ( theories are unreasonable, it is my business 
 ' as a friend to ignore them.' 
 
 Then the man frowned, and said : ' A truce 
 ' to your quibbles. There are very many who 
 ' must follow me or starve, and are you not 
 ' ashamed 
 
 ' Not in the least degree/ rejoined the youth. 
 ' I am a convinced Socialist, and the doctrine of 
 ' Socialism is that every one of us should work.' 
 The woman laughed, and tapped the ground im- 
 patiently with her foot. ' But it has been shown, 
 ' time and again, that the practice of Socialism 
 ' by isolated individuals does no good to the 
 ' unjustly worked, but rather benefits the un- 
 ' justly idle, if the community practises it 
 ' not. The chief advantage of our present 
 ' monstrous polity is in a variety of types ; 
 ' now England is a dull country to-day, and 
 1 most of us care too little for this lady. 
 ' Therefore shall I best mitigate the condi- 
 
104 MOODS 
 
 ' tion of my fellows by being her servant. 
 ' No, my friend that would be, return you 
 ' to selfish arguments.' 
 
 ' Ambition/ murmured the other ' Premier 
 ' . . . the woolsack.' 
 
 ' Vulgarity ! ' returned the youth in disdain : 
 ' these tempt me not. What ? To toil like a 
 ' slave for years and years, toil far more griev- 
 ' ously than any in that blessed state of Social- 
 ' ism I hope will arrive, to the doubtful end 
 ' that I be applauded by a despicable rabble, 
 ' and be used by a mob of place-hunters ? 
 ' Why, this,' and he took the woman's hand 
 and kissed it, ' is no more gross an end than 
 ' that, and is at least substantial. But I am 
 ' glad you did not call it an unselfish end, and 
 speak of "serving my country." ' 
 
 ' Art,' said the man, ' the best expression of 
 ' yourself in words, or in sounds, or in lines and 
 ' colours.' 
 
 ' You touch me more nearly/ said the other ; 
 ' but life is more than art, and there are other 
 ' media of expression than colours and sounds 
 ' and words. Yet is the aim at least likely to 
 ' be free from vulgar recognition. Now, listen/ 
 he said, ' listen, both of you. You have been 
 ' following this cross-ways business for thou- 
 ' sands of years, and must have learned by 
 ' experience that your immemorial quarrel is 
 ' superfluous in great measure. In so far as it is 
 
A MODERN VERSION 105 
 
 ' wholly irreconcileable, it is the remnant of an 
 ' ascetic superstition that the world is weary 
 ' of. It is possible for such as I am to go with 
 ' both of you. The end of life is life, and the 
 ' fullest life is the life most complex, in which 
 ' every faculty is duly exercised. In the best 
 ' equilibrium of existence a man goes with you 
 ' by turns, or rather with both at once. But 
 ' I grant you there is something calculating, 
 ' and therefore possibly unamiable, in this pro- 
 ' cedure, and it is yet an effect of a state of 
 ' transition that we admire an whole-hearted 
 ' self-abandonment. Possibly some play on the 
 ' nerves, some experience of life, is to be gained 
 ' in this way. Therefore I shall act thus : I shall 
 ' abandon myself wholly to you, Pleasure, while 
 ' youth is with me. Donee virenti ... it is 
 ' a very old tale. But, Work, I shall some day 
 ' perhaps ask your company, and perchance 
 ' with your assistance (for without it man is 
 ' mostly helpless) achieve something of that 
 ' last ambition you named to me. Does it 
 ' content you ? ' 
 
 The man said it contented him not. ' And 
 ' I have one other argument, and that is she.' 
 
 And the youth was aware of a second woman, 
 whose qualities you can best imagine for your- 
 self. It is enough to say that to the youth she 
 seemed a thing divine. Pleasure was pretty, 
 but Happiness (so the youth named her) was 
 
106 MOODS 
 
 beautiful, and the youth called her beauty 
 spiritual. Pleasure was graceful, but Happi- 
 ness was distinguished and a queen. And the 
 youth knelt and worshipped her. 
 
 She said : ' I forbid you to go with Pleasure ; 
 ' go you with Duty, and perchance you may 
 ' attain unto me.' 
 
 And the youth said : ' Will you not pro- 
 ' mise ? ' 
 
 And she : ' Your journey with Duty will be 
 ' long, and many things may happen to me 
 ' before its end. Live in hope,' she said, and 
 was gone, and the youth rose up and looked 
 foolishly. 
 
 ' It is a selfish object after all/ he sighed, and 
 the woman sneered and said : ' Yes, indeed. 
 ' And she and I are sisters, after all.' 
 
 ' Not so,' said the youth ; ' your lineage is 
 ' ancient, and you have not mended the appear- 
 ' ance of your first ancestress. She comes from 
 ' the same stock, but the generations have 
 ' added qualities you have not. There is desire 
 ' and there is love, which is desire and affec- 
 ' tion and esteem.' 
 
