This Shelley controversy raises several weighty issues.  We forgive Burns because he again and again offers us examples of splendid self-sacrifice in the course of his broken life, and we are able to do so because the balance is greatly on the good side; but we do not refrain from saying, “In some respects Burns was a scamp.”  The fact is that the claims of weak-headed adorers who worship men of genius would lead to endless mischief if they were allowed.  Men who were skilled in poetry and music and art have often behaved like scoundrels; but their scoundrelism should be reprobated, and not excused.  And my reason for this contention is very simple—­once allow that a man of genius may override all salutary conventions, and the same conventions will be overridden by vain and foolish mediocrities.  Take, for example, the conventions which guide us in the matter of dress.  Most people grant that in many respects our modern dress is ugly in shape, ugly in material, and calculated to promote ill-health.  The hard hat which makes the brow ache must affect the wearer’s health, and therefore, when we see the greatest living poet going about in a comfortable soft felt, we call him a sensible man.  Carlyle used to hobble about with soft shoes and soft slouch-hat, and he was right But it is possible to be as comfortable as Lord Tennyson or Carlyle without flying very outrageously in the face of modern conventions; and many everyday folk contrive to keep their bodies at ease without trying any fool’s device.  Charles Kingsley used to roam about in his guernsey—­most comfortable of all dresses—­when he was in the country; but when he visited the town he managed to dress easily and elegantly in the style of an average gentleman.

But some foolish creatures say in their hearts, “Men of genius wear strange clothing—­Tennyson wears a vast Inverness cape, Carlyle wore a duffel jacket, Bismarck wears a flat white cap, Mortimer Collins wore a big Panama; artists in general like velvet and neckties of various gaudy hues.  Let us adopt something startling in the way of costume, and we may be taken for men of genius.”  Thus it happened that very lately London was invested by a set of simpletons of small ability in art and letters; they let their hair grow down their backs; they drove about in the guise of Venetian senators of the fifteenth century; they appeared in slashed doublets and slouched hats; and one of them astonished the public—­and the cabmen—­by marching down a fashionable thoroughfare on a broiling day with a fur ulster on his back and a huge flower in his hand.  Observe my point—­these social nuisances obtained for themselves a certain contemptible notoriety by caricaturing the ways of able men.  I can forgive young Disraeli’s gaudy waistcoats and pink-lined coats, but I have no patience with his silly imitators.  This is why I object to the praise which is bestowed on men of genius for qualities which do not deserve praise.  The reckless literary admirer of Shelley or Byron goes into ecstasies and cries, “Perish the slave who would think of these great men’s vices!”—­whereupon raw and conceited youngsters say, “Vice and eccentricity are signs of genius.  We will be vicious and eccentric;” and then they go and convert themselves into public nuisances.