if they used the word) they
would have to call the vulgarity of visitors from town. And he, who was
so cavalier with men of his own class, was sedulous to shield the more
tender feelings of the peasant; he, who could be so trying in a
drawing-room, was even punctilious in the cottage. It was in all
respects a happy virtue. It renewed his life, during these holidays, in
all particulars. It often entertained him with the discovery of strange
survivals; as when, by the orders of Murdoch, Mrs. Jenkin must publicly
taste of every dish before it was set before her guests. And thus to
throw himself into a fresh life and a new school of manners was a
grateful exercise of Fleeming's mimetic instinct; and to the pleasures
of the open air, of hardships supported, of dexterities improved and
displayed, and of plain and elegant society, added a spice of drama.

II

Fleeming was all his life a lover of the play and all that belonged to
it. Dramatic literature he knew fully. He was one of the not very
numerous people who can read a play: a knack, the fruit of much
knowledge and some imagination, comparable to that of reading score. Few
men better understood the artificial principles on which a play is good
or bad; few more unaffectedly enjoyed a piece of any merit of
construction. His own play was conceived with a double design; for he
had long been filled with his theory of the true story of Griselda; used
to gird at Father Chaucer for his misconception; and was, perhaps first
of all, moved by the desire to do justice to the Marquis of Saluces, and
perhaps only in the second place by the wish to treat a story (as he
phrased it) like a sum in arithmetic. I do not think he quite succeeded;
but I must own myself no fit judge. Fleeming and I were teacher and
taught as to the principles, disputatious rivals in the practice, of
dramatic writing.

Acting had always, ever since Rachel and the "_Marseillaise_," a
particular power on him. "If I do not cry at the play," he used to say,
"I want to have my money back." Even from a poor play with poor actors
he could draw pleasure. "Glacometti's _Elisabetta_," I find him
writing, "fetched the house vastly. Poor Queen Elizabeth! And yet it was
a little good." And again, after a night of Salvini: "I do not suppose
any one with feelings could sit out _Othello_ if Iago and Desdemona were
acted." Salvini was, in his view, the greatest actor he had seen. We
were all indeed moved and bettered by t