But Lucian would neither be cajoled nor chaffed out of his _rôle_ of prophet. He became that most objectionable of all things--the man who believes he has a message, and must deliver it. He continued to hurl his philippics at the British public through the ever-ready columns of the peace-at-any-price paper, and the man in the street, who is not given to the drawing of fine distinctions, called him a pro-Boer. Lucian, in strict reality, was not a pro-Boer--he merely saw the artistry of the pro-Boer position. He remembered Byron’s attitude with respect to Greece, and a too generous instinct had led him to compare Mr. Kruger to Cincinnatus. The man in the street knew nothing of these things, and cared less. It seemed to him that Lucian, who was, after all, nothing but an ink-slinger, a blooming poet, was slanging the quarter of a million men who were hurrying to Table Bay as rapidly as the War Office could get them there. To this sort of thing the man in the street objected. He did not care if Lucian’s instincts were all on the side of the weaker party, nor was it an excuse that Lucian himself, in the matter of strict nationality, was an Italian. He had chosen to write his poems in England, said the man in the street, and also in the English language, and he had made a good thing out of it too, and no error, and the best thing he could do now was to keep a civil tongue in his head, or, rather, pen in his hand. This was no time for the cuckoo to foul the nest wherein he had had free quarters for so long. The opinion of the man in the street is the crystallised common-sense of England, voiced in elementary language. Lucian, unfortunately, did not know this, and he kept on firing sonnets at the heads of people who, without bluster or complaint, were already tearing up their shirts for bandages. The man in the street read them, and ground his teeth, and waited for an opportunity. That came when Lucian was ill-advised enough to allow his name to be printed in large letters upon the placard of a great meeting whereat various well-intentioned but somewhat thoughtless persons proposed to protest against a war which had been forced upon the nation, and from which it was then impossible to draw back with either safety or honour. Lucian was still in the clouds; still thinking of Byron at Missolonghi; still harping upon the undoubted but scarcely pertinent facts that England had freed slaves, slain giants, and waved her flag protectingly over all who ran to her for help. The foolishness of assisting at a public meeting whereat the nation was to be admonished of its wickedness in daring to assert itself never occurred to him. He was still the man with the message.