other course than that they did take."

Yet the recently published biography of Sir Charles Dilke shows clearly
how very critical Mr. Chamberlain had already become of his great
leader, Mr. Gladstone, and how many causes were already preparing the
rupture of 1886.

* * * * *

I first met Mr. Browning in 1884 or 1885, if I remember right, at a
Kensington dinner-party, where he took me down. A man who talked loud and
much was discoursing on the other side of the table; and a spirit of
opposition had clearly entered into Mr. Browning.

_A propos_ of some recent acting in London we began to talk of Moliere,
and presently, as though to shut out the stream of words opposite, which
was damping conversation, the old poet--how the splendid brow and the
white hair come back to me!--fell to quoting from the famous sonnet
scene in "Le Misanthrope": first of all, Alceste's rage with Phillinte's
flattery of the wretched verses declaimed by Oronte--"_Morbleu! vil
complaisant, vous louez des sottises_"; then the admirable fencing
between Oronte and Alceste, where Alceste at first tries to convey his
contempt for Oronte's sonnet indirectly, and then bursts out:

"_Ce n'est que jeu de mots, qu'affectation pure,
Et ce n'est point ainsi que parle la nature_!"

breaking immediately into the _vieille chanson_, one line of which is
worth all the affected stuff that Celimene and her circle admire.