ements on questions as to
which he has been quite free to make up his mind all by himself!

* * * * *

I remember one evening discussing the talents of a certain orchestral
conductor, who also played the violin. I was talking to a member of his
orchestra, a very genuine artist. We agreed that he had conducted badly;
but, I said in his defence, "Anyhow his intentions are good. You must
admit that he has a feeling for music." "My dear fellow," exclaimed the
bandsman pettishly, "no one who had any feeling for music could possibly
stand the d----d row that that chap makes on the fiddle." I was silenced.
I recall this episode in connexion with Professor Saintsbury. No one who
had any feeling for literature could possibly put down the ---- style that
Professor Saintsbury commits. His pen could not be brought to write it.
Professor Saintsbury may be as loudly positive as he likes--his style is
always quietly whispering: "Don't listen." As to his modern
judgments--well for their own sakes professors of literature ought to bind
themselves by oaths never to say anything about any author who was not
safely dead twenty years before they were born. Such an ordinance would at
any rate ensure their dignity.

* * * * *

Yet another example is Professor Walter Raleigh. Fifty per cent. of you
will leap up and say that I am being perverse. But I am not. It has been
demonstrated to me satisfactorily, by contact with Liverpool people, that
Professor Raleigh's personal influence at that university in certain ways
made for righteousness. Nevertheless, Professor Raleigh has himself
demonstrated to me that, wherever the root of the matter may be, it is not
in _him_. One must remember that he is young, and that his underived
opinions are therefore less likely to clash with the authoritative
opinions of living creative artists on their contemporaries and
predecessors than if he were of the same generation as the Collinses and
the Saintsburys. But wait a few years. Wait until something genuinely new
and original comes along and you will see what you will see. If he wished
not to ruin his reputation among artists, among people who really create
things, he ought not to have published his books on "Style" and on
"Shakespere." He ought to have burnt them. For they are as hollow as a
drum and as unoriginal as a bride-cake: nothing but vacuity with an icing
of phrases. I am brought back ag