no doubt, could discourse on many pertinent topics. He could have told the poet, had he perchance come across him, the state of the roads, and the changing quality of the ale. With a mind untinged with letters, he might have revealed his simple nature and shown his interlocutor what manner of man it is that is content to run up and down the country sitting on a petroleum-tin. But had FitzGerald met his worshippers, there would have been a sudden and headlong flight. Even his ghost must recoil in horror from the spectacle of those whom in his life he had most sedulously avoided.

And

Mr Birrell, having been inveigled into this strange society, could do no less than admit that the homage he and his colleagues were paying would not have been wholly acceptable to the object of their adoration.

Mr Birrell's modesty, however, was by no means to the taste of Mr Gosse, who, at another religious service held by the devout on their return to London, reproved the Irish Secretary's levity after his own pompous fashion. For him the motor - cyclist "represented a tendency indulged in by such men of letters as were ashamed of literature, and took it only as a recreation." That is not what he represented to Mr Birrell, and not what he represents to us. The true craftsman is not ashamed of his work; he knows that it is too exacting to be taken as a recreation. But, for these very reasons, he does not want to gabble of it to all and sundry. He will not admit to

his presence those well-meaning fanatics who ask him what are "his methods of work," and whether he writes more easily on a full or empty stomach. Such questions as these the motor-cyclist would be incapable of putting. There is not one of the devout who could be trusted to approach the master without some flattering indiscretion. Moreover, no sensible writer ever forgets that he is a man also, and that other things than the accident of his own profession are interesting to him. If we meet a stockbroker or a barrister, we do not instantly fall to discussing stocks and shares or the intricacies of the law. But men of letters are deemed the proper prey of the curious, and in selfdefence they have a perfect right to prefer the society of those who

can talk some

other "shop" than theirs. Now, FitzGerald was a writer by temperament and habit alike. Yet it was not for his poems that he loved Alfred Tennyson, who in his opinion was falling rapidly from grace. It was not for his prose that he called Carlyle his friend, for it represented in his eyes all that was vicious in the English language. He knew these men, and sometimes sought their society because he admired their character and their pride. Best of all, he rarely, if ever, chattered of his own performances. You may read his letters through without realising very clearly that he had given his enemies a firm hold upon him by writing a book. He did his work; it was for others to tell the tale.

No better example can be found of the author's pride than in Congreve's famous encounter with Voltaire. Voltaire visited the English dramatist when he was old and on the point of death, and Congreve spoke of his plays as trifles beneath him, wishing to be considered as nothing more than a gentleman who lived very simply. Voltaire replied that, had Congreve had the misfortune of being a mere gentleman like another, he would not have come to see him. Dr Johnson finds in Congreve's behaviour not merely despicable foppery but a base ingratitude to the Muses. The text of Voltaire does not warrant so harsh a judgment, and Lamb took another and a saner view than Johnson's. "I think the impertinent Frenchman was properly answered," said he; "I should just serve any member of the French Institute in the same manner, that wished to be introduced to me."

This story, in fact, may be diversely interpreted. In Voltaire Congreve met one who was at least his equal, and though he had a perfect right to dissociate himself from his plays, he might perhaps have acted the author's part for this one occasion, and still kept his sense of humour. But the pursuer is very seldom the equal of the pursued, and for this reason he should be most jealously suspected. To all those who stole in upon his privacy Guy de Maupassant had but one answer. "Don't talk to me of literature," he would say; "I know nothing about it. Ask me about boats, which I under

stand." Thus spoke he to the Paul Prys. It was not thus that he spoke when he met his friends at Médan. And the reproof thus sternly administered by Guy de Maupassant is far more often earned now than then. The common interest in literature, displayed in pilgrimages and paragraphs, is an interest of gossip, when it is not inspired by a love of self-advertisement. The poets' works do not assuage the thirsty curiosity of the vulgar. The vulgar wishes to know where the great live and to see blurred photographs of them and their houses in the pictured papers. The vulgar likes to share its interest with its fellows. It cannot study or admire in solitude. It has not the courage to read what books it likes, without putting a foolish badge in its buttonhole. And so it pledges itself to an open worship of this or that author with all the zeal of a cultured suburb preparing itself for a penny-reading. It must be more royalist than the king. It must exceed in devotion its momentary deity. FitzGerald was never an Omarian. There is not one man who attended the poet's belated obsequies who is ashamed of fixing upon himself this inappropriate title. Poshite, indeed, would be a better name for the most of them, and perhaps with increasing candour they may thus describe themselves. But to-day they are Omarians to a man, and Omarians they will remain until Posh intervenes or fashion shifts, and they find another shrine.

And this habit of the liter

ary tea-garden should be the more sternly discountenanced because the old custom of reticence is gone. No sooner does an eminent man die than his admirers are eager to uncover the secrecies of his life. The body-snatcher is abroad, intent upon driving a lucrative trade in the dead man's bones when he has rifled the dead man's grave. His practice is familiar and uniform. In the guise of a friend he watches the declining years of the great man whom he has chosen for his prey. He obeys his commands with the alacrity of a slave. He accepts his kicks, should they be offered, with a patient shrug, and knows that his forbearance will be amply repaid by the gossip already transferred to his note book. And in this welter of indiscretion literature is forgotten. Why should you read a man's works when you can read

scandalous imbecilities about him? Why should you exercise your own taste when it is easier to take the taste of the crowd? Why, why, indeed, should you do anything but go on pilgrimages and think yourself far better than those who journeyed to Canterbury many centuries ago? And yet Chaucer chose his pilgrims with such care that he left no corner of English life and character without illumination. How dull would their stories have been had they all been editors of weekly reviews and literary paragraphists!

The modern amateur of literature, in fact, refuses to believe in the existence of any poet whose "home - life," as

he calls it, he has failed to penetrate. We know more of Shakespeare than of any man that ever lived, because he has most generously revealed himself to us. But the curious investigator finds something lacking. He cannot discover that Shakespeare had a Posh. The eavesdroppings of interested friends, the gossip of the Press, have failed to belittle the author of "Hamlet" in his eyes. is convinced that Shakespeare never lived at all, and that somebody else wrote his plays. If he could read those plays with intelligence, he might come to a wiser conclusion. Did he reflect that, though a poet may understand law, no lawyer was ever a poet; did he accept the teaching of history that genius flourishes as and where it lists, he might discover that Shakespeare was a very real person. And if he must have evidence from without, the panegyrics of Ben Jonson, in prose and verse, should be enough to reassure him. But no! He looks about for Posh, and finding him not, declares that Shakespeare is an impostor. We are sorry for this poor investigator, and would recommend him to renounce Shakespeare and all his works and join the Omar Khayyám Club. For there he will hear reiterated with various eloquence that publicity is the only thing that counts, and that literature is Posh et præterea nihil.

And therefore he

In this refusal to be bound by the dead hand, there is a pathos as well as a comedy. Another event which during the last month has convulsed