midst. He likened them, if I remember rightly, to `hell-hounds foaming
at the jaws.' This was by some people taken as a sign that he had
fallen away from that high generosity of spirit which had once been
his. To me it meant merely that he thought of poor little England
writhing under the heel of an alien despotism, just as, in the days
when he really was interested in such matters, poor little Italy had
writhen. I suspect, too, that the first impulse to write about the
Boers came not from the Muse within, but from Theodore Watts-Dunton
without.... `Now, Algernon, we're at war, you know--at war with the
Boers. I don't want to bother you at all, but I do think, my dear old
friend, you oughtn't to let slip this opportunity of,' etc., etc.

Some such hortation is easily imaginable by any one who saw the two
old friends together. The first time I had this honour, this sight for
lasting and affectionate memory, must have been in the Spring of '99.
In those days Theodore Watts (he had but recently taken on the -
Dunton) was still something of a gad-about. I had met him here and
there, he had said in his stentorian tones pleasant things to me about
my writing, I sent him a new little book of mine, and in acknowledging
this he asked me to come down to Putney and `have luncheon and meet
Swinburne.' Meet Catullus!

On the day appointed `I came as one whose feet half linger.' It is but
a few steps from the railway-station in Putney High Street to No. 2.
The Pines. I had expected a greater distance to the sanctuary--a walk
in which to compose my mind and prepare myself for initiation. I laid
my hand irresolutely against the gate of the bleak trim front-garden,
I withdrew my hand, I went away. Out here were all the aspects of
common modern life. In there was Swinburne. A butcher-boy went by,
whistling. He was not going to see Swinburne. He could afford to