This is an age of "throwing off," and it is to be
presumed that future ages will throw the result away. One must be
brilliant, shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire
nowadays that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at
one's bank.
J.E.M. Agar--or "Jem" as his friends call him to his face and his
servants behind his back--Jem Sahib to wit--was no Pepys. His literary
style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This last
peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is
mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little
black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there
with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of
great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary
was a chronicle of solid facts--Jem being essentially solid and a man of
the very plainest facts.
Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that
Agar devoted too much thought to his work--in strong contrast, perhaps,
to the literary tendency of his day.
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