I think I
may say, however, that I had worn it out before I lost it. Indeed,
it was perhaps as well that it was some years before it was
replaced, for my instinct was always to read it again instead of
breaking fresh ground.
I remember the late James Payn telling the anecdote that he and two
literary friends agreed to write down what scene in fiction they
thought the most dramatic, and that on examining the papers it was
found that all three had chosen the same. It was the moment when
the unknown knight, at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, riding past the pavilions
of the lesser men, strikes with the sharp end of his lance, in a
challenge to mortal combat, the shield of the formidable Templar.
It was, indeed, a splendid moment! What matter that no Templar was
allowed by the rules of his Order to take part in so secular and
frivolous an affair as a tournament? It is the privilege of great
masters to make things so, and it is a churlish thing to gainsay
it. Was it not Wendell Holmes who described the prosaic man, who
enters a drawing-room with a couple of facts, like ill-conditioned
bull-dogs at his heels, ready to let them loose on any play of
fancy? The great writer can never go wrong. If Shakespeare gives
a sea-coast to Bohemia, or if Victor Hugo calls an English
prize-fighter Mr. Jim-John-Jack--well, it was so, and that's an end
of it. "There is no second line of rails at that point," said an
editor to a minor author. "I make a second line," said the author;
and he was within his rights, if he can carry his readers'
conviction with him.
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