truggling in me, I would
obtain, as it were, glimpses, fleeting and unsatisfactory, into a
former state. Then they would go, not for long intervals to return. As
time elapsed, however, these glimpses, to call them so, became more
frequent and lasting, the intervals of oblivion shorter; and at last,
one day on Hampstead Heath, I identified myself in a sudden burst of
insight. I was walking on the Heath, and thinking of my
work--marvelling at a certain quality I had discerned in it, which, I
was convinced, would assure it everlasting life: a quality that
seemed not unfamiliar to me, and yet which I could associate with none
of the writers whose names passed in review before my mind; not with
Byron, or Shelley, or Keats, not with Wordsworth or Coleridge, Goethe
or Dante, not even with Homer. I mean the quality which I call
universal--universal in its authenticity, universal in its appeal.
By-and-bye, I took out a little pocket mirror that I always carry, and
looked into it, studying my face. One glance sufficed. There,
suddenly, on Hampstead Heath, the whole thing flashed upon me. I saw,
I understood; I realised who I was, I remembered everything.'

'Stop right there, Mr. Blake,' called out Chalks in stentorian tones.
'Don't you say another word. I'm going to hail you by your right name
in half-a-minute. I guess I must have recognised you the very first
time I clapped eyes on your distinguished physiognomy; only I couldn't
just _place_ you, as we say over in America. But there was a _je ne
sais quoi_ in the whole cut of your jib as familiar to me as rolls and
coffee. I tried and tried to think when and where I'd had the pleasure
before. But now that you speak of a former state of existence--why,
I'm _there_! It was all I needed, just a little hint like that, to jog
my memory. Talk about entertaining angels unawares! The beard, eh? And
the yaller cloak? And ain't there a statue of you up Boulevard
Haussmann way? Shakesy, old man, shake!'

And Chalks got hold of his victim's hand and wrung it fervently. 'I'm
particularly glad to meet you this way,' he added, 'because I was
Queen Elizabeth myself; and I can't begin to tell you how sort of out
of it I felt, alone here with all this degenerate posterity.'

Blake coldly withdrew his hand, frowning loftily at Chalks. 'You
should reserve your nonsense for more appropriate occasions,' he said.
'Though you speak in a spirit of foolish levity, you have builded
better than you knew