CHAPTER VIII

THE BOOK TROTTER A DIALOGUE

Oxford: The Garden of St. John's.

WISEMAN, of Balliol; PAPILLON, of Christ Church.

Wiseman. Well! old fellow! where were you last night? You never turned up at our Plato grind. We were on that seventh book of the Republic, about the underground den and the screen which the marionette players have when they show their puppets. We should have liked your ingenious ideas about the parable of the Cave, for it is not so entirely obvious. Take a turn round the garden, and let us hear what became of you.

Papillon. I was much better employed. I did intend to have joined you over the Plato; but as I came up from the House, I dropped in at the Union to see the paper. There I stumbled on a sort of address that some fellow in Parliament had been making about reading. I skipped a good deal, for it was rather a long grind; but he says, read just as the whim takes you. So I took up King Solomon's Mines, and read that for an hour. There's an underground den in that, and some jerking about of puppets. Plato might have bored me; so I read Rider Haggard for my own pleasure, as the M.P. advises.

W. And you call that pleasure?

P. Well! it's as good as Mayne Reid, and what

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more do you want? But I got tired of that old hag in the cavern, and took up a volume of Darwin's Letters. I read something about Evolution, but it seemed rather rot. And then I tried old Lecky's new volumes-it's easy reading, you know-and I very nearly fell asleep over his Mirabeau and Pitt. But I could not stand much of a fellow who takes seven or eight volumes over a hundred years. Why, at that rate the history of England from Alfred would want about eighty volumes! So then I took a pull at Swinburne's Locrine -awfully pretty, but you can't stand more than six ice-creams at a sitting; and after a few pages, I settled into Zola's La Terre.

W. And you call that pleasure?

P. No! Beastly! But you must see something of whatever comes out nowadays. Last Long, you know, at Paris I went down the sewers with a guide to see what it was like. So I always read Zola to see what is the last new thing in smells, for I am more eclectic than you are. By that time 'Tom' had gone a long while, and I felt in no mood for Plato, so I finished with the Sporting Life over my pipe.

W. I can well believe you were in no mood for Plato; and Zola would not help us to explain Tàs Tŵv σκευαστῶν σκιάς. How are you going to get up your Republic?

P. Oh! I shall cram up likely bits from Jowett in the last term, and with my sixth form Greek I shall do. The Governor, you know, does not want me to go in for Honours. He says I am to prepare for Parliament and public life, and get all the general information I can. So I turn over any book, old or new, just as it comes; and I never read a line further when it begins to bore me.

W. I know that you have read as many books as any ten of us together. But, my dear 'Pap,' did you ever read a book from title to 'finis' in your life?

P. No! why should I? W. And did you ever through in your life?

I read to amuse me.

read a book a third time

P. No! nor twice. Why should I? I like something fresh.

W. What! Not Milton's Lyrics, nor Bacon's Essays, nor Tom Jones?

P. Pooh! I read all that at school. One wants something fresh to amuse one-Half-hours with Obscure Authors, or a Realist novel in a yellow cover.

W. What a Don Juan among the books you must be! Flirtations mille e tre with the literature of every country in Europe. Do the gardens of this old place never bore you at all, Giovannino mio?

P. Indeed they do! They are as dull as a prison yard. The everlasting old grey roof, the conventional mullions in the oriels of Laud's library there, eternally posing at the end of the formal lawn, weary me as much as the nightingales in May. Oxford would be a monotonous place were it all like this; if one had not Keble and the Taylor Gallery.

W. And how far do you carry your gospel of the butterfly: into art as well as books? Did you ever cultivate your taste in music-I know you have a flute and a pretty tenor voice? Do you take any pains with your natural gifts?

P. God forbid that I should pick or choose! I leave pedants to cultivate their taste, which ends in Wagner and all that is dismal. No! I take music as it comes -symphonies, waltzes, sonatas, Carnaval de Venise, and Two Lovely Black Eyes. They all are music; any

of them please a man with an ear; and one is as pleasant to hear as the other.

W. So your idea in music is a pot pourri by Dan Godfrey, or a caprice avec souvenirs variés by Offen

bach?

P. I like them just as they come. I am quite as much at home with Beethoven and Bach and that, as with 'Gus Harris's pantomime or a promenade concert. Pleasure, amusement, and variety are the object of art; and I call the man a pedant who prefers a symphony to a patter song or a good breakdown.

W. You don't think that is desultory now?

P. And a good thing too. Life is not worth living unless it is desultory. And the business of art is to gratify all tastes in turn.

W. As a confectioner does. Well, and what do you say to pictures? Are you equally omnivorous in a gallery of paintings?

P. Yes. I never could stand the nonsense about high art, ancient masters, and principles of taste. I have seen most of the galleries in Europe; and I like any school, and the telling pictures of all schools, in

turn.

W. Do you never spend a wet afternoon in the Taylor Gallery, to study the Raphael drawings or Michael Angelo's designs?

P. Oh! I saw them one morning in my first term, when our people came up to do Oxford; and very curious they are. But as to studying them, the fellows who do that are narrowing their taste. That is pedantry. Ars longa, vita brevis. I am for knowing something of every one. Raphael is very well, and so is Doré. Titian was a clever man, and so is Verestchagin.

W. Come, now, do you mean to say that all your study of picture galleries ends in your placing Doré on a level with Raphael?

P. Dear me, no! As a matter of criticism or estimate, I can see the difference, and write about it, I dare say, as the critic fellows do, by the column. But in order to enjoy, you must pass from one to the other; see the merit of all styles, and the skill of all methods. Doré has something which Raphael never had; and Verestchagin can teach Titian a thing or two in corpses.

W. And Verestchagin's corpses give you a new zest for Raphael's Madonnas?

P. Well, I like them all-Fra Angelico and Goya, Sandro Botticelli and Salvator, Giotto and Delacroix, Turner and Horace Vernet-they all have a way of their own. Variety is the end of art; and curiosity is the note of culture.

W. And you say the same in architecture, I suppose? Here, now, in Oxford, are you just as catholic in your tastes?

P. Yes! I know no place like Oxford for a happy confusion of styles. The Greek grotesque of the Taylor Museum beside the sham thirteenth century of the Martyrs' Memorial: round arch, pointed arch, ogee, and architrave-all side by side; Norman, Early Pointed, Decorated, Perpendicular, Debased, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Queen Anne, Georgian, Victorian, Churchwarden, Jacksonian, and Omnium Gatherum styles-all get a chance in turn, and all have something of their own. I am against any Index Expurgatorius in art.

W. What a delightful mood to have, an equal capacity of enjoying everything! And do you extend this to