uncommon device of meeting the sceptic by a more thorough-going
scepticism. It is peculiar because he scorned to take the further step
of accepting a dogmatic belief on sceptical grounds; but it certainly
left him in a position of which silence was, if I may say so, the only
obvious expression of his feeling.

One curious illustration of his feelings is given by an utterance at the
beginning of this period. Nobody had less tendency to indulge in
versification. When a man has anything to say, he observes to Lord
Lytton on one occasion, as an excuse for not criticising his friend
adequately, 'I am always tempted to ask why he cannot say it in plain
prose.' I find now that he once wrote some lines on circuit, putting a
judgment into rhyme, and that they were read with applause at a dinner
before the judges. They have disappeared; but I can quote part of his
only other attempt at poetry. Tennyson's poem called 'Despair' had just
appeared in the 'Nineteenth Century' for November 1881. The hero, it
will be remembered, maddened by sermons about hell and by 'know-nothing'
literature, throws himself into the sea with his wife and is saved by
his preacher. The rescuer only receives curses instead of thanks.
Fitzjames supplies the preacher's retort.[193] I give a part; omitting a
few lines which, I think, verged too much on the personal:--

So you're minded to curse me, are you, for not having let you be,
And for taking the trouble to pull you out when your wife was drowned
in the sea?
I'm inclined to think you are right--there was not much sense in it;
But there was no time to think--the thing was done in a minute.
You had not gone very far in; you had fainted where you were found,
You're the sort of fellow that likes to drown with his toe on the
ground.
However, you turn upon me and my creed with all sorts of abuse,
As if any preaching of mine could possibly be of use
To a man who refused to see what sort of a world he had got
To live in and make the best of, whether he liked it or not.
I am not sure what you mean; you seem to mean to say
That believing in hell you were happy, but that one unfortunate day
You found out you knew nothing about it, whereby the troubles of life
Became at once too heavy to bear for yourself and your wife.
That sounds silly; so, perhaps, you may mean that all is wrong all
round,
My creed and the know-nothing books, and that truth is not