He had the painter's view of Style, and even in,that
he was set what eccentric. He believed above all in smoothness, or what
would call "surface." He used to expound the fantastic theory I
the true artist could be distinguished from the secondary artist
the quality of his surface, and he would contend that Manet Ingres were the greatest of painters, since they created a surface smooth as spread butter. If one suggested that Rembrandt Velasquez were, in spite of their rough surfaces, artists of at le
equal-merit, he would either become petulant and hurry away or e
he would gape upwards with his mouth open in surprise, and in eyes an expression of wounded astonishment, as if one had jabbed child with a penknife in the thigh. One never quite knew vvhe
his startled expression indicated horror at the stupidity of manic' or whether in fact the point about Rembrandt's surfaces had no occurred to him before. I remember how he once reproved (" But, my dear friend, a man does not write like that if he serious ") regarding the rough texture of my style. He pointed that I had used the word " which " four times on one page. writer," he said, "ought ever to use either ' which ' or ' that.' " in truth his pages are amazingly clear of relative pronouns. I vi'und sometimes how George Moore would have taken this relentless IA The Boer War drove him out of England and into, the reluctant of the Gaelic League. The First German War inspired him 01 passionately pro-British feelings and he would patter down E.b Street after supper to exult upon our rare victories with his fnend I wonder whether in this war he would have remained in Lund° Would he have gone down to Sussex and lived again alll° the sights and scenes of Esther Waters? Or would he on again have packed his Aubusson carpets, his Manets and Berthe Morisot and • sought again, amid the lights of Dub to rekindle the memories of Upper Ely Place, of A. E, of Edwa Martyn and of Yeats?
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