by a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operations of human nature and by a careful application of the fine properties of well-selected men, and a judicious use of every available instrument of log-rolling, the mutual depreciation society gradually built up a constitution strong enough to defy every tendency to disintegration. hundreds of subtle malcontents floated round, ready to attack wherever there was a weak point, but foiled by ignorance of the society's existence, and the members escaped many a fatal shaft by keeping themselves entirely to themselves. the idea of the mutual depreciation society was that every member should say what he thought of the others. the founders, who all took equal shares in it, were

tom brown,

dick jones,

harry robinson.

their object in founding the mutual depreciation society was of course to achieve literary success, but they soon perceived that their phalanx was too small for this, and as they had no power to add to their number except by inviting strangers from without, they took steps to induce three other gentlemen to solicit the privileges of membership. the second batch comprised,

taffy owen,

andrew mackay,

patrick boyle.

these six gentlemen being all blessed with youth, health and incompetence, resolved to capture the town. their tactics were very simple, though their first operations were hampered by their ignorance of one another's. thus, it was some time before it was discovered that andrew mackay, who had been deployed to seize the saturday slasher, had no real acquaintance with the editor's fencing-master, while dick jones, who had undertaken to bombard the acadæum, had started under the impression that the eminent critic to whom he had dedicated his poems (by permission) was still connected with the staff. but these difficulties were eliminated as soon as the society got into working order. everything comes to him who will not wait, and almost before they had time to wink our six gentlemen had secured the makings of an influence. each had loyally done his best for himself and the rest, and the first spoils of the campaign, as announced amid applause by the secretary at the monthly dinner, were

two morning papers,

two evening papers,

two weekly papers.

they were not the most influential, nor even the best circulated, still it was not a bad beginning, though of course only a nucleus. by putting out tentacles in every direction, by undertaking to write even on subjects with which they were acquainted, they gradually secured a more or less tenacious connection with the majority of the better journals and magazines. on taking stock they found that the account stood thus:

three morning papers,

four evening papers,

eleven weekly papers,

thirteen london letters,

seven dramatic columns,

six monthly magazines,

thirteen influences on advertisements,

nine friendships with eminent editors,

seventeen ditto with eminent sub-editors,

six ditto with lady journalists,

fifty-three loans (at two-and-six each) to pressmen,

one hundred and nine mentions of editor's womenkind at fashionable receptions.

it showed what could be achieved by six men, working together shoulder to shoulder for the highest aims in a spirit of mutual good-will and brotherhood. they were undoubtedly greatly helped by having all been to oxford or cambridge, but still much was the legitimate result of their own manœuvres.

by the time the secret campaign had reached this stage, many well-meaning, unsuspecting men, not included in the above inventory, had been pressed into the service of the society, with the members of which they were connected by the thousand and one ties which spring up naturally in the intercourse of the world, so that there was hardly any journal in the three kingdoms on which the society could not, by some hook or the other, fasten a paragraph, if we except such publications as the newgate calendar and lloyds' shipping list, which record history rather than make it.

indeed, the success of the society in this department was such as to suggest the advisability of having themselves formally incorporated under the companies' acts for the manufacture and distribution of paragraphs, for which they had unequalled facilities, and had obtained valuable concessions, and it was only the publicity required by law which debarred them from enlarging their home trade to a profitable industry for the benefit of non-members. for, by the peculiar nature of the machinery, it could only be worked if people were unaware of its existence. they resolved, however, that when they had made their pile, they would start the newspaper of the future, which any philosopher with an eye to the trend of things can see will be a journal written by advertisers for gentlemen, and will contain nothing calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of the young person except cosmetics.

