But that was, of course, before I bolted on the Home-Rule question. I fancy he has found another passage since.
I know I'm not a person of any conspicuous ability. If I had not been born a C-v-nd-sh I would never have been even a Ch-pl-n. But as things fell out, I am like the boy in the middle of the balanced plank, at the end of which two others sit. According as I move to the right or to the left, one end of the plank goes up, and the other down. So the friends on either side constantly shoulder me one way or the other; which is all very well for them, but rather a nuisance to me.
It is part of this perpetual little game by which I am used for the convenience of others, that you get all the talk about my being Premier. I am not at all sure that I should not be shouldered into that by-and-by, if it were not for Gr-nd-lph. I do not pretend to see further through a ladder than an ordinary passer-by; but it is clear to me that you can never have a Government rival to the regular Liberals (observe, I do not say a Conservative Government) without Gr-nd-lph. It is no secret that I have never hankered after Gr-nd-lph, neither liking him, nor believing in him. You know what Dr. J-hns-n said about C-ll-y C-bb-r. I don't exactly, but it was something to the effect that "as for Cibber, if you take away from his conversation all that he should not have said, he is a poor creature." That is a way of putting it curiously applicable to Gr-nd-lph. If you take away from his political speeches all that he should not have said, he is a poor creature, a presumptuous rattle-trap, the gamin of Conservative politics. But if I undertake the titular headship of the Conservative Party, I shall have to deal with him, and that, as they say in a circular space of which I now see too little, is not good enough.
That is my present opinion. But, bless us all! I may be talked round on this point, and used by a Party as I was when I made my first appearance in the House of Commons nearly thirty years ago, and, a mere stripling, was made the instrument of turning out a powerful Government. Yours dejectedly,
H-rt-ngt-n.
SUSPIRIA.
(By a Disappointed Sportsman.)
The plane's broad plates of weather-beaten gold
Lie shrunk and sodden in the miry way,