Celtic temperament. Nevertheless, he was
essentially a modern, insomuch that his contempt for the writings of
dead men surpassed his dislike of living authors. To these two
central influences we may trace most of the peculiarities that
rendered him notorious and ultimately great. Thus, while his Celtic
aestheticism permitted him to eat nothing but raw meat, because he
mistrusted alike "the reeking products of the manure-heap and the
barbaric fingers of cooks," it was surely his modernity that made him
an agnostic, because bishops sat in the House of Lords. Smaller men
might dislike vegetables and bishops without allowing it to affect
their conduct; but Dale was careful to observe that every slightest
conviction should have its place in the formation of his character.
Conversely, he was nothing without a reason.

These may seem small things to which to trace the motive forces of a
man's life; but if we add to them a third, found where the truth
about a man not infrequently lies, in the rag-bag of his enemies, our
materials will be nearly complete. "Dale hates his
fellow-human- beings," wrote some anonymous scribbler, and, even
expressed thus baldly, the statement is not wholly false. But he
hated them because of their imperfections, and it would be truer to
say that his love of humanity amounted to a positive hatred of
individuals, and, _pace_ the critics, the love was no less sincere
than the hatred. He had drawn from the mental confusion of the darker
German philosophers an image of the perfect man--an image differing
only in inessentials from the idol worshipped by the Imperialists as
"efficiency." He did not find--it was hardly likely that he would
find--that his contemporaries fulfilled this perfect conception, and
he therefore felt it necessary to condemn them for the possession of
those weaknesses, or as some would prefer to say, qualities, of which
the sum is human nature.

I now approach a quality, or rather the lack of a quality, that is in
itself of so debatable a character, that were it not of the utmost
importance in considering the life of Charles Stephen Dale I should
prefer not to mention it. I refer to his complete lack of a sense of
humour, the consciousness of which deficiency went so far to detract
from his importance as an artist and a man. The difficulty which I
mentioned above lies in the fact that, while every one has a clear
conception of what they mean by the phrase, no one has yet
succeeded