“The most remarkable achievement of the Jew was to impose on Europe for eighteen centuries his own superstitions—­his ideas of the supernatural.  Jahveh was no more than Zeus or Milcom; yet the Jew got established the belief in the inspiration of his Bible and his Law.  If I were a Jew, I should have the same contempt as he has for the Christian who acted in this way towards me, who took my ideas and scorned me for clinging to them.”

[January 21.

Yesterday evening he again declared that it was very hard for a man of peace like himself to have been dragged into so many controversies.] “I declare that for the last twenty years I have never attacked, but always fought in self-defence, counting Darwin, of course, as part of myself, for dear Darwin never could nor would defend himself.  Before that, I admit I attacked —­, but I could not trust the man.” [A pause.] “No, there was one other case, when I attacked without being directly assailed, and that was Gladstone.  But it was good for other reasons.  It has always astonished me how a man after fifty or sixty years of life among men could be so ignorant of the best way to handle his materials.  If he had only read Dana, he would have found his case much better stated than ever he stated it.  He seemed never to have read the leading authorities on his own side.”

[Speaking of the hesitation shown by the Senate of London University in grappling with a threatened obstacle to reform, he remarked]:  “It is very strange how most men will do anything to evade responsibility.”

[January 23.

At dinner the talk turned on plays.  Mr. H.A.  Jones had sent him “Judah”, which he thought good, though] “there must be some hostility—­except in the very greatest writers—­between the dramatic and the literary faculties.  I noticed many points I objected to, but felt sure they met with applause.  Indeed in the theatre I have noticed that what I thought the worst blots on a piece invariably brought down the house.”

[He remarked how the French, in dramatic just as in artistic matters, are so much better than the English in composition, in avoiding anything slipshod in the details, though the English artists draw just as well and colour perhaps better.

The following sketch of human character is not actually a fragment of conversation, though it might almost pass for such; it comes from a letter to Mrs. W.K.  Clifford, of February 10, 1895:—­]

Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse-nervousness, ass-stubbornness and camel-malice—­with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset, and when they can do exactly as they please, they are very hard to drive.

[Whatever he talked of, his talk never failed to impress those who conversed with him.  One or two such impressions have been recorded.  Mr. Wilfrid Ward, whose interests lie chiefly in philosophy and theology, was his neighbour at Eastbourne, and in the “Nineteenth Century” for August 1896 has given various reminiscences of their friendly intercourse.