h
it in your presence. "Let me see," he will say. "Give me a moment. I
_should_ have some theory for that." A blither spectacle than the
vigour with which he sets about the task, it were hard to fancy. He is
possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the elements for his life, and
bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horseshoe, with a visible and
lively effort. He has, in theorising, a compass, an art; what I would
call the synthetic gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer,[18] who
should see the fun of the thing. You are not bound, and no more is he,
to place your faith in these brand-new opinions. But some of them are
right enough, durable even for life; and the poorest serve for a
cock-shy--as when idle people, after picnics, float a bottle on a pond
and have an hour's diversion ere it sinks. Whichever they are, serious
opinions or humours of the moment, he still defends his ventures with
indefatigable wit and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking
punishment like a man. He knows and never forgets that people talk,
first of all, for the sake of talking; conducts himself in the ring,
to use the old slang, like a thorough "glutton,"[19] and honestly
enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled
effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot,
says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry
champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities
by which he lives. Athelred,[20] on the other hand, presents you with
the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He
is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may
see him sometimes wrestle with a refractory jest for a minute or two
together, and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is
something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity
with which he thus exposes the process as well as the result, the
works as well as the dial of the clock. Withal he has his hours of
inspiration. Apt words come to him as if by accident, and, coming from
deeper down, they smack the more personally, they have the more of
fine old crusted humanity, rich in sediment and humour. There are
sayings of his in which he has stamped himself into the very grain of
the language; you would think he must have worn the words next his
skin and slept with them. Yet it is not as a sayer of particular good
things that Athelred is most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart