Which touches upon the Pains of Enjoying the Glow of Self-Abasement whilst Maintaining a Position of Dignity
As Noll and Horace stood on the platform of the railway-station at Oxford, waiting for the London express to take them to town, Horace Malahide began to feel some discomfort about the brooding mood of the other—for the first time he was distressed with the question whether they ought not to have remained at Oxford. He knew that Noll had but narrow means. Guessing that Noll was in some embarrassment as to how to explain his sudden return to his people, he, to divert him from worrying, called his wandering attention to a newspaper criticism upon a book which had just come out and was creating considerable stir in the literary world.
Horace, holding up the newspaper criticism, put his finger upon the name of Caroline Baddlesmere. Noll roused and read the notice. The writer, Anthony Bickersteth, was proclaimed as the founder of a new school—a new star had risen above the dead level of the commonplace literature of the day—and all of the review that was not violent praise of this Anthony Bickersteth was the cover for a bitter and sneering screed against the work of Caroline Baddlesmere, who, so it bluntly averred, had gone well-nigh to destroying English as an artistic language. The writer’s judgment would have been of more weight, perhaps, had his English been of more value; but even his ill-balanced phrasing, his academic eyes, his dullard’s palate, and his faulty ear, could not altogether damn the object of his adoration; and Noll, struck by the beauty of phrasing in some of the quoted passages, bought a copy of the book at the station stall as the train came clanking in. He ran through its pages on his journey to town....
As they rattled through the outskirts of London, Horace, who had been watching the other’s face, asked:
“Is it any good, Noll?”
Noll shut up the book, and stretched himself:
“Very good,” said he—“but I think the fellow would have shown better taste not to hit at my mother in the Preface.”
There was a long pause.
Horace broke it: