Part 31 (1/2)

Mr. Walter Pater's style is, to me, like the face of some old woman who has been to Madame Rachel and had herself enamelled. The bloom is nothing but powder and paint and the odour is cherry-blossom. Mr.

Matthew Arnold's odour is as the faint sickliness of hawthorn.

My Random Pa.s.sages

At the Century Club a friend very kindly and hesitatingly ventured to suggest to me that I should get some one to go over my MS. before printing; a judicious editor, he said, would have prevented me from printing many a bit which, it seemed to him, was written too recklessly and offhand. The fact is that the more reckless and random a pa.s.sage appears to be, the more carefully it has been submitted to friends and considered and re-considered; without the support of friends I should never have dared to print one half of what I have printed.

I am not one of those who can repeat the General Confession unreservedly. I should say rather:

”I have left unsaid much that I am sorry I did not say, but I have said little that I am sorry for having said, and I am pretty well on the whole, thank you.”

Moral Try-Your-Strengths

There are people who, if they only had a slot, might turn a pretty penny as moral try-your-strengths, like those we see in railway- stations for telling people their physical strength when they have dropped a penny in the slot. In a way they have a slot, which is their mouths, and people drop pennies in by asking them to dinner, and then they try their strength against them and get snubbed; but this way is roundabout and expensive. We want a good automatic asinometer by which we can tell at a moderate cost how great or how little of a fool we are.

Populus Vult

If people like being deceived--and this can hardly be doubted--there can rarely have been a time during which they can have had more of the wish than now. The literary, scientific and religious worlds vie with one another in trying to gratify the public.

Men and Monkeys

In his latest article (Feb. 1892) Prof. Garner says that the chatter of monkeys is not meaningless, but that they are conveying ideas to one another. This seems to me hazardous. The monkeys might with equal justice conclude that in our magazine articles, or literary and artistic criticisms, we are not chattering idly but are conveying ideas to one another.

”One Touch of Nature”

”One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Should it not be ”marks,” not ”makes”? There is one touch of nature, or natural feature, which marks all mankind as of one family.

P.S.--Surely it should be ”of ill-nature.” ”One touch of ill-nature marks--or several touches of ill-nature mark the whole world kin.”

Genuine Feeling

In the Times of to-day, June 4, 1887, there is an obituary notice of a Rev. Mr. Knight who wrote about 200 songs, among others ”She wore a wreath of roses.” The Times says that, though these songs have no artistic merit, they are full of genuine feeling, or words to this effect; as though a song which was full of genuine feeling could by any possibility be without artistic merit.

George Meredith

The Times in a leading article says (Jany. 3, 1899) ”a talker,” as Mr. George Meredith has somewhere said, ”involves the existence of a talkee,” or words to this effect.

I said what comes to the same thing as this in Life and Habit in 1877, and I repeated it in the preface to my translation of the Iliad in 1898. I do not believe George Meredith has said anything to the same effect, but I have read so very little of that writer, and have so utterly rejected what I did read, that he may well have done so without my knowing it. He d.a.m.ned Erewhon, as Chapman and Hall's reader, in 1871, and, as I am still raw about this after 28 years, (I am afraid unless I say something more I shall be taken as writing these words seriously) I prefer to a.s.sert that the Times writer was quoting from my preface to the Iliad, published a few weeks earlier, and fathering the remark on George Meredith. By the way the Times did not give so much as a line to my translation in its ”Books of the Week,” though it was duly sent to them.

Froude and Freeman

I think it was last Sat.u.r.day (Ap. 9) (at any rate it was a day just thereabouts) the Times had a leader on Froude's appointment as Reg.