experienced teachers coached you up to the necessary proficiency.
Sweet could not organize his market in that fashion. He might as
well have been the Sybil who tore up the leaves of prophecy that
nobody would attend to. The four and six-penny manual, mostly in
his lithographed handwriting, that was never vulgarly advertized,
may perhaps some day be taken up by a syndicate and pushed upon
the public as The Times pushed the Encyclopaedia Britannica; but
until then it will certainly not prevail against Pitman. I have
bought three copies of it during my lifetime; and I am informed
by the publishers that its cloistered existence is still a steady
and healthy one. I actually learned the system two several times;
and yet the shorthand in which I am writing these lines is
Pitman's. And the reason is, that my secretary cannot transcribe
Sweet, having been perforce taught in the schools of Pitman.
Therefore, Sweet railed at Pitman as vainly as Thersites railed
at Ajax: his raillery, however it may have eased his soul, gave
no popular vogue to Current Shorthand. Pygmalion Higgins is not a
portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would
have been impossible; still, as will be seen, there are touches
of Sweet in the play. With Higgins's physique and temperament
Sweet might have set the Thames on fire. As it was, he impressed
himself professionally on Europe to an extent that made his
comparative personal obscurity, and the failure of Oxford to do
justice to his eminence, a puzzle to foreign specialists in his
subject. I do not blame Oxford, because I think Oxford is quite
right in demanding a certain social amenity from its nurslings
(heaven knows it is not exorbitant in its requirements!); for
although I well know how hard it is for a man of genius with a
seriously underrated subject to maintain serene and kindly
relations with the men who underrate it, and who keep all the