bad?' 'Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?' At length
Coleridge quietly broke in, 'For Heaven's sake, leave Mr. Scott alone!
I wrote the poem'" (p. 39).

Such lessons are more needed now than ever. Only by stripes can the
vulgar pseudo-cultured be taught their folly.

The post of father-confessor and general director to the readers of
_The Family Herald_ which Mr. Runciman filled in succession to
Mr. Grant Allen is one which any student of human nature might envy.
There is no dissecting-room of the soul like the Confessional, where
the priest is quite impalpable and impersonal and the penitent secure
in the privacy of an anonymous communication. The ordinary man and
woman have just as much of the stuff of tragedy and comedy in their
lives as the Lord Tomnoddy or Lady Fitzboodle, and as there are many
more of them--thank Heaven!--than the lords and ladies, the masses
afford a far more fertile field for the psychological student of life
and character than the classes. They are, besides, much less
artificial. There are fewer apes and more men and women among people
who don't pay income tax than among those who do. As Director-General
of the Answers to Correspondents column of _The Family Herald_
Mr. Runciman was brought into more vitalising touch with the broad and
solid realities of the average life of the average human being, with
all its wretched pettiness and its pathetic anxieties, its carking
cares and its wild, irrational aspirations, than he would have been if
he had spent his nights in dining out in Mayfair and lounged all day
in the clubs of Pall Mall.

The essays which he contributed to _The Family Herald_ were therefore
adjusted to the note which every week was sounded by his innumerable