Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE A FAIRY TALE FOR TIRED MEN BY MAX BEERBOHM JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD. _Published Sq. 16mo April 1897_ _Reprinted December 1897_ _Reprinted February 1904_ _Reprinted May 1908_ _Reprinted May 1913_ _Cr. 4to Illus. Edition October 1918_ _Cr. 8vo Edition December 1919_ _Reprinted February 1922_ _Reprinted August 1924_ _Reprinted July 1928_ _Made and Printed in Great Britain_ _by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_ [Illustration] The Happy Hypocrite I None, it is said, of all who revelled with the Regent, was half so wicked as Lord George Hell. I will not trouble my little readers with a long recital of his great naughtiness. But it were well they should know that he was greedy, destructive, and disobedient. I am afraid there is no doubt that he often sat up at Carlton House until long after bedtime, playing at games, and that he generally ate and drank far more than was good for him. His fondness for fine clothes was such that he used to dress on week-days quite as gorgeously as good people dress on Sundays. He was thirty-five years old and a great grief to his parents. And the worst of it was that he set such a bad example to others. Never, never did he try to conceal his wrong-doing; so that, in time, every one knew how horrid he was. In fact, I think he was proud of being horrid. Captain Tarleton, in his account of _Contemporary Bucks_, suggested that his Lordship's great Candour was a virtue and should incline us to forgive some of his abominable faults. But, painful as it is to me to dissent from any opinion expressed by one who is now dead, I hold that Candour is good only when it reveals good actions or good sentiments, and that when it reveals evil, itself is evil, even also.