wonder which to admire the more—his easy familiarity with the Eternal Veracities or the brilliant flashes of imbecility with which his excursions into the Infinite are sometimes diversified. He radiates talk, as the sun does light and heat; and after an evening—or a week—with him, you come forth with a sense of satisfaction in your own capacity which somehow proves superior even to the inevitable conclusion that your brilliance was but the reflection of his own, and that all the while you were only playing the part of Rubinstein’s piano or Sarasate’s violin.’ All this the reader should imagine as helped by the most speaking of presences: a steady, penetrating fire in the wide-set eyes, a compelling power and sweetness in the smile; courteous, waving gestures of the arms and long, nervous hands, a lit cigarette generally held between the fingers; continual rapid shiftings and pacings to and fro as he conversed: rapid, but not flurried nor awkward, for there was a grace in his attenuated but well-carried figure, and his movements were light, deft, and full of spring. When I first knew him he was passing through a period of neatness between two of Bohemian carelessness as to dress; so that the effect of his charm was immediate. At other times of his youth there was something for strangers, and even for friends, to get over in the odd garments which it was his whim to wear—the badge, as they always seemed to me, partly of a genuine carelessness, certainly of a genuine lack of cash (the little he had was always absolutely at the disposal of his friends), partly of a deliberate detachment from any particular social class or caste, partly of his love of pickles and adventures, which he thought befel a man thus attired more readily than another. But this slender, slovenly, nondescript apparition, long-visaged and long-haired, had only to speak in order to be recognised in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman, and within the first five for a master spirit and man of genius. There were, indeed, certain stolidly conventional and superciliously official kinds of persons, both at home and abroad, who were incapable of looking beyond the clothes, and eyed him always with frozen suspicion. This attitude used sometimes in youth to drive him into fits of flaming anger, which put him helplessly at a disadvantage unless, or until, he could call the sense of humour to his help. For the rest, his human charm was the same for all kinds of people, without the least distinction of class or caste; for worldly wise old great ladies, whom he reminded of famous poets in their youth; for his brother artists and men of letters, perhaps, above all; for the ordinary clubman; for his physicians, who could never do enough for him; for domestic servants, who adored him; for the English policeman even, on whom he often tried, quite in vain, to pass himself as one of the criminal classes; for the common seaman, the shepherd, the street arab, or the tramp.