eside him on the London pavements and beckoned him
incessantly into the vast inane. It cut a very majestic figure in his
columns, till some irritable compositor docked it of its capital and
compelled it to march with the rank and file of vulgar adjectives.
Even thus degraded it ruled his paragraphs as it ruled his thoughts.

But lately the review seemed to be making efforts to redeem itself
from the charge of heaviness. In certain of its columns there was a
curious radiance and agitation, as of some winged and luminous
creature struggling against obscurity; and it was felt that Jewdwine
was binding in a pious tradition of dulness a spirit that would
otherwise have danced and flown. Whether it was his own spirit or
somebody else's did not definitely appear; but now and again it broke
loose altogether, and then, when people complimented him on the
brilliance of his appearance that week, he smiled inscrutably.

It was impossible to say how far Jewdwine's conscience approved of
these outbursts of individuality. Certainly he did his best to
restrain them, his desire being to give to his columns a distinguished
unity of form. He saw himself the founder of a new and higher school
of journalism, thus satisfying his undying tutorial instincts. He had
chosen his staff from the most promising among the young band of
disciples who thronged his lecture-room at Oxford; men moulded on his
methods, inspired by his ideals, drenched in his metaphysics; crude
young men of uncontrollable enthusiasm, whose style awaited at his
hands the final polishing.

He knew that he had done a risky thing in associating young Rickman
with them in this high enterprise. But under all his doubts there lay
a faith in the genius of his sub-editor, a faith the more fascinating
because it was so far removed from any certainty. In giving Rickman
his present post he conceived himself not only to be paying a debt of
honour, but doing the best possible thing for _The Museion_. It was
also, he considered, the best possible thing for Rickman. His work on
the review would give him the discipline he most needed, the
discipline he had never had. To be brought into line with an august
tradition; to be caught up out of the slough of modern journalism into
a rarer atmosphere; to breathe the eternal spirit of great literature
(a spirit which according to Jewdwine did not blow altogether where it
listed); to have his too exuberant individuality chastened and
controlled,