contemporaneously with the execution of one side of the plan of campaign, the society was working the supplementary side. day and night, week-days and sundays, in season and out, these six gentlemen praised themselves and one another, or got themselves and one another praised by non-members. there are many ways in which you can praise an author, from blame downwards. there is the puff categorical and the puff allusive, the lie direct and the eulogy insinuative, the downright abuse and the subtle innuendo, the exaltation of your man or the depression of his rival. the attacking method of log-rolling must not be confounded with depreciation. in their outside campaign, the members used every variety of puff, but depreciation was strictly reserved for their private gatherings. for this was the wisdom of the club, and herein lay its immense superiority over every other log-rolling club, that whereas in those childish cliques every man is expected to admire every other, or to say so, in the mutual depreciation society the obligation was all the other way. every man was bound by the rules to sneer at the work of his fellow-members and, if he should happen to admire any of it, at least to have the grace to keep his feelings to himself. in practice, however, the latter contingency never arose, and each was able honestly to express all he thought, for it is impossible for men to work together for a common object without discovering that they do not deserve to get it. needless to point out how this sagacious provision strengthened them in their campaign, for not having to keep up the tension of mutual admiration, and being able to relax and breathe (and express themselves) freely at their monthly symposia, as well as to slang one another in the street, they were able to write one another up with a clear conscience. it is well to found on human nature. every other basis proves shifting sand. the success of the mutual depreciation society justified their belief in human nature.

not only did they depreciate one another, but they made reparation to the non-members they were always trying to write down during business hours, by eulogizing them in the most generous manner in those blessed hours of leisure when knife answers fork and soul speaks to soul. at such times even popular authors were allowed to have a little merit.

it was at one of these periods of soul-expansion, when the most petty-souled feels inclined to loosen the last two buttons of his waistcoat, that the idea of the english shakespeare was first mooted. but we are anticipating, which is imprudent, as anticipations are seldom realized.

one of the worst features of prosperity is that it is cloying, and when the first gloss of novelty and adventure had worn off, the free lances of the mutual depreciation society began to bore one another. you can get tired even of hearing your own dispraises; and the members were compelled to spice their mutual adverse criticism in the highest manner, so as to compensate for its staleness. the jaded appetite must needs be pampered if it is to experience anything of that relish which a natural healthy hunger for adverse criticism can command so easily.

this was the sort of thing that went on at the dinners:

"i say, tom," said andrew mackay, "what in heaven's name made you publish your waste-paper basket under the name of 'stray thoughts?' for utter and incomprehensible idiocy they are only surpassed by dick's last volume of poems. i shouldn't have thought such things [pg 204] could come even out of a lunatic asylum, certainly not without a keeper. really you fellows ought to consider me a little——"

"we do. we consider you as little as they make them," they interrupted simultaneously.

"it isn't fair to throw all the work on me," he went on. "how can i go on saying that tom brown is the supreme thinker of the time, the deepest intellect since hegel, with a gift of style that rivals berkeley's, if you go on turning out twaddle that a copy-book would boggle at? how can i keep repeating that for sure and consummate art, for unfailing certainty of insight, for unerring visualization, for objective subjectivity and for subjective objectivity, for swinburnian sweep of music and shakespearean depth of suggestiveness, dick jones can give forty in a hundred (spot stroke barred) to all other contemporary poets, if you continue to spue out rhymes as false as your teeth, rhythms as musical as your voice when you read them, and words that would drive a drawing-room composer mad with envy to set them? i maintain, it is not sticking to the bargain to expose me to the danger of being found out. you ought at least to have the decency to wrap up your fatuousness in longer words or more abstruse themes. you're both so beastly intelligible that a child can understand you're asses."

"tut, tut, andrew," said taffy owen, "it's all very well of you to talk who've only got to do the criticism. and i think it's deuced ungrateful of you after we've written you up into the position of leading english critic to want us to give you straw for your bricks! do we ever complain when you call us cataclysmic, creative, esemplastic, or even epicene? we know it's rot, but we put up with it. when you said that robinson's last novel had all the glow and genius of dickens without his humor, all the ripe wisdom of thackeray without his social knowingness, all the imaginativeness of shakespeare without his definiteness of characterization, we all saw at once that you were incautiously allowing the donkey's ears to protrude too obviously from beneath the lion's skin. but did anyone grumble? did robinson, though the edition was sold out the day after? did i, though you had just called me a modern buddhist with the soul of an ancient greek and the radiant fragrance of a cingalese tea-planter? i know these phrases take the public and i try to be patient."

