saying.

Nevertheless, though Butler lives with much discomfort and some danger
in Mr Jones's tabernacle, he does continue to live. What his head loses
by the inquisition of a biography his heart gains, though we wonder
whether Butler himself would have smiled upon the exchange. Butler loses
almost the last vestige of a title to be considered a creative artist
when the incredible fact is revealed that the letters of Theobald and
Christina in _The Way of all Flesh_ are merely reproduced from those
which his father and mother sent him. Nor was Butler, even as a copyist,
always adequate to his originals. The brilliantly witty letters of Miss
Savage, by which the first volume is made precious, seem to us to
indicate a real woman upon whom something more substantial might have
been modelled than the delightful but evanescent picture of Alethea
Pontifex. Here, at least, is a picture of Miss Savage and Butler
together which, to our sense, gives some common element in both which
escaped the expression of the author of _The Way of all Flesh_:--

'I like the cherry-eating scene, too [Miss Savage wrote after
reading the MS. of _Alps and Sanctuaries_], because it reminded me
of your eating cherries when I first knew you. One day when I was
going to the gallery, a very hot day I remember, I met you on the
shady side of Berners Street, eating cherries out of a basket. Like
your Italian friends, you were perfectly silent with content, and
you handed the basket to me as I was passing, without saying a word.
I pulled out a handful and went on my way rejoicing, without saying
a word either. I had not before perceived you to be different from
any one else. I was like Peter Bell and the primrose with the yellow
brim. As I went away to France a day or two after that and did not
see you again for months, the recollection of you as you were eating