’Sometimes the critic’s phrases seemed wet with tears; sometimes, abandoning his tone of commiseration, he would assume one of scientific indifference.  The phenomenon was the commonest.  There were dozens of Hubert Prices in London.  The universities and the newspapers, working singly and in collaboration, turned them out by the dozen.  And the mission of these men of intelligent culture seemed to be to poser des lapins sur la jeune presse.  Each one came in turn with his little volume of poems, his little play, his little picture; all were men of “advanced ideas”; in other words, they were all dans le mouvement.  There was the rough Hubert Price, who made mild consternation in the drawing-room, and there was the sophisticated Hubert Price, who cajoled the drawing-room; there was the sincere and the insincere, and the Price that suffered and the Price that didn’t.  Each one brought a different nuance, a thousand infinitesimal variations of the type, but, considered merely in its relation to art, the species may be said to be divided into two distinct categories.  In the first category are those who rise almost at the first bound to a certain level, who produce quickly, never reaching again the original standard, dropping a little lower at each successive effort until their work becomes indistinguishable from the ordinary artistic commercialism of the time.  The fate of those in the second category is more pathetic; they gradually wither and die away like flowers planted in a thin soil.  Among these men many noble souls are to be found, men who have surrendered all things for love of their art, and who seemed at starting to be the best equipped to win, but who failed, impossible to tell how or why.  Sometimes their failure turns to comedy, sometimes to tragedy.  They may become refined, delicate, elderly bachelors, the ornaments of drawing-rooms, professional diners-out—­men with brilliant careers behind them.  But if fate has not willed that they should retire into brilliant shells; if chance does not allow them to retreat, to separate themselves from their kind, but arbitrarily joins them to others, linking their fate to the fate of others’ unhappiness, disaster may and must accrue from the alliance; honesty of purpose, trueness of heart, deep love, every great, good, and gracious quality to be found in nature, will not suffice to save them.’

The paper dropped from his hands, and he recollected all his failures.

’Once I could do good work; now I can do neither good work nor bad.  Were I a rich man, I should collect my scattered papers and write songs to be sung in drawing-rooms; but being a poor one, I must—­I suppose I must get out.  Positively, there is no hope,—­debts on every side.  Fate has willed me to go as went Haydon, Gerard de Nerval, and Maréchal.  The first cut his throat, the second hanged himself, and the third blew out his brains.  Clearly the time has come to consider how I shall make my exit.  It is a little startling to be called upon so peremptorily to go.’