situation. I see in him personified the rising generation of literary
critics, who have a hard row to hoe in a deliterated democracy. By some
unknowable miracle of birth or training he has come by a love of beauty,
a reverence for what is fine and true, an absolute intolerance of the
slipshod and insincere.

Such a man is not happy, can never be happy, when the course of his
daily routine wishes him to praise what he does not admire, to exploit
what he does not respect. The most of us have some way of quibbling
ourselves out of this dilemma. But he cannot do so, because more than
comfort, more than clothes and shoe leather, more than wife or
fireside, he must preserve the critic's self-respect. "I cannot write a
publicity story about A.B," he said woefully to me, "because I am
convinced he is a bogus philosopher. I am not interested in selling
books: what I have to do with is that strange and esoteric thing called
literature."

I would be sorry to have it thought that because of this devotion to
high things my friend is stubborn, dogmatic, or hard to work with. He is
unpractical as dogs, children, or Dr. Johnson; in absent-minded
simplicity he has issued forth upon the highway only half-clad, and been
haled back to his boudoir by indignant bluecoats; but in all matters
where absolute devotion to truth and honour are concerned I would not
find him lacking. Wherever a love of beauty and a ripened judgment of
men and books are a business asset, he is a successful business man.

In person, he has the charm of a monstrously overgrown elf. His shyly
wandering gaze behind thick spectacle panes, his incessant devotion to
cigarettes and domestic lager, his whimsical talk on topics that
confound the unlettered--these are amiable trifles that endear him to