state of society in England, where we are still more or less under the heel of the illiterate and prudish Philistinism of our middle class, that I might be had up to answer some charge of publishing an indecent book.  The current of the time appears to be against me.  In the spacious days of Elizabeth, in the modish time of the Georges, a freedom of speech was habitual which to-day is tabooed.  Our cases, therefore, are somewhat alike.  Do you think I should dread the issue or allow myself to be silenced by a judge?  I would set forth my defence before the judge and before the jury with the assurance of victory in me!  I should not minimise what I had written; I should not try to explain it away; I should seek to make it stronger.  I should justify every word, and finally I’d warn both judge and jury that if they condemned and punished me they would only make my ultimate triumph more conspicuous.  ’All the great men of the past are with me,’ I would cry; ’all the great minds of to-day in other countries, and some of the best in England; condemn me at your peril:  you will only condemn yourselves.  You are spitting against the wind and the shame will be on your own faces.’

“Do you believe I should be left to suffer?  I doubt it even in England to-day.  If I’m right, and I’m sure I’m right, then about me there would be an invisible cloud of witnesses.  You would see a strange movement of opinion in my favour.  The judge would probably lecture me and bind me over to come up for judgment; but if he sentenced me vindictively then the Home Secretary[32] would be petitioned and the movement in my favour would grow, till it swept away opposition.  This is the very soul of my faith.  If I did not believe with every fibre in me that this poor stupid world is honestly groping its way up the altar stairs to God, and not down, I would not live in it an hour.”

“Why do you argue against me, Frank?  It is brutal of you.”

“To induce you even now to turn and pull yourself out of the mud.  You are forty odd years of age, and the keenest sensations of life are over for you.  Turn back whilst there’s time, get to work, write your ballad and your plays, and not the Alexanders alone, but all the people who really count, the best of all countries—­the salt of the earth—­will give you another chance.  Begin to work and you’ll be borne up on all hands:  No one sinks to the dregs but by his own weight.  If you don’t bear fruit why should men care for you?”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned from me with disdainful indifference.

“I’ve done enough for their respect, Frank, and received nothing but hatred.  Every man must dree his own weird.  Thank Heaven, life’s not without compensations.  I’m sorry I cannot please you,” and he added carelessly, “M——­has asked me to go and spend the summer with him at Gland in Switzerland. He does not mind whether I write or not.”

“I assure you,” I cried, “it is not my pleasure I am thinking about.  What can it matter to me whether you write or not?  It is your own good I am thinking of.”