the country. If he had not been able to win
scholarships he would have had to begin life as a clerk in a bank
or a house of business. But he won them, and a good education with
them, wherever they were to be won--at the City of London School,
and at Balliol College, Oxford. He was a first-class man (both in
'Mods' and 'Greats'), _proxime accessit_ for the Hertford, and a
Fellow of Pembroke. He learnt German, and specialised in
metaphysics. A review which he wrote of Mr Balfour's 'Foundations
of Religious Belief' showed how much more deeply than the average
journalist he had studied the subjects about which philosophers
doubt; and his first book--'Monologues of the Dead'--established
his claim to scholarship. Some critics called them vulgar, and they
certainly were frivolous. But they proved two things--that Mr
Steevens had a lively sense of humour, and that he had read the
classics to some purpose. The monologue of Xanthippe--in which she
gave her candid opinion of Socrates--was, in its way, and within
its limits, a masterpiece.

"But it was not by this sort of work that Mr Steevens was to win
his wide popularity. Few writers, when one comes to think of it, do
win wide popularity by means of classical _jeux d'esprit_. At the
time when he was throwing them off, he was also throwing off 'Occ.
Notes' for the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' He was reckoned the humorist
_par excellence_ of that journal in the years when, under the
editorship of Mr Cust, it was almost entirely written by humorists.
He was one of the seceders on the occasion of Mr Cust's retirement,
and occupied the leisure that then presented itself in writing his
book on 'Naval Policy.' His real chance in life came when he was
sent to America for the 'Daily Mail.' It was a better chance than
it might have been, because that newspaper did not publish his
letters at irregular intervals, as usually happens, but in an
unbroken daily sequence. Other excursions followed--to Egypt, to
India, to Turkey, to Germany, to Rennes, to the Soudan--and the
letters, in almost every case, quickly reappeared as a book.

"A rare combination of gifts contributed to Mr Steevens's success.
To begin with, he had a wonderful power of finding his way quickly
through a tangle of complicated detail: this he owed, no doubt,