Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/331

 cares. And such variety of character too, where you would least expect it!"

GEORGE MORLEY.—"Very true. Cowper noticed marked differences of character in his favourite hares."

WAIFE.—"Hares! I am sure that there are not two house-flies on a window-pane, two minnows in that water, that would not present to us interesting points of contrast as to temper and disposition. If house-flies and minnows could but coin money, or set up a manufacture,—contrive something, in short, to buy or sell attractive to Anglo-Saxon enterprise and intelligence,—of course we should soon have diplomatic relations with them; and our despatches and newspapers would instruct us to a T in the characters and propensities of their leading personages. But, where man has no pecuniary nor ambitious interests at stake in his commerce with any class of his fellow-creatures, his information about them is extremely confused and superficial. The best naturalists are mere generalizers, and think they have done a vast deal when they classify a species. What should we know about mankind if we had only a naturalist's definition of man? We only know mankind by knocking classification on the head, and studying each man as a class in himself. Compare Buffon and Shakspeare! Alas, sir! can we never have a Shakspeare for house-flies and minnows?"

GEORGE MORLEY.—"With all respect for minnows and house-flies, if we found another Shakspeare, he might be better employed, like his predecessor, in selecting individualities from the classifications of man."

WAIFE.—"Being yourself a man, you think so: a housefly might be of a different opinion. But permit me, at least, to doubt whether such an investigator would be better employed in reference to his own happiness, though I grant that he would be so in reference to your intellectual amusement and social interests. Poor Shakspeare! How much he must have suffered!"

GEORGE MORLEY.—"You mean that he must have been racked by the passions he describes,—bruised by collision with the hearts he dissects. That is not necessary to genius. The judge on his bench, summing up evidence and charging the jury, has no need to have shared the temptations or been privy to the acts of the prisoner at the bar. Yet how consummate may be his analysis!"

"No," cried Waife, roughly. "No! Your illustration destroys your argument. The judge knows nothing of the