7) 247

Letter to Lady Derby 247

Died November 1881 248

_Enigmas of Life_, 1875 252

Letter to Lord Grey, May 28, 1874 255

Conclusion 256

* * * * *

W. R. GREG: A SKETCH.

It is perhaps a little hard to undertake to write about the personality
of a thinker whose ideas one does not share, and whose reading of the
events and tendencies of our time was in most respects directly opposite
to one's own. But literature is neutral ground. Character is more than
opinion. Here we may forget the loud cries and sounding strokes, the
watchwords and the tactics of the tented field, and fraternise with the
adversary of the eve and the morrow in friendly curiosity and liberal
recognition. It fell to the present writer at one time to have one or
two bouts of public controversy with Mr. Greg. In these dialectics Mr.
Greg was never vehement and never pressed, but he was inclined to
be--or, at least, was felt by an opponent to be--dry, mordant, and
almost harsh. These disagreeable prepossessions were instantly
dissipated, as so often happens, by personal acquaintance. He had not
only the courtesy of the good type of the man of the world, but an air
of moral suavity, when one came near enough to him, that was infinitely
attractive and engaging. He was urbane, essentially modest, and readily
interested in ideas and subjects other than his own. There was in his
manner and address something of what the French call _liant_. When the
chances of residence made me his neighbour, an evening in his
drawing-room, or half an hour's talk in casual meetings in afternoon
walks on Wimbledon Common, was always a particularly agreeable incident.
Some men and women have the quality of atmosphere. The egotism of the
natural man is surrounded by an elastic medium. Mr. Greg was one of
these personalities with an atmosphere elastic, stimulating, elevating,
and yet composing. We do wrong to narrow our interests to those only of
our contemporaries who figure with great lustre and _eclat_ in the
world. Some of the quiet characters away from the centre of great
affairs are as well worth our attention as those who in high-heeled
cothurnus stalk across the foreground.

Mr. Greg,