The Story of the House of Cassell
who has forgotten the fairest half of his kingdom. . . . However, Mr. Henley is not to be judged by samples. Indeed, the most attractive thing in the book is no single poem that is in it, but the strong human personality that stands behind both flawless and faulty work alike, and looks out through many masks, some of them beautiful, and some grotesque, and not a few misshapen. In the case of most of our modern poets, when we have analysed them down to an adjective we can go no further, or we care to go no further; but with this book it is different. Through these reeds and pipes blows the very breath of life. It seems as if one could put one's hand upon the singer's heart and count its pulsation. There is something wholesome, virile and sane about a man's soul. Anybody can be reasonable, but to be sane is not common; and sane poets are as rare as blue lilies, though they may not be quite so beautiful. . . . Mr. Henley's healthy, if sometimes misapplied, confidence in the myriad suggestions of life gives him his charm. He is made to sing along the highways, not to sit down and write. If he took himself more seriously his work would become trivial."
It is tempting, by way of rejoinder to Wilde, to recall an almost unknown letter Henley wrote to a friend: "I have never babbled the Art for Art's sake babble. If I have, I'll eat the passage publicly. What I've said is, the better the writer the better the poet; that, in fact, good writing's better than bad."
The two men were, of course, radically antipathetic. Mr. Edwin Bale, deploring the antagonism between them, did his best to bring them together. He invited them to dine at his house to meet each other and certain wellknown artists. The result was, in Mr. Bale's words, that "Wilde completely won over Henley, the latter insisting that Wilde should drive home with him to Chiswick, and at three o'clock in the morning they left together in a hansom cab. I saw Wilde the next day and he told me that they 'sat and babbled' at Chiswick till nine o'clock
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