It renewed his life, during these
holidays, in all particulars. It often entertained him with the
discovery of strange survivals; as when, by the orders of Murdoch,
Mrs. Jenkin must publicly taste of every dish before it was set
before her guests. And thus to throw himself into a fresh life and
a new school of manners was a grateful exercise of Fleeming's
mimetic instinct; and to the pleasures of the open air, of
hardships supported, of dexterities improved and displayed, and of
plain and elegant society, added a spice of drama.
II.
Fleeming was all his life a lover of the play and all that belonged
to it. Dramatic literature he knew fully. He was one of the not
very numerous people who can read a play: a knack, the fruit of
much knowledge and some imagination, comparable to that of reading
score. Few men better understood the artificial principles on
which a play is good or bad; few more unaffectedly enjoyed a piece
of any merit of construction. His own play was conceived with a
double design; for he had long been filled with his theory of the
true story of Griselda; used to gird at Father Chaucer for his
misconception; and was, perhaps first of all, moved by the desire
to do justice to the Marquis of Saluces, and perhaps only in the
second place, by the wish to treat a story (as he phrased it) like
a sum in arithmetic.
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