ainly vote for
him if I am one of the examiners--or one of the cloak-room attendants.

It was against such kind of criticism that Whistler hurled his impatient
epigram about pigeon-holes. And if it is absurd in regard to painting,
how much more absurd is it in regard to the more various and less friable
substances of literature. By the old ten-o'clock rule (I do not refer to
Whistler's lecture), once observed in Board schools, no scripture could
be taught after that hour. Once a teacher asked his class who was the
wisest man. 'Solomon,' said a little boy. 'Right; go up top,' said the
teacher. But there was a small pedant who, while never paying much
attention to the lessons, and being usually at the bottom of the form in
consequence, knew the regulations by heart. He interrupted with a shrill
voice (for the clock had passed the hour), 'No, sir, please, sir; past
ten o'clock, sir . . . Solon.' Thus it is, I fear, with critics of every
generation, though they try very hard to make the time pass as slowly as
possible.

But if invidious distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome,
I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great
man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we
have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to
me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly too. We have become
Laodiceans. We are even fearful of exposing imposture in current
literature lest we get into hot water with a publisher.

During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very
diverting house-party. This peer, it will be remembered, is the well-
known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in
the submerged tenth. Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic
structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir
Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse. Including our hosts we numbered
forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and
ladies'-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty. In all, we were a
hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five
Scotch gardeners. On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy
of the _Petit Parisien_ relating the plebiscite for the greatest
Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the
_Evening News_ list. The famous _Pall Mall Gazette_ Academy of Forty was
recalled with indifferen