"That one," he answered (still with the lace between his teeth), "which begins—
"'Curse the people, blast the people,
Damn the lower orders!'"
"'Curse the people, blast the people,
Damn the lower orders!'"
X as a rule calls himself a Liberal-Conservative: but a certain acerbity of temper may be forgiven in a man who has just assisted (against all his instincts) in an act of poltroonery. He explained, too, that it was a genuine, if loosely remembered, quotation from Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer. "Yet in circumstances of peril," he went on, "and in moments of depression, you cannot think what sustenance I have derived from those lines."
"Then you had best send them up," said I, "to the Daily Post. It is conducting a Symposium."
"If two wrongs do not make a right," he answered tartly, "even less will an assembly of deadly dry persons make something to drink."
That evening, in the cabin, we held a symposium on our own account and in the proper sense of the term, while the rain drummed on the deck and the sky-lights.
X said, "The greatest poem written on love during these fifty years—and we agree to accept love as the highest theme of lyrical poetry—is George Meredith's Love in the Valley. I say this and decline to argue about it."
"Nor am I disposed to argue about it," I answered, "for York Powell—peace to his soul for a great man gone—held that same belief. In his rooms in Christ Church, one night while The Oxford Book of Verse was preparing and I had come to him, as everyone came, for counsel.… I take it, though, that we are not searching for the absolute best but for our own prime favourite. You remember what Swinburne says somewhere of Hugo's Gastibelza:—
"'Gastibelza, l'homme à la carabine,
Chantait ainsi:
Quelqu'un a-t-il connu Doña Sabine?
Quelqu'un d'ici?
Dansez, chantez, villageois! la nuit gagne
Le mont Falou—
Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne
Me rendra fou!'