Few people
knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without them; he
welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour
in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties
than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds. He lived in a
queer and comfortable garret in the roofs of Lambeth. He was
surrounded by a chaos of things that were in odd contrast to the
slums around him; old fantastic books, swords, armour--the whole
dust-hole of romanticism. But his face, amid all these quixotic
relics, appeared curiously keen and modern--a powerful, legal
face. And no one but I knew who he was.
Long ago as it is, everyone remembers the terrible and grotesque
scene that occurred in--, when one of the most acute and forcible
of the English judges suddenly went mad on the bench. I had my own
view of that occurrence; but about the facts themselves there is
no question at all. For some months, indeed for some years, people
had detected something curious in the judge's conduct. He seemed
to have lost interest in the law, in which he had been beyond
expression brilliant and terrible as a K.C., and to be occupied in
giving personal and moral advice to the people concerned. He
talked more like a priest or a doctor, and a very outspoken one at
that.
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