Seriously, one of the most curious and significant of recent literary
phenomena is the sudden return of the literary man to physical, and
so-called 'Philistine,' pleasures and modes of recreation. Perhaps
Stevenson set the fashion with his canoe and his donkey. But at the
moment that he was valiantly daring any one to tell him whether there
was anything better worth doing 'than fooling among boats,' Edward
Fitzgerald, all unconscious and careless of literary fashions, was
giving still more practical expression to the physical faith that was in
him, by going shares in a Lowestoft herring-lugger, and throwing his
heart as well as his money into the fortunes of its noble skipper
'Posh.' A literary man _par excellence_, Mr. Lang reproaches his sires
for his present way of life--

'Why lay your gipsy freedom down
And doom your child to pen and ink?'

and by steady and persistent golfing, and writing about angling and
cricket, comes as near to the noble savage as is possible to so
incorrigibly civilised a man. Mr. Henley--that Berserker of the
pen--sings the sword with a vigour that makes one curious to see him
using it, and we all know Mr. Kipling's views on the matter. Then Mr.
Bernard Shaw rides a bicycle!

Those men of letters whose inclinations or opportunities do not lead
them to these out-of-door, and more or less ferocious, pleasures seek to
forget themselves at the music-hall, the Aquarium, or the numerous
Earl's Court exhibitions. They become amateurs of foreign dancing,
connoisseurs of the trapeze, or they leave their great minds at home and
go up the Great Wheel. Earl's Court, particularly, is becoming quite a
modern Vauxhall--Tan-ta-ra-ra! Earl's Court! Earl's Court!--and Mr. Imre