"Whom, then, do you propose," continued Lecky to Besant, "to summon to your consultations?"
"Surely," was the reply, "any respectable authors."
"Outsiders, then," said Mr. Spencer, "a few possible and a multitude of impossible candidates?"
"Female writers as well as male?" asked Black; "are we to have the literary Daphne at our conversaziones—
With legs toss'd high on her sophee she sits,
Vouchsafing audience to contending wits?
How do you like that prospect, Lecky?"
"But poorly, I must confess. We have tiresome institutions enough in London without adding to them a sort of Ptolemaic Mouseion, for us to strut about on the steps of, in our palm-costume, attended by dialectical ladies and troops of intriguing pupils. Though that, I am sure," he added courteously, "is the last thing our friend Besant desires, yet I conceive it would tend to be the result of such consultation."
"What then," said the novelist, "is to be the practical service of the English Academy to life and literature?"
At this we all put on a grave and yet animated expression, for certainly, to each of us, this was a very important consideration.