Here, it seemed to me, was the true voice of reason and challenging passion combined--a voice which would not say "peace when there was no peace," and which I missed altogether in Jowett and the Oxford liberals generally. Jowett always regarded me as a mere dilettante and an idler, who was bound to disgrace Balliol by coming to grief in the schools, and he was, I think, mortified rather than pleased when I won, in my second year, the Newdigate prize for poetry.
But mine was certainly no mere idler's mood; and whatever Jowett may have thought of me when he heard of my giving parties to ladies, of my driving them out to picnics, or of my concocting prize poems, my mental life at Oxford was far from being a life of idleness. On the contrary, from my second year of residence onward I was constantly engaged in tentative sketches of a book in which I hoped some day to give a comprehensive picture of the moral and intellectual condition to which my Oxford experiences had by that time raised or reduced me. That book was _The New Republic_, with regard to which in this place a few words may be apposite.
The form of nearly every book is more or less fashioned on some model or models. My own models in the case of _The New Republic_ were _The Republic_ of Plato, the _Satyricon_ of Petronius Arbiter, and the so-called novels of Peacock. All these books introduce us to circles of friends who discuss questions of philosophy, religion, art, or the problems of social life, each character representing some prevalent view, and their arguments being so arranged as to have, when taken together, some general and coherent meaning. Many of Peacock's characters are taken direct from life, and in this respect I made myself a disciple of Peacock. My characters in _The New Republic_ were all portraits, though each was meant to be typical; but the originals of some--such as Lady Ambrose, the conventional woman of the world--were of no public celebrity, and to mention them here would be meaningless. The principal speakers, however, were drawn without any disguise from persons so eminent and influential that a definite fidelity of portraiture was in their case essential to my plan. Mr. Storks and Mr. Stockton, the prosaic and the sentimental materialists, were meant for Professors Huxley and Tyndall. Mr. Luke was Matthew Arnold. Mr. Rose was Pater. Mr. Saunders, so far as his atheism was concerned, was suggested by Professor Clifford. Mrs. Sinclair was the beautiful "Violet Fane"; and finally--more important than any others--Doctor Jenkinson was Jowett, and Mr. Herbert was Ruskin. All these people I set talking in polite antagonism to one another, their one underlying subject being the rational aim of life, and the manner in which a definite supernatural faith was essential, extraneous, or positively prejudicial to this.