Of Mr. Le Gallienne we know nothing personally. He is, if we are rightly informed, still a young man, and we would in all kindness exhort him to turn the abilities which he undoubtedly possesses to better account. There is much in these essays which shows that he was intended for something better than to further the decadence. If, instead of sneering at scholars, affecting to despise learning and study, indulging in silly paradoxes, tinsel epigrams, and absurd generalisations, he would read and think, and endeavour to do justice to himself and to his opportunities, he might, we make no doubt, obtain an honourable reputation. There is much which is attractive in his work, and in the personality reflected in it. He is not a charlatan, for though he is ignorant, he is honest. Genial and sympathetic, he has much real critical insight, and, in going through his volumes, we have noted many remarks which were both sound and fine. At its best his style is excellent,—clear, lively, and engaging. Let him cease to play the buffoon, which can only end in his gaining the applause of mere fools and the contempt of every one else.
THE GENTLE ART OF SELF-ADVERTISEMENT
The illustrious Barnum once observed that, if a man's capital consisted of a shilling, one penny of that shilling should be spent in purchasing something, and the remaining eleven-pence should be invested in advertising what was purchased. There was, perhaps, a touch of exaggeration in that great man's remark, but it was founded on a profound knowledge both of human nature and of the world. Intrinsically nothing is valuable; things are what we make or imagine them. Even the diamond, as a costly commodity, exists on suffrage. If a man cannot persuade his fellow-creatures that he has genius, talent, learning, "'twere all alike as if he had them not." What Persius asks with a sneer, "Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?"—is your knowledge nothing, unless some one else know that you are knowing?—a wiser man would ask in all seriousness. Shakespeare was never nearer the truth than when he wrote—
"No man is the lord of anything,
Though in and of him there be much consisting,
Till he communicates his parts to others;
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause