Mr. Benson has approached Walter Pater, the man, with almost sacerdotal deference.  He suggests ingeniously where you can find the self-revelation in Gaston and The Child in the House.  This is far more illuminating than the recollections of personal friends whose reminiscences are modelled on those of Captain Sumph.  Mr. Humphry Ward remembers Pater only once being angry—­it was in the Common Room—­it was with X, an elderly man!  The subject of the difference was ’modern lectures.’  ‘Relations between them were afterwards strained.’  Mr. Arthur Symons remembers that he intended to bring out a new volume of Imaginary Portraits.  Fancy that!  Really, when friends begin to tell stories of that kind, I begin to suspect they are trying to conceal something.  Perhaps we have no right to know everything or anything about the amazing personalities of literature; but Henleys and Purcells lurk and leak out even at Oxford; and that is not the way to silence them.  Just when the aureole is ready to be fitted on, some horrid graduate (Litterae inhumaniores) inks the statue.  Anticipating something of the kind, Mr. Benson is careful to insist on the divergence between Rossetti and Pater, and on page eighty-six says something which is ludicrously untrue.  If self-revelation can be traced in Gaston, it can be found elsewhere.  There are sentences in Hippolytus Veiled, the Age of the Athletic Prizemen, and Apollo in Picardy, which not only explode Mr. Benson’s suggestions, but illustrate the objections he urges against Denys l’Auxerrois.  They are passages where Pater thinks aloud.  If Rossetti wore his heart on the sleeve, Pater’s was just above the cuff, like a bangle; though it slips down occasionally in spite of the alb which drapes the hieratic writer not always discreetly.

(1906.)

SIMEON SOLOMON.

A good many years ago, before the Rhodes scholars invaded Oxford, there lingered in that home of lost causes and unpopular names, the afterglow of the aesthetic sunset.  It was not a very brilliant period.  Professor Mackail and Mr. Bowyer Nichols had left Balliol.  Nothing was expected of either the late Sir Clinton Dawkins or Canon Beeching; and the authorities of Merton could form no idea where Mr. Beerbohm would complete his education.  Names are more suggestive than dates and give less pain.  Then, as now, there were ‘cultured’ undergraduates, and those who were very cultured indeed, read Shelley and burned incense, would always have a few photographs after Simeon Solomon on their walls—­little notes of illicit sentiment to vary the monotony of Burne-Jones and Botticelli.  When uncles and aunts came up for Gaudys and Commem., while ‘Temperantia’ and the ‘Primavera’ were left in their places, ’Love dying from the breath of Lust,’ ‘Antinous,’ and other drawings by Solomon with titles from the Latin Vulgate, were taken down for the occasion.  Views of the sister University, Cambridge took their places, being more appropriate to Uncle Parker’s and Aunt Jane’s tastes.  More advanced undergraduates, who ‘knew what things were,’ possessed even originals.  Now the unfortunate artist is dead his career can be mentioned without prejudice.