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from starvation merely by the kindness of his friends—is
simply beastly. He just happens to be a great artist.’
Philip pondered over the man who was willing to sacri-
fice everything, comfort, home, money, love, honour, duty,
for the sake of getting on to canvas with paint the emotion
which the world gave him. it was magnificent, and yet his
courage failed him.
Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that he
had not seen him for a week, and so, when Clutton left him,
he wandered along to the cafe in which he was certain to
find the writer. During the first few months of his stay in
Paris Philip had accepted as gospel all that Cronshaw said,
but Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient
with the theories which resulted in no action. Cronshaw’s
slim bundle of poetry did not seem a substantial result for a
life which was sordid. Philip could not wrench out of his na-
ture the instincts of the middle-class from which he came;
and the penury, the hack work which Cronshaw did to keep
body and soul together, the monotony of existence between
the slovenly attic and the cafe table, jarred with his respect-
ability. Cronshaw was astute enough to know that the young
man disapproved of him, and he attacked his philistinism
with an irony which was sometimes playful but often very
keen.
‘You’re a tradesman,’ he told Philip, ‘you want to invest
life in consols so that it shall bring you in a safe three per
cent. I’m a spendthrift, I run through my capital. I shall
spend my last penny with my last heartbeat.’
The metaphor irritated Philip, because it assumed for the

Of Human Bondage