Then there is a break until February 8th, and the assemblage has shrunk to “Jephson and Self.”  With a final flicker, as of a dying candle, my diary at this point, however, grows luminous, shedding much light upon that evening’s conversation.

Our talk seems to have been of many things—­of most things, in fact, except our novel.  Among other subjects we spoke of literature generally.

“I am tired of this eternal cackle about books,” said Jephson; “these columns of criticism to every line of writing; these endless books about books; these shrill praises and shrill denunciations; this silly worship of novelist Tom; this silly hate of poet Dick; this silly squabbling over playwright Harry.  There is no soberness, no sense in it all.  One would think, to listen to the High Priests of Culture, that man was made for literature, not literature for man.  Thought existed before the Printing Press; and the men who wrote the best hundred books never read them.  Books have their place in the world, but they are not its purpose.  They are things side by side with beef and mutton, the scent of the sea, the touch of a hand, the memory of a hope, and all the other items in the sum-total of our three-score years and ten.  Yet we speak of them as though they were the voice of Life instead of merely its faint echo.  Tales are delightful as tales—­sweet as primroses after the long winter, restful as the cawing of rooks at sunset.  But we do not write ‘tales’ now; we prepare ‘human documents’ and dissect souls.”

He broke off abruptly in the midst of his tirade.  “Do you know what these ‘psychological studies,’ that are so fashionable just now, always make me think of?” he said.  “One monkey examining another monkey for fleas.

“And what, after all, does our dissecting pen lay bare?” he continued.  “Human nature? or merely some more or less unsavoury undergarment, disguising and disfiguring human nature?  There is a story told of an elderly tramp, who, overtaken by misfortune, was compelled to retire for a while to the seclusion of Portland.  His hosts, desiring to see as much as possible of their guest during his limited stay with them, proceeded to bath him.  They bathed him twice a day for a week, each time learning more of him; until at last they reached a flannel shirt.  And with that they had to be content, soap and water proving powerless to go further.

“That tramp appears to me symbolical of mankind.  Human Nature has worn its conventions for so long that its habit has grown on to it.  In this nineteenth century it is impossible to say where the clothes of custom end and the natural man begins.  Our virtues are taught to us as a branch of ‘Deportment’; our vices are the recognised vices of our reign and set.  Our religion hangs ready-made beside our cradle to be buttoned upon us by loving hands.  Our tastes we acquire, with difficulty; our sentiments we learn by rote.  At cost of infinite suffering,