as a late
favourite; and he found at least a passing entertainment in the
"Arcadia" and the "Grand Cyrus." George Eliot he outgrew, finding her
latterly only sawdust in the mouth; but her influence, while it lasted,
was great, and must have gone some way to form his mind. He was easily
set on edge, however, by didactic writing; and held that books should
teach no other lesson but what "real life would teach, were it as
vividly presented." Again, it was the thing made that took him, the
drama in the book; to the book itself, to any merit of the making, he
was long strangely blind. He would prefer the "Agamemnon" in the prose
of Mr. Buckley, ay, to Keats. But he was his mother's son, learning to
the last. He told me one day that literature was not a trade; that it
was no craft; that the professed author was merely an amateur with a
door-plate. "Very well," said I, "the first time you get a proof, I will
demonstrate that it is as much a trade as bricklaying, and that you do
not know it." By the very next post a proof came. I opened it with fear;
for he was, indeed, a formidable amateur; always wrote brightly, because
he always thought trenchantly; and sometimes wrote brilliantly, as the
worst of whistlers may sometimes stumble on a perfect intonation. But it
was all for the best in the interests of his education; and I was able,
over that proof, to give him a quarter of an hour such as Fleeming loved
both to give and to receive. His subsequent training passed out of my
hands into those of our common friend, W. E. Henley. "Henley and I," he
wrote, "have fairly good times wigging one another for not doing better.
I wig him because he won't try to write a real play, and he wigs me
because I can't try to write English." When I next saw him he was full
of his new acquisitions. "And yet I have lost something too," he said
regretfully. "Up to now Scott seemed to me quite perfect, he was all I
wanted. Since I have been learning this confounded thing, I took up one
of the novels, and a great deal of it is both careless and clumsy."

V

He spoke four languages with freedom, not even English with any marked
propriety. What he uttered was not so much well said, as excellently
acted: so we may hear every day the inexpressive language of a poorly
written drama assume character and colour in the hands of a good player.
No man had more of the _vis comica_ in private life; he played no
character on the stage as he could play himself a