is entirely and absolutely a matter of style; while Life--poor,
probable, uninteresting human life--tired of repeating herself for
the benefit of Mr. Herbert Spencer, scientific historians, and the
compilers of statistics in general, will follow meekly after him,
and try to reproduce, in her own simple and untutored way, some of
the marvels of which he talks.

'No doubt there will always be critics who, like a certain writer
in the Saturday Review, will gravely censure the teller of fairy
tales for his defective knowledge of natural history, who will
measure imaginative work by their own lack of any imaginative
faculty, and will hold up their ink-stained hands in horror if some
honest gentleman, who has never been farther than the yew-trees of
his own garden, pens a fascinating book of travels like Sir John
Mandeville, or, like great Raleigh, writes a whole history of the
world, without knowing anything whatsoever about the past. To
excuse themselves they will try and shelter under the shield of him
who made Prospero the magician, and gave him Caliban and Ariel as
his servants, who heard the Tritons blowing their horns round the
coral reefs of the Enchanted Isle, and the fairies singing to each
other in a wood near Athens, who led the phantom kings in dim
procession across the misty Scottish heath, and hid Hecate in a
cave with the weird sisters. They will call upon Shakespeare--they
always do--and will quote that hackneyed passage forgetting that
this unfortunate aphorism about Art holding the mirror up to
Nature, is deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince the
bystanders of his absolute insanity in all art-matters.'

CYRIL. Ahem! Another cigarette, please.