and exquisite flash of deprecation, as if he were half inclined to
make fun of his own statement.
It was not his views on art, however, which recommended him to the
aristocratic set in London; but his contempt for social reform, or
rather his utter indifference to it, and his English love of
inequality. The republicanism he flaunted in his early verses was not
even skin deep; his political beliefs and prejudices were the
prejudices of the English governing class and were all in favour of
individual freedom, or anarchy under the protection of the policeman.
"The poor are poor creatures," was his real belief, "and must always
be hewers of wood and drawers of water. They are merely the virgin
soil out of which men of genius and artists grow like flowers. Their
function is to give birth to genius and nourish it. They have no other
_raison d'etre_. Were men as intelligent as bees, all gifted
individuals would be supported by the community, as the bees support
their queen. We should be the first charge on the state just as
Socrates declared that he should be kept in the Prytaneum at the
public expense.
"Don't talk to me, Frank, about the hardships of the poor. The
hardships of the poor are necessities, but talk to me of the hardships
of men of genius, and I could weep tears of blood. I was never so
affected by any book in my life as I was by the misery of Balzac's
poet, Lucien de Rubempre."
Naturally this creed of an exaggerated individualism appealed
peculiarly to the best set in London. It was eminently aristocratic
and might almost be defended as scientific, for to a certain extent it
found corroboration in Darwinism. All progress according to Darwin
comes from peculiar individuals; "sports" as men of science call them,
or the "heaven-sent" as rhetoricians prefer to style them. The many
are only there to produce more "sports" and ultimately to benefit by
them. All this is valid enough; but it leaves the crux of the question
untouched. The poor in aristocratic England are too degraded to
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