Page:The Anatomy of Tobacco.pdf/22

 make him understand, and indeed I hardly understand myself. But I am quite clear that even the patronage of Swinburne would have done no good—to me.

But now, as to the bad little book, "The Anatomy of Tobacco," itself, apart I mean from its surface of chop-logic, cheap scholarship, easy parodies, and learned affectations. Is there anything at all behind this sufficiently unattractive surface? Somewhat to my own surprise, I begin to believe that there is a certain genuine emotion deeply latent beneath the bewildered text; nowhere patent indeed; least of all to the writer in the act of writing. But, very darkly hidden beneath all the verbiage, I think I can see a dawning glimmer of recognition of the great truth that everything is very good, that there is nothing common or unclean, not even an ounce of cheap tobacco.

You know out of what very odd and indeed unsavoury matters Rabelais made a book which is, essentially, a great song of joy and triumph, you know how Cervantes fashioned a madman's delirious and ridic-