vividly that I almost felt stormbound and in peril of my life. To
disentangle one from another of the several occasions on which I heard
him talk is difficult because the procedure was so invariable: Watts-
Dunton always dictating when I arrived, Swinburne always appearing at
the moment of the meal, always the same simple and substantial fare,
Swinburne never allowed to talk before the meal was half over. As to
this last point, I soon realised that I had been quite unjust in
suspecting Watts-Dunton of selfishness. It was simply a sign of the
care with which he watched over his friend's welfare. Had Swinburne
been admitted earlier to the talk, he would not have taken his proper
quantity of roast mutton. So soon, always, as he had taken that, the
embargo was removed, the chance was given him. And, swiftly though he
embraced the chance, and much though he made of it in the courses of
apple-pie and of cheese, he seemed touchingly ashamed of `holding
forth.' Often, before he had said his really full say on the theme
suggested by Watts-Dunton's loud interrogation, he would curb his
speech and try to eliminate himself, bowing his head over his plate;
and then, when he had promptly been brought in again, he would always
try to atone for his inhibiting deafness by much reference and
deference to all that we might otherwise have to say. `I hope,' he
would coo to me, `my friend Watts-Dunton, who'--and here he would turn
and make a little bow to Watts-Dunton--`is himself a scholar, will
bear me out when I say'--or `I hardly know,' he would flute to his old
friend, `whether Mr. Beerbohm'--here a bow to me--`will agree with me
in my opinion of' some delicate point in Greek prosody or some
incident in an old French romance I had never heard of.

On one occasion, just before the removal of the mutton, Watts-Dunton
had been asking me about an English translation that had been made of
M. Rostand's `Cyrano de Bergerac.' He then took my information as the