to which he was indisposed to respond. The debate on this point and the pretty uncertainty in which it is left can surely arouse in Miss Savage's relations no other feelings than "pride and delight."
This brings us to the Butlerian substitute for the chivalry which used to be practised by those who bore what the Victorians called "the grand old name of gentleman." In his later years, after the death of Miss Savage, in periods of loneliness, depression and ill-health, Butler made notes on his correspondence, reproaching himself for his ill-treatment of her. "He also," says his biographer, "tried to express his remorse" in two sonnets, from which I extract some lines:
Wrote moving letters to me day by day;
Hard though I tried to love I tried in vain.
For she was plain and lame and fat and short,
Forty and overkind.
Should leave her till she have prevailed; and, true,
A man will yield for pity if he can,
But if the flesh rebel what can he do?
I could not; hence I grieve my whole life long
The wrong I did in that I did no wrong.
In these Butlerian times one who should speak of "good taste" would incur the risk of being called a prig. Good taste is no longer "in." Yet even now, in the face of these sonnets, may not one exclaim, Heaven preserve us from the remorseful moments of a Butlerian Adonis of fifty!