"owen is right," harry robinson put in emphatically. "when you said i was a cross between a scandinavian skald and a dutch painter, i bore my cross in silence."

"yes, but what else can a fellow say, when you give the public such heterogeneous and formless balderdash that there is nothing for it but to pretend it's a new style, an epoch-making work, the foundation of a new era in literary art? really i think you others have out and away the best of it. it's much easier to write bad books than to eulogize their merits in an adequately plausible manner. i think it's playing it too low upon a chap, the way you fellows are going on. it's taking a mean advantage of my position."

"and who put you into that position, i should like to know?" yelled dick jones, becoming poetically excited. "didn't we lift you up into it on the point of our pens?"

"fortunately they were not very pointed," ejaculated the great critic, wriggling uncomfortably at the suggestion. "i don't deny that, of course. all i say is, you're giving me away now."

"you give yourself away," shrieked owen vehemently, "with a pound of that cingalese tea. how is it boyle managed to crack up our plays without being driven to any of this new-fangled nonsense?"

"plays!" said patrick, looking up moodily. "anything is good enough for plays. you see i can always fall back on the acting and crack up that. i had to do that with owen's thing at the lymarket. my notice read like a gushing account of the play, in reality it was all devoted to the players. the trick of it is not easy. those who can read between the lines could see that there were only three of them about the piece itself, and yet the outside public would never dream i was shirking the expression of an opinion about the merits of the play or the pinning myself to any definite statement. the only time, owen, i dare say, that your plays are literature is when they are a frost, for that both explains the failure and justifies you. but, an you love me, taffy, or if you have any care for my reputation, do not, i beg of you, be enticed into the new folly of printing your plays."

"but things have come to that stage i must do it," said owen, "or incur the suspicion of illiterateness."

"no, no!" pleaded patrick in horror. "sooner than that i will damn all the other printed plays en bloc, and say that the real literary playwrights, conscious of their position, are too dignified to resort to this cheap method of self-assertion."

"but you will not carry out your threat? remember how dangerously near you came to exposing me over your naquette."

the club laughed. everyone knew the incident, for it was patrick's stock grievance against the dramatist. patrick being out of town, had written his eulogy of this play of owen's from his inner consciousness. on the fourth night in deference to owen's persuasions he had gone to see naquette.

after the tragedy, owen found him seated moodily in the stalls, long after the audience had filed out.

"knocked you, old man, this time, eh?" queried owen laughing complacently.

"yes, all to pieces!" snarled patrick savagely. "i shall never believe in my critical judgment again. i dare not look my notice in the face. when i wrote naquette was a masterpiece, i thought at least there would be some merit in it—i didn't bargain for such rot as this."

in this wise things would have gone on—from bad to worse—had heaven not created cecilia nineteen years before.

cecilia was a tall, fair girl, with dreamy eyes and unpronounced opinions, who longed for the ineffable with an unspeakable yearning.

frank grey loved her. he always knew he was going to and one day he did it. after that it was impossible to drop the habit. and at last he went so far as to propose. he was a young lawyer, with a fondness for manly sports and a wealth of blonde moustache.

"cecilia," he said, "i love you. will you be mine?"

he had a habit of using unconventional phrases.

"no, frank," she said gently, and there was a world and several satellites of tenderness in her tremulous tones. "it cannot be."

"ah, do not decide so quickly," he pleaded. "i will not press you for an answer."

"i would press you for an answer, if i could," replied cecilia, "but i do not love you."

"why not?" he demanded desperately.

"because you are not what i should like you to be?"

"and what would you like me to be?" he demanded eagerly.

"if i told you, you would try to become it?"