 The woman laughed, and said : ' Go your 
 ' ways, Youth, and follow this will-o'-the-wisp. 
 ' But know that if Happiness cheat you, 
 ' and you come back to me in later life, you 
 ' will come not as a friend, as you may now, 
 ' but as a thrall for ever. I shall drive you 
 
A MODERN VERSION 107 
 
 ' before me, and when you faint I shall strike 
 ' you with a whip.' 
 
 So the woman left them, and the man and 
 the youth set forth together. 
 
 But whether he found Happiness was Con- 
 greve's woman, ' the reflection of Heaven in 
 a pond ; and he that leaps at her is sunk,' 
 and so returned to Pleasure and her whip, or 
 Happiness rejoined him and the man (whom 
 he would then call Duty) and made their road 
 pleasant, ... it is very much a toss-up. 
 
THE PATH OF REJECTION 
 
 ' E begin by accepting most things, 
 and, if the discipline of our 
 minds have been of a certain 
 order, we end by rejecting 
 nearly all. This commonplace 
 has many illustrations, and on it doubtless many 
 a sage and sad reflection has been uttered. 
 One or two bright ones might be added to 
 complete the truth ; for if we have outworn 
 our loves, yet our loves they have been, and 
 we may say there is a pride of intellect not 
 altogether futile in the ultimate passage to 
 indifference : which pride is pleasant. For the 
 worthless indifference and for the pretentious 
 dislike are allowed you ; contempt for modest 
 lack of brains or learning is another thing 
 the mere snobbery of intellect or learning. Re- 
 membering this, you may go on your path 
 of rejection blameless, and reach the goal with 
 what appetite you may. After all, it will go 
 hard but that some few of the world's artists 
 shall content you to the end of your days. 
 This of the things in the field of taste and 
 
 108 
 
judgment less dependent on the circulation of 
 the blood. Our tiring of the rest means 
 physical weakness, of course, and so in all the 
 warmth of our acceptance is according to our 
 temperament : some will be enthusiastic over 
 that which leaves others, who have, emotion 
 apart, a like appreciation, unperturbed. Our 
 taste and judgment may become more and 
 more exquisite, while our vitality becomes less 
 and less abundant, and ourselves critical and 
 merely blase at the same time. Nil admirari, 
 or something like that, is an attribute of both 
 states. 
 
 When we reject persons, it is most often 
 for good and all. The relations who loomed 
 large in our childhood, only because they had 
 the (now very disputable) advantage of matu- 
 rity ; the sham roues who imposed on our 
 adolescence with their brag of common dis- 
 sipation; the women who flattered our early 
 manhood with hopes of comprehension : they 
 are all gone, and their place on our horizon 
 knoweth them no more. We may but I 
 would hope it was otherwise have been be- 
 guiled by the platitudes of progress in our 
 conceit of emancipation ; or by the worship 
 of the bloodless, merely a reaction from the 
 necessary brute within us ; or by the cult of 
 cleverness, which was our revolt against the 
 healthy stupidity around us. They are all gone 
 
110 MOODS 
 
 for ever. In books, too, some sorts of jocosity 
 and pathos please us no more. 
 
 But with most things there is rejection, and 
 after a space acceptance on other terms. 
 Dogmas learned early are despised and again 
 valued not as dogmas but as half-true criti- 
 cism of life. We are shut out of fairyland, 
 again, for a while, and are fain to re-enter 
 later on : we make but clumsy figures there, it 
 may be, and are no longer full citizens, but as 
 visitors we are humble and grateful enough. 
 The scenes that seemed ah ! hundreds of 
 years ago to embody life and gaiety have 
 once more, after a period of contempt for the 
 monotonies of folly, some attraction of huma- 
 nity. And Horace (say), despised for a time, 
 while our mighty philosophy seemed to lay 
 bare his shallows, draws us back by his sureness, 
 and we attain at length to a sense of his per- 
 fection. And so forth; and the refusal of 
 some kinds of the worse is a condition of the 
 acceptance of the better. Do not, therefore, 
 ask me to pity you unless your case be in this 
 wise. You may have created, and you may have 
 to reject much of your own. How, then, have 
 you hated those earlier inanities which are all 
 the run of your friends care for ! Sometimes 
 you may be at fault : yours may be the case of 
 comfortable middle-age frowning on the less 
 trammelled and worthier commissions of the 
 
THE PATH OF REJECTION 111 
 
 hot season. I fear, though, that as a rule your 
 condemnation of those poems and stories is 
 just enough. But you may desire still to 
 create, and your faculty for it may lag behind 
 the improvement of your judgment. Then I 
 am sorry in truth, for you come to a deadlock. 
 As t' other afternoon you took the occasion of 
 solitude, and settled down to a work of genius : 
 everything was still, the air persuaded you 
 softly, the sky smiled approval. But, alas o' 
 day, the genius was all critical. Poetical 
 rhapsody, cynical analysis, observant philo- 
 sophy never a one would serve you. This 
 was crude, that ancient, the other superficial. 
 In the end your paper was innocent. And 
 how many of these pages would you have 
 passed that afternoon ? 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press. 
 
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