ut a negative embodiment of our
personalities or ideas. He is an involuntary witness to our vitality.
Much as he despises us, greatly as he may injure us, he is none the less
a creature of our making. It was we who put into him the breath of his
malignity, and inspired the activity of his malice. Therefore, with his
very existence so tremendous a tribute, we can afford to smile at his
self-conscious disclaimers of our significance. Though he slay us, we
_made_ him--to 'make an enemy,' is not that the phrase?

Indeed, the fact that he is our enemy is his one _raison d'etre_. That
alone should make us charitable to him. Live and let live. Without us
our enemy has no occupation, for to hate us is his profession. Think of
his wives and families!

The friendship of the little for the great is an old-established
profession; there is but one older--namely, the hatred of the little
for the great; and, though it is perhaps less officially recognised, it
is without doubt the more lucrative. It is one of the shortest roads to
fame. Why is the name of Pontius Pilate an uneasy ghost of history?
Think what fame it would have meant to be an enemy of Socrates or
Shakespeare! _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The Quarterly Review_ only
survive to-day because they once did their best to strangle the genius
of Keats and Tennyson. Two or three journals of our own time, by the
same unfailing method, seek that circulation from posterity which is
denied them in the present.

This is particularly true in literature, where the literary enemy is as
organised a tradesman as the literary agent. Like the literary agent, he
naturally does his best to secure the biggest men. No doubt the time
will come when the literary cut-throat--shall we call him?--will publish
dainty little books of testimonials from authors, full of effusive
gratitude for the manner in which they have been slashed and bludgeoned
into fame. 'Butcher to Mr. Grant Allen' may then become a familiar
legend over literary shop-fronts:--

'Ah! did you stab at Shelley's heart
With silly sneer and cruel lie?
And Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Keats,
To murder did you nobly try?

You failed, 'tis true; but what of that?
The world remembers still your name--
'Tis fame, _for you_, to be the cur
That barks behind the heels of Fame.'

Any one who is fortunate enough to have enemies will know that all this
is far from being fanciful. If one's enemies have any other _raison