The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (7.1895)

From “The Yellow Dwarf” 135
taken this excellent maxim to heart is Mr. John Oliver Hobbes.
His was the next book I directed an attack upon, after I had
beaten my retreat from the impenetrable Manxman. But I
found myself confronted with Pretentiousness at the very draw-
bridge. There fluttered a flag—I daresay, on my unsupported
testimony, you could scarce believe it ; but I can refer you to the
book itself, or (it has been advertised like a patent medicine) to its
publishers’ advertisements, for corroboration—there fluttered a
flag bearing this device—■
THE GODS
SOME MORTALS
AND
LORD WICKENHAM
BY
JOHN OLIVER
HOBBES
This, in Christian England ! And above it and below it were
wonderful drawings, drawings of gods and goddesses and mortals ^
and, at one side of it, another wonderful drawing, a drawing of an
Owl.
When I recovered my breath I turned to Chapter I., An
Aristocratic Household, and before I had reached the bottom of
that short first page, here is the sort of sentence I had to face and
vanquish: “The young girl who came forward seemed to have
been whipped up into a fragile existence from the very cream of
tenderness, love, and folly.” It is doubtless very pretty, but do
you know what it means ? Anyhow, it has the great merit of
being Pretentious. I can see the Pressman-Critic, as his eye
lights upon it. I can see him “sit up.” I can hear him gasp,
and