y raises several weighty issues. We forgive Burns
because he again and again offers us examples of splendid self-sacrifice
in the course of his broken life, and we are able to do so because the
balance is greatly on the good side; but we do not refrain from saying,
"In some respects Burns was a scamp." The fact is that the claims of
weak-headed adorers who worship men of genius would lead to endless
mischief if they were allowed. Men who were skilled in poetry and music
and art have often behaved like scoundrels; but their scoundrelism
should be reprobated, and not excused. And my reason for this contention
is very simple--once allow that a man of genius may override all
salutary conventions, and the same conventions will be overridden by
vain and foolish mediocrities. Take, for example, the conventions which
guide us in the matter of dress. Most people grant that in many respects
our modern dress is ugly in shape, ugly in material, and calculated to
promote ill-health. The hard hat which makes the brow ache must affect
the wearer's health, and therefore, when we see the greatest living poet
going about in a comfortable soft felt, we call him a sensible man.
Carlyle used to hobble about with soft shoes and soft slouch-hat, and he
was right But it is possible to be as comfortable as Lord Tennyson or
Carlyle without flying very outrageously in the face of modern
conventions; and many everyday folk contrive to keep their bodies at
ease without trying any fool's device. Charles Kingsley used to roam
about in his guernsey--most comfortable of all dresses--when he was in
the country; but when he visited the town he managed to dress easily and
elegantly in the style of an average gentleman.

But some foolish creatures say in their hearts, "Men of genius wear
strange clothing--Tennyson wears a vast Inverness cape, Carlyle wore a
duffel jacket, Bismarck wears a flat white cap, Mortimer Collins wore a
big Panama; artists in general like velvet and neckties of various gaudy
hues. Let us adopt something startling in the way of costume, and we
may be taken for men of genius." Thus it happened that very lately
London was invested by a set of simpletons of small ability in art and
letters; they let their hair grow down their backs; they drove about in
the guise of Venetian senators of the fifteenth century; they appeared
in slashed doublets and slouched hats; and one of them astonished the
public--and the cabmen--by marching down a fas