xxv TABLE-TALK 453 



years of life among men could be so ignorant of the best 

 way to handle his materials. If he had only read Dana, he 

 would have found his case much better stated than ever 

 he stated it. He seemed never to have read the leading 

 authorities on his own side." 



Speaking of the hesitation shown by the Senate of Lon- 

 don University in grappling with a threatened obstacle to 

 reform, he remarked : ' It is very strange how most men 

 will do anything to evade responsibility." 



January 23. At dinner the talk turned on plays. Mr. 

 H. A. Jones had sent him Jiidah, which he thought good, 

 though " there must be some hostility except in the very 

 greatest writers between the dramatic and the literary 

 faculties. I noticed many points I objected to, but felt sure 

 they met with applause. Indeed in the theatre I have no- 

 ticed that what I thought the worst blots on a piece in- 

 variably brought down the house." 



He remarked how the French, in dramatic just as in 

 artistic matters, are so much better than the English in 

 composition, in avoiding anything slipshod in the details, 

 though the English artists draw just as well and colour 

 perhaps better. 



The following sketch of human character is not actually 

 a fragment of conversation, though it might almost pass 

 for such ; it comes from a letter to Mrs. W. K. Clifford, of 

 February 10, 1895 : 



Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse- 

 nervousness, ass-stubbornness and camel-malice with an angel 

 bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset, and 

 when they can do exactly as they please, they are very hard to 

 drive. 



Whatever he talked of, his talk never failed to impress 

 those who conversed with him. One or two such impres- 

 sions have been recorded. Mr. Wilfrid Ward, whose inter- 

 ests lie chiefly in philosophy and theology, was his neighbour 

 at Eastbourne, and in the Nineteenth Century for August 

 1896 has given various reminiscences of their friendly in- 

 tercourse. 



