Night-Butterflies and Day -Moths. 1 93 



he should sketch a gluttonous, fat, lazy, sensual man, and 

 end up by saying " in fact, a regular pig," the novelist would 

 be just as far beyond his authority as if I, having described 

 some animal as cunning, heartless, and voracious, should 

 sum up with "in fact, a regular solicitor." The latter would 

 sound the more unjust to the majority. Because every one 

 knows that solicitors, taken as a class, are not necessarily 

 cunning, heartless, or voracious ; and very many know, no 

 doubt, individual solicitors who are positively straight- 

 forward, kind-hearted, and moderate in fees; while nobody, 

 except a very few pig-breeders, knows anything of swine as a 

 class, and it is only a small minority that can even speak to 

 the character of any one individual porker. Yet the one 

 generalisation would, in fact, be quite as unjust as the 

 other. 



How does this read ? " The hyaena is as ugly as most 

 old pawnbrokers, with the voice of a female politician, the 

 shifty eye of a professional company-director, and a slink 

 in the hind-quarters suggestive of a private detective. 

 Though feeding as indiscriminately as a city alderman, it 

 always, like a newspaper-editor, shirks conflict with those 

 who can retaliate," and so on. How does it read ? Does it 

 not seem prejudiced and unsympathetic? That is just my 

 complaint against the poets who, studying only mankind, 

 insist on fitting in all the rest of creation into their ideas 

 about humanity, 



