I must unbend sometimes. I must
occasionally lie fallow. The kind of conversation that I affect most is
what sort of a day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold
up fine for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the _otium cum
dignitate,_ as the end and privilege of a life of study. I would resign
myself to this state of easy indifference, but I find I cannot. I must
maintain a certain pretension, which is far enough from my wish. I must
he put on my defence, I must take up the gauntlet continually, or I find
I lose ground. 'I am nothing, if not critical.' While I am thinking what
o'clock it is, or how I came to blunder in quoting a well-known passage,
as if I had done it on purpose, others are thinking whether I am not
really as dull a fellow as I am sometimes said to be. If a drizzling
shower patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of a mild spring
rain, from which I retired twenty years ago, into a little public-house
near Wem in Shropshire, and while I saw the plants and shrubs before
the door imbibe the dewy moisture, quaffed a glass of sparkling ale, and
walked home in the dusk of evening, brighter to me than noonday suns
at present are! Would I indulge this feeling? In vain. They ask me what
news there is, and stare if I say I don't know. If a new actress has
come out, why must I have seen her? If a new novel has appeared, why
must I have read it? I, at one time, used to go and take a hand at
cribbage with a friend, and afterwards discuss a cold sirloin of beef,
and throw out a few lackadaisical remarks, in a way to please myself,
but it would not do long. I set up little pretension, and therefore the
little that I did set up was taken from me. As I said nothing on that
subject myself, it was continually thrown in my teeth that I was an
author. From having me at this disadvantage, my friend wanted to peg on
a hole or two in the game, and was displeased if I would not let him. If
I won off him, it was hard he should be beat by an author. If he won, it
would be strange if he did not understand the game better than I did. If
I mentioned my favourite game of rackets, there was a general silence,
as if this was my weak point. If I complained of being ill, it was asked
why I made myself so. If I said such an actor had played a part well,
the answer was, there was a different account in one of the newspapers.
If any allusion was made to men of letters, there was a suppressed
smile. If I told a humorous s