R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

94 George Saintsburyhim: and I am entitled to speak on the matter because,as I have mentioned already, he and I both began withthe same subject—Old French—and I was before verylong luckier in getting hold of creditable and profitableemployment on this subject than he was. And he actuallyintroduced me, if not directly to these, to others whichwere likely to lead to them. But it was quite impossiblefor him to do anything ungenerous, even as it was impossiblefor him to do anything unliterary. And this lastword may give us a keynote to a brief conclusion orsumming up of the whole matter of Andrew Lang bothin the 'seventies and as long as I knew him. I have saidand now repeat that with him literary did not meanpedantic. I don't think I ever knew any one whom itwould be more absurd to call a pedant: it was not muchmore adequately synonymed by ' bookish', for that wordgenerally implies limitation to books. The Muses have,with the vulgar, a bad reputation for neglecting thegarments, the manners, the age, and other trimmings (asone may call them) of their lovers; they did not do sowith Lang. And the quality of his literariness itself was,if not as unique as his delivery of it, very unusual. It waspervasive but not obtrusive; varied but not superficial;facile to a wonderful degree, but never trivial or trumpery.It may be that in one way it did not concentrate itselfenough—did not leave two or three big books instead ofthirty or forty little ones; and in another concentrateditself too much by writing not very small books onsubjects which might have been adequately treated innot very long essays. So also in his behaviour there maysometimes have been a little too much abstraction, andtoo much indifference to the existence of those agreeablefolk who always put the worst construction on everything.I once heard him abused for affectation becausehe had lunched off two oysters and a pancake. What use