Pagina 289 van 490

For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was

almost immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and

found, indeed, a subtle pleasure in the thought that he might

really become to the London of his own day what to imperial

Neronian Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been, yet in

his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere

arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the wearing of a jewel,

or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane. He sought

to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned

philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the

spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.