"i would," he said, enthusiastically. "be it what it may, i would leave no stone unturned. i would work, strive, study, reform—anything, everything."

"i feared so," she said despondently. "that is why i will not tell you. don't you understand that your charm to me is your being just yourself—your simple, honest, manly self? i will not have my enjoyment of your individuality spoilt by your transmogrification into some unnatural product of the forcing house. no, frank, let us be true to ourselves, not to each other. i shall always remain your friend, looking up to you as to something stanch, sturdy, stalwart, coming to consult you (unprofessionally) in all my difficulties. i will tell you all my secrets, frank, so that you will know more of me than if i married you. dear friend, let it remain as i say. it is for the best."

so frank went away broken-hearted, and joined the mutual depreciation society. he did not care what became of him. how they came to let him in was this. he was the one man in the world outside who knew all about them, having been engaged as the society's legal adviser. it was he who made their publishers and managers sit in an erect position. in applying for a more intimate connection, he stated that he had met with a misfortune, and a little monthly abuse would enliven him. the society decided that, as he was already half one of themselves, and as he had never written a line in his life, and so could not diminish their takings, nothing but good could ensue from the infusion of new blood. in fact, they wanted it badly. their mutual recriminations had degenerated into mere platitudes. with a new man to insult and be insulted by, something of the old animation would be restored to their proceedings. the wisdom of the policy was early seen, for the first fruit of it was the english shakespeare, who for a whole year daily opened out new and exciting perspectives of sensation and amusement to a blasé society. andrew mackay had written an enthusiastic article in the so-called nineteenth century on "the cochin-china shakespeare," and set all tongues wagging about the new literary phenomenon with whose verses the boatmen of the irrawady rocked their children to sleep on the cradle of the river, and whose dramas were played in eight hours slices in the strolling-booths of shanghai. andrew had already arranged with anyman to bring out a translation from the original cochin-chinese, for there was no language he could not translate from, provided it were sufficiently unknown.

"cochin-chinese shakespeare, indeed!" said dick jones, at the next symposium. "why, judging from the copious extracts you gave from his greatest drama, baby bantam, it is the most tedious drivel. you might have written it yourself. where is the shakespearean quality of this, which is, you say, the whole of act thirteen?

"'hang-ho: out, fu-sia, does your mother know you are?

"'fu-sia: i have no mother, but i have a child.'"

"where is the shakespearean quality?" repeated andrew. "do you not feel the perfect pathos of those two lines, the infiniteness of incisive significance? to me they paint the whole scene in two strokes of matchless simplicity, strophe and anti-strophe. fu-sia the repentant outcast and hang-ho whose honest love she rejected, stand out as in a flash of lightning. nay, shakespeare himself never wrote an act of such tragic brevity, packed so full of the sense of anagke. why, so far from it being tedious drivel, a lady in whose opinion i have great confidence and to whom i sent my article, told me afterwards that she couldn't sleep till she had read it."

she burst into tears. "a great writer has always been the ideal which i would not tell you of. it is the one thing i have kept from you. but oh, frank, frank, he can never be mine. he will probably never know of my existence and the most i can ever hope for is his autograph. to-morrow i shall join the old maids' club, and then all will be over." a paroxysm of hopeless sobs punctuated her remarks.

it was a terrible position. frank groaned inwardly.

how was he to explain to this fair young thing that she loved nobody and could never hope to marry him? there was no doubt that with her intense nature and her dreamy blue eyes she would pine away and die. or worse, she would live to be an old maid.

he made an effort to laugh it off.

"tush!" he said, "all this is mere imagination. i don't believe you really love anybody!"

"frank!" she drew herself up, stony and rigid, the warm tears on her poor white face frozen to ice. "have you nothing better than this to say to me, after i have shown you my inmost soul?"

the wretched young lawyer's face returned from white to red. he could have faced a football team in open combat, but these complex psychical positions were beyond the healthy young philistine.

