INTRODUCTION.

Long before Pater was generally known by his own works as a master of style and taste, he was presented to the world in a book by some one else, far more widely circulated than anything he had himself then written. This book was The New Republic." Mr. Mallock had before that time become noteworthy for a considerable power of analysis (in "The Newdigate Prizeman "): he now disclosed remarkable constructive power which took the form of imitation. His book presented under slight disguise well-known figures in contemporary letters. He was not very strong on the scientific side, but the figures which stood for Jowett, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold were extraordinarily good. Mr. Ruskin, it was said, declared that Mr. Mallock was the only man who understood him.

Walter Pater can hardly have had any such idea. "That, too," says Lawrence, " is another critic close by him, the pale creature, with a large moustache looking out of the window at the sunset. He is Mr. Rose, the Pre-Raphaelite. He always speaks in an undertone, and his two topics are self-indulgence and art."

Mr. Pater was at the time "The New Republic was published, about thirty-five years of age; he

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had been for a number of years a fellow of Brasenose College; he had just begun to be known as a critic by his Studies in the History of the Renaissance which had appeared the year before. Whether he were pale is not recorded, but he probably did have a large moustache, at least he had one later in life, spoken of by a youthful admirer as having bristles. He might well have been called a Pre-Raphaelite, especially by those with whom that word covered a multitude of sinners. His two topics of conversation may perhaps have been loosely defined as in our quotation; some such impression might have followed not unnaturally from a knowledge of his published work alone. But the further presentation of Pater was only half true. Mr. Rose was needlessly disagreeable: he was a man of a coarsely prurient turn of mind. There were, perhaps, Pre-Raphaelites of his stamp, but as far as Pater was concerned - and the fact was pointed out at the time the slur was most unjust. Nowhere in his published work is there hint that he was a man of low feeling or act. On the other hand he seems to have always had a singularly keen love for the charm of pure sanity and well-being.

This matter is in itself of little importance now. Mr. Mallock burlesqued Mr. Pater, well or ill, and the world had its laugh and forgot it. It does not appear that Pater took the matter very seriously. I have read that he thought the portrait a little un