Rodin in Rime

clean, scientific sequences of rib-punchers, claret-tappers, etc.,etc.,recentlyreceived one of these missiles in the eye, my attention was called to the disturber: I will now do my part as a law-abiding citizen and take my boot to the offender, as a warning to him and all of his kidney. I shall not mention his name: that he would enjoy: that is perhaps what he hoped. I will merely state that he is one of those unwashen and oleaginous individuals who are a kind of Mérodack-Jauneau without the Mérodack, ie., without the gleam of intention in their work which to the lay mind redeems even the most grotesque imbecility of technique, and the most fatu@s ignorance of all subjects connected or unconnected with art. By philosophy he understands “Science and Health”: by poetry Lake Harris or Eric Mackay: he expects a painting to tell a pretty story or to upset a metaphysical position. His conversation is like that of Planchette: or if William Horton were vocal But Heaven forbid! What he said, though parrot-talk, caught up in some fifth-rate sculptor’s studio, no doubt, had so much truth in it, carefully concealed by the lying misinterpre- tation he had put on it, that, as I said, the pellet hit me. This was what it came to. Rodin’s works, it is said, mean nothing. He makes a study: people see it in his studio: A. goes up and says to the Master: “Ah, how beautiful, etc., ad nauseam—“I suppose it is ‘Harth and the Spring.’” B. follows, and suggests “ Hercules and Cacus’; C. thinks “The Birth of a Flower”; D. calls it ‘““Despair”; E. varies 4