Barnes was for us both a sign of literary freemasonry
which at once made us recognise each other as fellow-craftsmen.
Bewildered readers will ask how my discovery of Barnes affected my
position at _The Spectator_. It happened in this way. A couple of
weeks after I had been established at _The Spectator_ as a
"_verus socius_" Barnes died, at a very great age. It was one of
those cases in which death suddenly makes a man visible to the
generation into which he has survived. Barnes had outlived not only his
contemporaries but his renown, and most of the journalists detailed to
write his obituary notice had evidently found it a hard task to say why
he should be held in remembrance.
But by a pure accident here was I, in the high tide of my enthusiasm for
my new poet. Needless to say I was only too glad to have a chance to let
myself go on Barnes, and so was entrusted with the Barnes Obituary
article for _The Spectator_.
The result was that the next week my chiefs showed me a letter one of
them had received from Canon Ainger, asking for the name of the
"evidently new hand" who had written on Barnes, and making some very
complimentary remarks on his work. It was eminently characteristic of
them that instead of being a little annoyed at being told that an
article had appeared in _The Spectator_ with an unexpected literary
charm, they were as genuinely delighted as I was.
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