that Brown and Son has a very poor opinion of the book now under his consideration." And again, quite as forcible is a little anecdote with which he begins an unfinished paper on "Genius." The story is, I now believe, his own; though, at the time, I fancied it was adopted: "There was once a king who sat to listen to the sermon of a great preacher.

From minute to minute the great words flowed on, consoling, wounding, helping, condemning, dividing the marrow from the bones; and the king wept and smiled.
"And at the end he sent for the preacher, and said, 'Sir, Christ is the only king; yet let me look at the book from which you made your discourse.

The written words, though half despoiled of their grace, may perhaps strike an echo in my soul, which rings yet.' "And for some time the preacher was unwilling, and parleyed with the king; but at the last he drew out a little pale book with faded characters traced in ink; and he opened it at a well-worn page, and held it out before the king.
"And the king looked, and saw nothing except the crabbed printed lines.
"So he said, 'Not your text-book, sir, but the book from which your arguments are rehearsed.' "'Sire,' said the preacher, 'look but once more upon the book.' And he showed him that four of the words upon the page had a thin line drawn in ink below them.

'That was the writing of my discourse,' he said." Neither, it must be remembered, was Arthur a first-rate conversationalist.

He did not steer a conversation; he could keep the ball going creditably when it was once started; but he never communicated to the circle in which he was that indefinable interest which is so intangible and yet so unmistakable.
The two points that I spoke of that he is always trying to work out in his books are: (1) the strength of temperament, and the difficulty, almost impossibility, of altering it.