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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
152
While
the
Muse
was
thus
musing,
Zeus
(disguised
as
Miss
Annie
S.
Swan’s
latest
work)
paid
his
usual
visit.
She
let
her
eyes
rest
on
him.
Hither
and
thither
she
divided
her
swift
mind,
and
addressed
him
in
winged
words.
“Zeus,
father
of
gods
and
men,
cloud-compeller,
what
wouldst
thou
of
me?
But
first
will
I
say
what
I
would
of
thee”;
and
she
besought
him
to
extend
to
the
writers
of
history
such
privileges
as
are
granted
to
novelists.
His
whole
manner
had
changed.
He
listened
to
her
with
the
massive
gravity
of
a
ruler
who
never
yet
has
allowed
private
influence
to
obscure
his
judgment.
He
was
silent
for
some
time
after
her
appeal.
Then,
in
a
voice
of
thunder,
which
made
quake
the
slopes
of
Parnassus,
he
gave
his
answer.
He
admitted
the
disabilities
under
which
historians
laboured.
But
the
novelists--were
they
not
equally
handicapped?
They
had
to
treat
of
persons
who
never
existed,
events
which
never
were.
Only
by
the
privilege
of
being
in
the
thick
of
those
events,
and
in
the
very
bowels
of
those
persons,
could
they
hope
to
hold
the
reader’s
attention.
If
similar
privileges
were
granted
to
the
historian,
the
demand
for
novels
would
cease
forthwith,
and
many
thousand
of
hard-working,
deserving
men
and
women
would
be
thrown
out
of
employment.
In
fact,
Clio
had
asked
him
an
impossible
favour.
But
he
might--he
said
he
conceivably
might--be
induced
to
let
her
have
her
way
just
once.
In
that
event,
all
she
would
have
to
do
was
to
keep
her
eye
on
the
world’s
surface,
and
then,
so
soon
as
she
had
reason
to
think
that
somewhere
was
impending
something
of
great
import,
to
choose
an
historian.
On
him,
straightway,
Zeus
would
confer
invisibility,
inevitability,
and
psychic
penetration,
with
a
flawless
memory
thrown
in.
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