This particular entry into the Temple of Fame, however, exacts a heavy toll; for a man who has written in order to break the crust of the public with his pungency, is not allowed ever thereafter to write without pungency. I believe that the talent of all the men I have named would have developed more seriously if they had not in early life given way to the taste of the public for sensation. But they would not wait: they must sting themselves into notice. As for Shaw and Chesterton, they seem to have become partners in a sort of game of buffoonery--for the world will have its jesters. They are tumblers on a raft, floating down stream, surrounded by a whole Henley regatta, an armada of applauding multitudes, on barges, wherries, tugs, and ferry-boats and river-craft innumerable, whose holiday passengers shout their admiration to the performers on the raft, and egg on the favorites to superhuman effort. Shaw shows how far he can stick out his tongue while continuing to stand on one leg. “Bravo! Huzzah!” roars the audience. “Did you ever see the like? O Jesu, this is excellent sport! Faith! How he holds his countenance! He doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see.” Chesterton thereupon puts his wrists on the carpet and lifts his back like a cat. “Lord save us! This was Ercles’ vein! He hath simply the best wit of any handy-craftsman in Athens. You have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he!” There is some exaggeration in this picture; but, I think, some truth also. The loss which Shaw and Chesterton share in common is a loss of delicacy. They are crude: they are all edge. They are, indeed, a little vulgar. But this is not the serious objection to them. The serious objection to Shaw and Chesterton is that they have no intellectual independence. They are moving with the show. It will pass, and they with it. THE COMIC. I. In the caverns of our nature lie hid various emotions, like beasts in a lair. They are shy to the voice of question or of curiosity, and they slink and crouch all the more, if we try to lure them out for inspection. But they come gambolling and roaring forth at the call of ingenuous human utterance. Any utterance that has in it no afterthought, but is mere speech that has grown out of a need to speak, lays a spell upon the wild things within us. Before the echo of it has died away they are rampant in the open, ignorant of how they came forth. Let no one then wonder at the difficulties that surround all study of the human emotions,--blushing giants, vanishing Genii that they are.