The Adventure of Living : a Subjective Autobiography

"THE SPECTAT

called forth a protest from Mr. Hutton when I suggested writing it. It was entitled "The Privy Council and the Colonies." I had always been an ardent Imperialist, and I had taken to Constitutional Law like a duck to the water, and felt strongly, like so many young men before me, the intellectual attraction of legal problems and still more the majesty and picturesqueness of our great Tribunals. Especially had I been fascinated by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and its w

neral of the self-governing Colonies, as they were then called, on the Saturday; and finally, that Lord Granville had a fit of the gout. The result of the last fact was that he had to put off preparing

ut "that people are apt to overlook the importance of the Judicial Committee of the

ked about the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council being a body which "bind

had seen The Times of Monday, and what was said therein about my Privy Council article. I admit that for a moment I thought I had been guilty of some appalling blunder and that, as the soldiers say, I was "for it" However, I saw that I must face the music as best I could, and admitted that I had not seen the paper. "Then you ought to have," was Mr. Hutton's not very reassuring repl

to bring down two birds with two articles, i.e., to hit one of his own

tunately people do not argue in that rational and statistical spirit. All my chiefs knew or cared was that I had written good stuff and on a very

ly took me to Venice,-"Italiam petimus" should always be the motto of an English youth,-I returned to take up the position of a weekly leader-writer and holiday-understudy, a mixed post which by the irony of fate, as

to the thought that the good fortune that was mine was the reward of a grinding and ignoble perseverance. I was in no mood for the dr

eferment, of frantic proprietors asking me at a moment's notice to edit their papers, or of taking up some great and responsible position, but never of carry

y to drive in my nail but to hammer it up to the head. It happened that both Mr. Hutton and Mr. Townsend had great belief in the literary judgment of Canon A

I must confess, would be natural to me now, my search for a book took me straight to that part of the library in which the poets congregated. My eye wandered over the shelves, and lighted upon Poems in the Dorsetshire Dialect by the Rev. William Barnes. Hadspen House was quite close to the Dorset border. I was interested and I took down the volume. I don't think I had ever heard of Barnes before, but being very fond of the Somersetshire dialect and proud of my ability to speak in it, my first impulse was rather to turn up my nose at the vernacular of a neighbouring county. It was, then, with a decided inclination to look a gift-horse in the mouth that I retired with Barnes to my den. Yet, as Hafiz says, "by this a world was affected." I opened the poe

hos had that touch of stableness in sorrow which we associate, and rightly associate, with the classics. Miserably bad scholar as I was, and am, I knew

er wi' air

ide at

?neas filled his arms with the empty air when

may as truly be said to have lived for a mo

folk thought,

were a

, when I w

at Woa

at my Mary

erzelf s

o think th

from Wo

e West dares to use not merely the words of common speech and primitive origin, but words drawn from Low Latin and of administrative connotation. Barnes achieves

n your pleazen to bloom an' to die; An' the zummer will always h

ty alive when the fairest is dead; As when one sparklen wave do z

that the reviewer in question was Mr. George Venables, who was within a year to become a friend of mine. He and his family were close friends of my wife's people, and when after my marriage I met him, a common love of Barnes brought together the ardent worsh

"verus socius" Barnes died, at a very great age. It was one of those cases in which death suddenly makes a man visible to the generation into which he has survived. Barnes had outlived n

poet. Needless to say I was only too glad to have a chance to let myself go on

nd" who had written on Barnes, and making some very complimentary remarks on his work. It was eminently characteristic of them that instead of being a

head and to make Mr. Hutton and Mr. Townsend feel that they had not been rash

ing for instructions-or, rather, finding articles for my chiefs to write about, for that very soon became the routine-a large, consequential, not to say stout black Tom-cat slowly entered the room, walked round me, sniffed at my legs in a suspicious manner, and then, to my inte

beast had realised that there was a new element in the office, and had come to inspect it and see whether he could give it his approval or not. When it was given, it was conceded by all co

he Senior Fe

Fellow, bla

his front

iffed the st

nose, as a

mankind

s I who te

fortune's tre

d the

udged: "He lo

his ances

t upon

in common-r

ocius kno

nd went

ss fate's or

title cou

ed by

ough I might still take any work I liked outside. But this was not all. The letter went on to say that the first of the partners who died or retired would offer me a half-share of the paper. It was pointed out that, of cour

happy. Though I did not fully realise how deeply my life had been affected by the decision or how strange in some ways was the course that lay before me, I had an instinctive feeling that I must follow wholeheartedly the path of Destiny. I determined to free my mind from all thoughts of a return

wonder now whether, if I could have looked down the long avenue of the years and seen the crowded, turbulent series of events which, as Professor Einstein has taught us, was rushing upon me like a tiger on its prey, I should ha

ental works of our brethren in the superior ranks of the literary profession: "Have I not cast my life and energy away on things ephemeral and unworthy? Have not I preferred a kind of glorified pot-boiling to the se

ne some servi

een paid

oul write my six

xtent be judged by their quantity as well as their quality. Anyway, I am inclined to be proud of my output. When an occasion like the present makes me turn back to my old articles, I am glad to say that my attitude, far from being one of sha

st now describe what sort of a youth it was who got there