Chapter 4 - Page 2

am
convinced that his genius was a kind of animal nobility. Henley,
half inarticulate--'I am very costive,' he would say--beset with
personal quarrels, built up an image of power and magnanimity till
it became, at moments, when seen as it were by lightning, his true
self. Half his opinions were the contrivance of a sub-consciousness
that sought always to bring life to the dramatic crisis, and
expression to that point of artifice where the true self could
find its tongue. Without opponents there had been no drama,
and in his youth Ruskinism and Pre-Raphaelitism, for he was
of my father's generation, were the only possible opponents. How
could one resent his prejudice when, that he himself might play a
worthy part, he must find beyond the common rout, whom he derided
and flouted daily, opponents he could imagine moulded like
himself? Once he said to me in the height of his imperial
propaganda, 'Tell those young men in Ireland that this great thing
must go on. They say Ireland is not fit for self-government but
that is nonsense. It is as fit as any other European country but
we cannot grant it.' And then he spoke of his desire to found and
edit a Dublin newspaper. It would have expounded the Gaelic
propaganda then beginning, though Dr. Hyde had as yet no league,
our old stories, our modern literature--everything that did not
demand any shred or patch of government. He dreamed of a tyranny
but it was that of Cosimo de Medici.