do task-work," he said; he
wrote when the whim seized him, or when the last penny was in his pouch,
or when he was actually in the spunging-house or the Fleet,--migrations
which occurred to him, on an average, twice a year. He could generally
sell what he had actually written, but no one would engage him
beforehand. Editors of magazines and other periodicals were very glad
to have his articles, on the condition that they were anonymous; and
his style was not necessarily detected, for he could vary it with
the facility of a practised pen. Audley Egerton continued his best
supporter, for there were certain questions on which no one wrote with
such force as John Burley,--questions connected with the metaphysics of
politics, such as law reform and economical science. And Audley Egerton
was the only man John Burley put himself out of the way to serve, and
for whom he would give up a drinking bout and do task-work; for John
Burley was grateful by nature, and he felt that Egerton had really tried
to befriend him. Indeed, it was true, as he had stated to Leonard by the
Brent, that even after he had resigned his desk in the London office,
he had had the offer of an appointment in Jamaica, and a place in India,
from the minister. But probably there were other charms then than those
exercised by the one-eyed perch that kept him to the neighbourhood of
London. With all his grave faults of character and conduct, John Burley
was not without the fine qualities of a large nature. He was most
resolutely his own enemy, it is true, but he could hardly be said to be
any one else's. Even when he criticised some more fortunate writer, he
was good-humoured in his very satire: he had no bile, no envy. And as
for freedom from malignant personalities, he might have been a model to
all critics. I must except politics, however, for in these he could
be rabid and savage. He had a passion for independence, which, though
pushed to excess, was not without grandeur. No lick-platter, no
parasite, no toad-eater, no literary beggar, no hunter after patronage
and subscriptions; even in his dealings with Audley Egerton, he insisted
on naming the price for his labours. He took a price, because, as the
papers required by Audley demanded much reading and detail, which
was not at all to his taste, he considered himself entitled fairly
to something more than the editor of the journal wherein the papers
appeared was in the habit of giving. But he assessed this extr