"If two wrongs do not make a right," he answered tartly, "even less will
an assembly of deadly dry persons make something to drink."

That evening, in the cabin, we held a symposium on our own account and in
the proper sense of the term, while the rain drummed on the deck and the
sky-lights.

X said, "The greatest poem written on love during these fifty years--and
we agree to accept love as the highest theme of lyrical poetry--is George
Meredith's _Love in the Valley_. I say this and decline to argue about
it."

"Nor am I disposed to argue about it," I answered, "for York Powell--peace
to his soul for a great man gone--held that same belief. In his rooms in
Christ Church, one night while _The Oxford Book of Verse_ was preparing
and I had come to him, as everyone came, for counsel. . . . I take it,
though, that we are not searching for the absolute best but for our own
prime favourite. You remember what Swinburne says somewhere of Hugo's
_Gastibelza_:--

"'Gastibelza, l'homme a la carabine,
Chantait ainsi:
Quelqu'un a-t-il connu Dona Sabine?
Quelqu'un d'ici?
Dansez, chantez, villageois! la nuit gagne
Le mont Falou--
Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne
Me rendra fou!'

"'The song of songs which is Hugo's,' he calls it; and goes on to ask how
often one has chanted or shouted or otherwise declaimed it to himself, on
horseback at full gallop or when swimming at his best as a boy in holiday
time; and how often the matchless music, ardour, pathos of it have not
reduced his own ambition to a sort of rapturous and adoring despair--yes,
and requickened his old delight in it with a new delight in the sense that
he will always have this to rejoice in, to adore, and to recognise as
something beyond the reach of man. Well, that is the sense in which our
poem should be our favourite poem. Now, for my part, there's a page or so
of Browning's _Saul_--"

"What do you say to Meredith's _Phoebus with Admetus?_" interrupted X.

I looked up at him quickly, almost shamefacedly. "Now, how on earth did
you guess--"

X laid down his pipe, stared up at the sky-light, and quoted, almost under
his breath:--

"'Bulls that walk the pasture in kingly-flashing coats!
Laurel, ivy, vine, wreath'd for feasts not few!'"

Why is it possible to consider Mr. Meredith--whose total yield of verse
has been so scanty and the most of it so 'harsh and crab