what is the matter with you?” we exclaimed simultaneously.  He gave a sickly nervous smile.  “Of course you have sent to ask me about that review.  Well, I have changed my opinions, I have altered.  I think we should praise everything or ignore everything.  To slate a book, good or bad, is taking the bread out of a fellow’s mouth.  I have been the chief sinner in this way, and I am going to be the first reformer.”  “Not in my paper,” said Curtis, angrily.

’Then we all fell to discussing that old question with all the warmth that North and the rest of you were doing just now.  We lost our tempers and Curtis ended the matter by saying:  “I tell you what it is, Burrage, if you ever bring out a book yourself I’ll send it to you to review.  You can praise it as much as you like.  But don’t let this occur again, with any one else’s work.”  Burrage turned quite white, I thought, and Curtis, noticing the effect of his words, went up and taking him by the hand, added more kindly, “My poor Burrage, are you quite well?  I never saw you in so morbid a state before.  All this is mere sentimentality—­so different from your usual manly spirit.  Go away for a change, to Brighton or Eastbourne, and you must come back with that wholesome contempt for your contemporaries that characterises most of your writings.  I’ll look over the matter this time, and we’ll say no more about it.”  And here Curtis was so overcome that he dashed a tear from his eye.  A few hours later I saw Burrage off to the sea.  He was very strange in his manner.  “I’ll never be quite the same again.  If I only dared to tell you,” he said.  And the train rolled out of the station.

’Some weeks later I was again in the editorial room and Curtis showed me a curiously bound book, printed on hand-made paper, entitled Prejudices.  I had already seen it.  “That book,” Curtis remarked, “ought to have been noticed long ago.  I was keeping it for Burrage when he gets better.  Shall I send it to him?”

’Prejudices for some weeks had been the talk of London.  It was a series of very ineffectual essays on different subjects.  Sight, Colour, Sound, Art, Letters, and Religion were all dealt with in that highly glowing and original manner now termed Style.  It was delightfully unwholesome and extraordinarily silly.  Young persons had already begun to get foolish over it, and leaving the more stimulating pages of Mr. Pater they hailed the work as an earnest of the English Renaissance.  Instead of stroking Marius the Epicurean they fondled a copy of Prejudices.  I prophesied that Burrage would vindicate himself over it and that the public would hear very little of Prejudices in a year’s time.  The book was sent; and the first part of my prophecy was fulfilled, Burrage spared neither the author nor his admirers.  The pedantry, the affected style, the cheap hedonism were all pitilessly exposed.  London, rocked with