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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
222
Reluctantly
he
uncorked
the
crusted
bottle,
and
filled
a
glass.
Was
he
come
to
this?
He
sighed
and
sipped,
quaffed
and
sighed.
The
spell
of
the
old
stored
sunshine
seemed
not
to
work,
this
time.
He
could
not
cease
from
plucking
at
the
net
of
ignominies
in
which
his
soul
lay
enmeshed.
Would
that
he
had
died
yesterday,
escaping
how
much!
Not
for
an
instant
did
he
flinch
from
the
mere
fact
of
dying
to-day.
Since
he
was
not
immortal,
as
he
had
supposed,
it
were
as
well
he
should
die
now
as
fifty
years
hence.
Better,
indeed.
To
die
“untimely,”
as
men
called
it,
was
the
timeliest
of
all
deaths
for
one
who
had
carved
his
youth
to
greatness.
What
perfection
could
he,
Dorset,
achieve
beyond
what
was
already
his?
Future
years
could
but
stale,
if
not
actually
mar,
that
perfection.
Yes,
it
was
lucky
to
perish
leaving
much
to
the
imagination
of
posterity.
Dear
posterity
was
of
a
sentimental,
not
a
realistic,
habit.
She
always
imagined
the
dead
young
hero
prancing
gloriously
up
to
the
Psalmist’s
limit
a
young
hero
still;
and
it
was
the
sense
of
her
vast
loss
that
kept
his
memory
green.
Byron!--he
would
be
all
forgotten
to-day
if
he
had
lived
to
be
a
florid
old
gentleman
with
iron-grey
whiskers,
writing
very
long,
very
able
letters
to
“The
Times”
about
the
Repeal
of
the
Corn
Laws.
Yes,
Byron
would
have
been
that.
It
was
indicated
in
him.
He
would
have
been
an
old
gentleman
exacerbated
by
Queen
Victoria’s
invincible
prejudice
against
him,
her
brusque
refusal
to
“entertain”
Lord
John
Russell’s
timid
nomination
of
him
for
a
post
in
the
Government...
Shelley
would
have
been
a
poet
to
the
last.
But
how
dull,
how
very
dull,
would
have
been
the
poetry
of
his
middle
age!--a
great
unreadable
mass
interposed
between
him
and
us...
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