OLIVER. Nothing about honouring ’em either. It’s left optional. Of course, he’s a wonderful old fellow—ninety, and still going strong; but—well, as I say, he’s my grandfather.
ROYCE. I’m afraid, Conway, that even the fact of his being your grandfather doesn’t prevent me thinking him a very great poet, a very great philosopher, and a very great man.
OLIVER (interested). I say, do you really mean that, or are you just quoting from the Address you’ve come to present?
ROYCE. Well, it’s in the Address, but then I wrote the Address, and got it up.
OLIVER. Yes, I know—you told me—“To Oliver Blayds on his ninetieth birthday: Homage from some of the younger writers.” Very pretty of them and all that, and the old boy will love it. But do they really feel like that about him—that’s what interests me. I’ve always thought of him as old-fashioned, early Victorian, and that kind of thing.
ROYCE. Oh, he is. Like Shakespeare. Early Elizabethan and that kind of thing.
OLIVER. Shakespeare’s
different. I meant more like Longfellow.... Don’t think I am setting up my opinion against yours. If you say that Blayds’ poetry is as good as the best, I’ll take your word for it. Blayds the poet, you’re the authority. Blayds the grandfather, I am.
ROYCE. All right, then, you can take my word for it that his best is as good as the best. Simple as [183]Wordsworth, sensuous as Tennyson, passionate as Swinburne.
OLIVER. Yes, but what about the modern Johnnies? The Georgians.