s allusive, and what is called unconventional; to me it is
simply spasmodic and affected. The man seems, as a rule, utterly unable
to say anything in a simple and delicate way; his one object appears to
be not to use the obvious word. He has a sort of jargon of his own--a
dreadful jargon. He must write "crittur" or "craythur," when he means
"creature"; he says "Yiss, ma'am, I'd be glad to jine the Book Club";
he uses the word "galore"; he talks of "the resipiscential process"
when he means growing wiser--at least I think that is what he means.
The following, taken quite at random, are specimens of the sort of
passages that abound:--

"Rain, too, is one of my joys. I want to wash myself, soak myself in
it; hang myself over a meridian to dry; dissolve (still better) into
rags of soppy disintegration, blotting paper, mash and splash and hash
of inarticulate protoplasm."

I suppose that both he and his friends thought that picturesque; to me
it is neither beautiful nor amusing--simply ugly and aggravating.

Here again:--

"On the Quantocks I feel fairies all round me, the good folk, meet
companions for young poets. How Coleridge, more especially, fits in to
such surroundings! 'Fairies?' say you. Well, there's odds of fairies,
and of the sort I mean Coleridge was the absolute Puck. 'Puck?' says
you. 'For shame!' says you. No, d--n it! I'll stick to that. There's
odds o' fairies, and often enough I think the world is nothing else;
troops, societies, hierarchies--S.T.C., a supreme hierarch; look at his
face; think of meeting him at moonlight between Stowey and Alfoxden,
like a great white owl, soft and plumy, with eyes of flame!"

I confess that such passages simply make me blush, leave me with a kind
of mental nausea. What makes it worse is that there is something in
what he says, if he would only say it better. It makes me feel as I
should feel if I saw an elderly, heavily-built clergyman amusing
himself in a public place with a skipping-rope, to show what a child of
nature he was.

I cannot help feeling that the man was a poseur, and that his
affectations were the result of living in a small and admiring coterie.
If, when one begins to write and talk in that jesting way, there is
some one at your elbow to say, "How refreshing, how original, how
rugged!" I suppose that one begins to think that one had better indulge
oneself in such absurdities. But readers outside the circle turn away
in disgust.

The pity o