f his love that maddened him. But he lived to
be the lightest-hearted of lunatics and caused great amusement for many
years. Whether we think of him in his relation to history or psychology,
dandiacal or dramatic art, he is a salient, pathetic figure. That he is
memorable for his defects, not for his qualities, I know. But Romeo,
in the tragedy of his wild love and frail intellect, in the folly that
stretched the corners of his 'peculiar grin' and shone in his diamonds
and was emblazoned upon his tumbril, is more suggestive than some sages.
He was so fantastic an animal that Oblivion were indeed amiss. If no
more, he was a great Fool. In any case, it would be fun to have seen
him.

London, 1896.

Diminuendo

In the year of grace 1890, and in the beautiful autumn of that year, I
was a freshman at Oxford. I remember how my tutor asked me what lectures
I wished to attend, and how he laughed when I said that I wished to
attend the lectures of Mr. Walter Pater. Also I remember how, one
morning soon after, I went into Ryman's to order some foolish engraving
for my room, and there saw, peering into a portfolio, a small, thick,
rock-faced man, whose top-hat and gloves of bright dog-skin struck one
of the many discords in that little city of learning or laughter. The
serried bristles of his moustachio made for him a false-military air. I
think I nearly went down when they told me that this was Pater.

Not that even in those more decadent days of my childhood did I admire
the man as a stylist. Even then I was angry that he should treat English
as a dead language, bored by that sedulous ritual wherewith he laid out
every sentence as in a shroud--hanging, like a widower, long over its
marmoreal beauty or ever he could lay it at length in his book, its
sepulchre. From that laden air, the so cadaverous murmur of that
sanctuary, I would hook it at the beck of any jade. The writing of Pater
had never, indeed, appealed to me, all' aiei, having regard to the couth
solemnity of his mind, to his philosophy, his rare erudition, tina phota
megan kai kalon edegmen [I received some great and beautiful light]. And
I suppose it was when at length I saw him that I first knew him to be
fallible.

At school I had read Marius the Epicurean in bed and with a dark
lantern. Indeed, I regarded it mainly as a tale of adventure, quite as
fascinating as Midshipman Easy, and far less hard to understand, because
there were no nautical terms in it