Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/209

183 BEAU BBERBOHM 183 The figure may look like bisque, but the pedestal is rock ; and good old laws, observed austerely, run up through the ribands and the garlands and the tinted coquetries to sustain the poised caprice. For this reason let that presumptuous talk about un- worthiness be taken as not written. It traduces what it tries to praise. For the book is one of those that make their readers worthy willy-nilly. You may not put it down feeling that the world is in a deuce of a state and that you will certainly go slumming to-morrow. But by some sort of in- voluntary mimicry your tact for the niceties is quickened. It holds the mirror up to Nature in the only sensible fashion — as a modiste does, that is to say, to her customer, or Melisande to her mistress. Like its ghosts, it is "a lesson in deportment." Mcmchester Guarddcm, 1911.