oar you down, bury
his face in his hands, undergo passions of revolt and agony, letting
loose a spring torrent of words. There was always a wild flood and storm
of talk wherever Henley might be. He and his Young Men were the most
clamorous group of the clamorous Nineties, though curiously their
clamour seems faint in the ears of the present authorities on that noisy
period. I have read one of these authorities' description of the London
of the Nineties dressed in a powder puff, dancing beneath Chinese
lanterns, being as wicked as could be in artificial rose-gardens. But
had Henley and his Young Men suspected the existence of a London like
that, they would have overthrown it with their voices, as Joshua
overthrew the walls of Jericho with his trumpets. To other authorities
the Nineties represent an endless orgy of societies--Independent Theatre
Societies, Fabian Societies, Browning Societies, every possible kind of
societies--but the _National Observer_, with its keen scent for shams,
was as ready to pounce upon any and all of them for the good of their
health, and to upbraid their members as cranks. It was a paper that
existed to protest against just this sort of thing, as against most
other things in a sentimental and artificial and reforming and ignorant
world. It made as much noise in print as its editorial staff made in
talk. The main function of criticism, according to Henley, was to
increase the powers of depreciation rather than of appreciation, and
what a healthy doctrine it is! As editor, he roared down his opponents
no less lustily than he roared them down as talkers, and he had the
strong wit and the strong heart that a man must have, or so it is said,
to know when to tell the truth, which, with him, was always. He could
not stand anything like affectation, or what people were calling
aestheticism and decadence. To him, literature was literature and art was
art, and not puling sentiment, affected posturing, lilies and
sunflowers. The _National Observer_ was the housetop from which he
shouted for all who passed to hear that it did not matter twopence what
the dabbler wanted to express if he could not express it, if he had not
the technique of his medium at his fingers' ends and under his perfect
control. A man might indulge in noble and beautiful ideas, and if he did
not know how to put them in beautiful words or in beautiful paint or in
beautiful sound, he was anathema, to be cast into outer darkness where
the