New Grub Street [16]
knows nothing about her, except that she was a quite uneducated girl.'
'But, dash it! by this time she must have got decent manners. Of course there may be other objections. Mrs Reardon knows nothing against her.'
Midway in the following morning, as Jasper sat with a book in the garden, he was surprised to see Alfred Yule enter by the gate.
'I thought,' began the visitor, who seemed in high spirits, 'that you might like to see something I received this morning.'
He unfolded a London evening paper, and indicated a long letter from a casual correspondent. It was written by the authoress of 'On the Boards,' and drew attention, with much expenditure of witticism, to the conflicting notices of that book which had appeared in The Study. Jasper read the thing with laughing appreciation.
'Just what one expected!'
'And I have private letters on the subject,' added Mr Yule.
'There has been something like a personal conflict between Fadge and the man who looks after the minor notices. Fadge,more suo, charged the other man with a design to damage him and the paper. There's talk of legal proceedings. An immense joke!'
He laughed in his peculiar croaking way.
'Do you feel disposed for a turn along the lanes, Mr Milvain?'
'By all means.--There's my mother at the window; will you come in for a moment?'
With a step of quite unusual sprightliness Mr Yule entered the house. He could talk of but one subject, and Mrs Milvain had to listen to a laboured account of the blunder just committed by The Study. It was Alfred's Yule's characteristic that he could do nothing lighthandedly. He seemed always to converse with effort; he took a seat with stiff ungainliness; he walked with a stumbling or sprawling gait.
When he and Jasper set out for their ramble, his loquacity was in strong contrast with the taciturn mood he had exhibited yesterday and the day before. He fell upon the general aspects of contemporary literature.
'. . . The evil of the time is the multiplication of ephemerides. Hence a demand for essays, descriptive articles, fragments of criticism, out of all proportion to the supply of even tolerable work. The men who have an aptitude for turning out this kind of thing in vast quantities are enlisted by every new periodical, with the result that their productions are ultimately watered down into worthlessness. . . . Well now, there's Fadge. Years ago some of Fadge's work was not without a certain--a certain conditional promise of--of comparative merit; but now his writing, in my opinion, is altogether beneath consideration; how Rackett could be so benighted as to give him The Study-- especially after a man like Henry Hawkridge--passes my comprehension. Did you read a paper of his, a few months back, in The Wayside, a preposterous rehabilitation of Elkanah Settle? Ha!
ha! That's what such men are driven to. Elkanah Settle! And he hadn't even a competent acquaintance with his paltry subject. Will you credit that he twice or thrice referred to Settle's reply to "Absalom and Achitophel" by the title of "Absalom Transposed," when every schoolgirl knows that the thing was called "Achitophel Transposed"! This was monstrous enough, but there was something still more contemptible. He positively, I assure you, attributed the play of "Epsom Wells" to Crowne! I should have presumed that every student of even the most trivial primer of literature was aware that "Epsom Wells" was written by Shadwell. . . . Now, if one were to take Shadwell for the subject of a paper, one might very well show how unjustly his name has fallen into contempt. It has often occurred to me to do this. "But Shadwell never deviates into sense." The sneer, in my opinion, is entirely unmerited. For my own part, I put Shadwell very high among the dramatists of his time, and I think I could show that his absolute worth is by no means inconsiderable. Shadwell has distinct vigour of dramatic conception; his dialogue. . . .'
And as he talked the man kept describing imaginary geometrical figures with the end of his walking-stick; he very
'But, dash it! by this time she must have got decent manners. Of course there may be other objections. Mrs Reardon knows nothing against her.'
Midway in the following morning, as Jasper sat with a book in the garden, he was surprised to see Alfred Yule enter by the gate.
'I thought,' began the visitor, who seemed in high spirits, 'that you might like to see something I received this morning.'
He unfolded a London evening paper, and indicated a long letter from a casual correspondent. It was written by the authoress of 'On the Boards,' and drew attention, with much expenditure of witticism, to the conflicting notices of that book which had appeared in The Study. Jasper read the thing with laughing appreciation.
'Just what one expected!'
'And I have private letters on the subject,' added Mr Yule.
'There has been something like a personal conflict between Fadge and the man who looks after the minor notices. Fadge,more suo, charged the other man with a design to damage him and the paper. There's talk of legal proceedings. An immense joke!'
He laughed in his peculiar croaking way.
'Do you feel disposed for a turn along the lanes, Mr Milvain?'
'By all means.--There's my mother at the window; will you come in for a moment?'
With a step of quite unusual sprightliness Mr Yule entered the house. He could talk of but one subject, and Mrs Milvain had to listen to a laboured account of the blunder just committed by The Study. It was Alfred's Yule's characteristic that he could do nothing lighthandedly. He seemed always to converse with effort; he took a seat with stiff ungainliness; he walked with a stumbling or sprawling gait.
When he and Jasper set out for their ramble, his loquacity was in strong contrast with the taciturn mood he had exhibited yesterday and the day before. He fell upon the general aspects of contemporary literature.
'. . . The evil of the time is the multiplication of ephemerides. Hence a demand for essays, descriptive articles, fragments of criticism, out of all proportion to the supply of even tolerable work. The men who have an aptitude for turning out this kind of thing in vast quantities are enlisted by every new periodical, with the result that their productions are ultimately watered down into worthlessness. . . . Well now, there's Fadge. Years ago some of Fadge's work was not without a certain--a certain conditional promise of--of comparative merit; but now his writing, in my opinion, is altogether beneath consideration; how Rackett could be so benighted as to give him The Study-- especially after a man like Henry Hawkridge--passes my comprehension. Did you read a paper of his, a few months back, in The Wayside, a preposterous rehabilitation of Elkanah Settle? Ha!
ha! That's what such men are driven to. Elkanah Settle! And he hadn't even a competent acquaintance with his paltry subject. Will you credit that he twice or thrice referred to Settle's reply to "Absalom and Achitophel" by the title of "Absalom Transposed," when every schoolgirl knows that the thing was called "Achitophel Transposed"! This was monstrous enough, but there was something still more contemptible. He positively, I assure you, attributed the play of "Epsom Wells" to Crowne! I should have presumed that every student of even the most trivial primer of literature was aware that "Epsom Wells" was written by Shadwell. . . . Now, if one were to take Shadwell for the subject of a paper, one might very well show how unjustly his name has fallen into contempt. It has often occurred to me to do this. "But Shadwell never deviates into sense." The sneer, in my opinion, is entirely unmerited. For my own part, I put Shadwell very high among the dramatists of his time, and I think I could show that his absolute worth is by no means inconsiderable. Shadwell has distinct vigour of dramatic conception; his dialogue. . . .'
And as he talked the man kept describing imaginary geometrical figures with the end of his walking-stick; he very