HAVE YOU A NASTY TASTE IN YOUR MOUTH?
IT IS LIVER.
YOU NEED ONE TWENTY-THREE PILL.
(JUST ONE.)
NOT A DRUG BUT A LIVE AMERICAN REMEDY.
CONTENTS.
A Hitherto Unpublished Letter from Walter Pater.
Charlotte Brontë’s Maternal Great Aunt.
A New Catholic History of England.
The Genius of Shakespeare.
Correspondence:—The Mendelian Hypothesis; The Split Infinitive; “Commence,” or “Begin;” Claverhouse; Socialism and the Individual; The Dignity of Letters.
Folk-lore Gossip.
The Stage; the Paradox of Acting.
Travel Biography, Verse, Fiction, etc.
THE BEST PILL IN THE WORLD FOR AN IRREGULAR LIVER
I suppose it is some lingering traces of the Bladesover tradition to me that makes this combination of letters and pills seem so incongruous, just as I suppose it is a lingering trace of Plutarch and my ineradicable boyish imagination that at bottom our State should be wise, sane and dignified, that makes me think a country which leaves its medical and literary criticism, or indeed any such vitally important criticism, entirely to private enterprise and open to the advances of any purchaser must be in a frankly hopeless condition. These are ideal conceptions of mine.
As a matter of fact, nothing would be more entirely natural and representative of the relations of learning, thought and the economic situation in the world at the present time than this cover of the Sacred Grove—the quiet conservatism of the one element embedded in the aggressive brilliance of the other; the contrasted notes of bold physiological experiment and extreme mental immobility.
VI
There comes back, too, among these Hardingham memories, an impression of a drizzling November day, and how we looked out of the windows upon a procession of the London unemployed.