"for—or—give me," he stammered. "i—i am—i—that is to say, fladpick—oh how can i explain what i mean?"

cecilia sobbed on. every sob seemed to stick in frank's own throat. his impotence maddened him. was he to let the woman he loved fret herself to death for a shadow? and yet to undeceive her were scarcely less fatal. he could have cut out the tongue that first invented fladpick. verily, his sin was finding him out.

"why can you not explain what you mean?" wept cecilia.

"because i—oh, hang it all—because i am the cause of your grief."

"you?" she said. a strange, wonderful look came into her eyes. the thought shot from her eyes to his and dazzled them.

yes! why not? why should he not sacrifice himself to save this delicate creature from a premature tomb? why should he not become "the english shakespeare?" true, it was a heavy burden to sustain, but what will a man not dare or suffer for the woman he loves? moreover, was he not responsible for fladpick's being, and thus for all the evil done by his frankenstein? he had employed fladpick for his own amusement and the employers' liability act was heavy upon him. the path of abnegation, of duty, was clear. he saw it and he went for it then and there—went, like a brave young englishman, to meet his marriage.

"yes," he said, "i am glad you love mr. fladpick."

"why?" she murmured breathlessly.

"because i love you."

"but—i—do—not—love—you," she said slowly.

"you will, when i tell you it is i who have provoked your love."

"frank, is this true?"

"on my word of honor as an englishman."

"you are fladpick?"

"if i am not, he does not exist. there is no such person."

"oh, frank, this is no cruel jest?"

"cecilia, it is the sacred truth. fladpick is nobody, if he is not frank grey."

"but you never lived in tartary?"

"of course not. all that about fladpick is the veriest poetry. but i did not mind it, for nobody suspected me. i'll introduce you to andrew mackay himself, and you shall hear from his own lips how the newspapers have lied about fladpick."

"my noble, modest boy! so this was why you were so embarrassed before! but why not have told me that you were fladpick?"

"because i wanted you to love me for myself alone."

she fell into his arms.

"frank—frank—fladpick, my own, my english shakespeare," she sobbed ecstatically.

at the next meeting of the mutual depreciation society, a bombshell in a stamped envelope was handed to mr. andrew mackay. he tore open the envelope and the explosion followed—as follows:

"gentlemen,

"i hereby beg to tender the resignation of my membership in your valued society, as well as to anticipate your objections to my retaining the post of legal adviser i have the honor to hold. i am about to marry—the cynic will say i am laying the foundation of a mutual depreciation society of my own. but this is not the reason of my retirement. that is to be sought in my having accepted the position of the english shakespeare which you were good enough to open up for me. it would be a pity to let the pedestal stand empty. from the various excerpts you were kind enough to invent, especially from the copious extracts in mr. mackay's articles, i have been able to piece together a considerable body of poetic work, and by carefully collecting every existing fragment, and studying the most authoritative expositions of my aims and methods, i have constructed several dramas, much as professor owen re-constructed the mastodon from the bones that were extant. as you know i had never written a line in my life before, but by the copious aid of your excellent and genuinely helpful criticism i was enabled to get along without much difficulty. i find that to write blank verse you have only to invert the order of the words and keep on your guard against rhyme. you may be interested to know that the last line in the last tragedy is:

'coffined in english yew he sleeps in peace.'

when written, i got my dramas privately printed with a tartary trademark, after which i smudged the book and sold the copyright to makemillion & co. for ten thousand pounds. needless to say i shall never write another book. in taking leave of you i cannot help feeling that, if i owe you some gratitude for the lofty pinnacle to which you have raised me, you are also not unindebted to me for finally removing the shadow of apprehension that must have dogged you in your sober moments—i mean the fear of being found out. mr. andrew mackay, in particular, as the most deeply committed, i feel owes me what he can never hope to repay for my gallantry in filling the mantle designed by him, whose emptiness might one day have been exposed, to his immediate downfall.

"i am, gentlemen,

"your most sincere and humble depreciator,

"the english shakespeare."