By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operations of human nature and by a careful application of the fine properties of well-selected men, and a judicious¹ use of every available instrument of log-rolling, the Mutual² Depreciation³ Society gradually built up a constitution strong enough to defy every tendency to disintegration⁴. Hundreds of subtle malcontents floated round, ready to attack wherever there was a weak point, but foiled by ignorance of the Society's existence, and the members escaped many a fatal shaft⁵ by keeping themselves entirely⁶ to themselves. The idea of the Mutual Depreciation Society was that every member should say what he thought of the others. The founders⁷, who all took equal shares in it, were  
Tom Brown,
Dick Jones,
Harry⁸ Robinson.
Their object in founding the Mutual Depreciation Society was of course to achieve literary success, but they soon perceived that their phalanx was too small for this, and as they had no power to add to their number except by inviting⁹ strangers from without, they took steps to induce three other gentlemen to solicit¹⁰ the privileges of membership. The second batch¹¹ comprised,
 
Taffy Owen,
Andrew Mackay,
Patrick Boyle.
 
These six gentlemen being all blessed with youth, health and incompetence¹², resolved to capture the town. Their tactics were very simple, though their first operations were hampered¹³ by their ignorance of one another's. Thus, it was some time before it was discovered that Andrew Mackay, who had been deployed¹⁴ to seize the Saturday Slasher, had no real acquaintance with the editor's fencing-master, while Dick Jones, who had undertaken to bombard the Acadæum, had started under the impression that the eminent¹⁵ critic to whom he had dedicated¹⁶ his poems (by permission) was still connected with the staff. But these difficulties were eliminated as soon as the Society got into working order. Everything comes to him who will not wait, and almost before they had time to wink¹⁷ our six gentlemen had secured the makings of an Influence. Each had loyally done his best for himself and the rest, and the first spoils of the campaign, as announced amid applause by the Secretary at the monthly dinner, were
 
Two Morning Papers,
Two Evening Papers,
Two Weekly Papers.
They were not the most influential¹⁸, nor even the best circulated, still it was not a bad beginning, though of course only a nucleus¹⁹. By putting out tentacles²⁰ in every direction, by undertaking²¹ to write even on subjects with which they were acquainted, they gradually secured a more or less tenacious²² connection with the majority of the better journals and magazines. On taking stock they found that the account stood thus:
 
Three Morning Papers,
Four Evening Papers,
Eleven Weekly Papers,
Thirteen London Letters,
Seven Dramatic Columns,
Six Monthly Magazines,
Thirteen Influences on Advertisements,
Nine Friendships with Eminent Editors,
Seventeen ditto with Eminent Sub-editors,
Six ditto with Lady Journalists,
Fifty-three Loans (at two-and-six each) to Pressmen,
One hundred and nine Mentions of Editor's Womenkind at Fashionable Receptions.
It showed what could be achieved by six men, working together shoulder to shoulder for the highest aims in a spirit of mutual good-will and brotherhood²³. They were undoubtedly²⁴ greatly helped by having all been to Oxford²⁵ or Cambridge, but still much was the legitimate²⁶ result of their own manœuvres.
 
By the time the secret campaign had reached this stage, many well-meaning, unsuspecting men, not included in the above inventory²⁷, had been pressed into the service of the Society, with the members of which they were connected by the thousand and one ties which spring up naturally in the intercourse²⁸ of the world, so that there was hardly any journal in the three kingdoms on which the Society could not, by some hook or the other, fasten a paragraph, if we except such publications as the Newgate Calendar and Lloyds' Shipping²⁹ List, which record history rather than make it.
 
Indeed, the success of the Society in this department was such as to suggest the advisability of having themselves formally incorporated under the Companies' Acts for the manufacture and distribution of paragraphs, for which they had unequalled facilities, and had obtained valuable concessions³⁰, and it was only the publicity³¹ required by law which debarred them from enlarging their home trade to a profitable industry for the benefit of non-members. For, by the peculiar³² nature of the machinery³³, it could only be worked if people were unaware³⁴ of its  existence. They resolved, however, that when they had made their pile, they would start the newspaper of the future, which any philosopher with an eye to the trend of things can see will be a journal written by advertisers for gentlemen, and will contain nothing calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of the young person except cosmetics³⁵.
 
Contemporaneously with the execution of one side of the Plan of Campaign, the Society was working the supplementary³⁶ side. Day and night, week-days and Sundays, in season and out, these six gentlemen praised themselves and one another, or got themselves and one another praised by non-members. There are many ways in which you can praise an author, from blame downwards³⁷. There is the puff³⁸ categorical and the puff allusive³⁹, the lie direct and the eulogy⁴⁰ insinuative, the downright abuse and the subtle innuendo⁴¹, the exaltation of your man or the depression of his rival. The attacking method of log-rolling must not be confounded with depreciation. In their outside campaign, the members used every variety of puff, but depreciation was strictly⁴² reserved for their private gatherings⁴³. For this was the wisdom of the Club, and herein lay its immense superiority over every other log-rolling club, that whereas in those childish cliques⁴⁴ every man is expected to admire every other, or to say so, in the Mutual Depreciation Society the obligation was all the other way. Every man was bound by the rules to sneer⁴⁵ at the work of his fellow-members and, if he should happen to admire any of it, at least to have the grace to keep his feelings to himself. In practice, however, the latter contingency⁴⁶ never arose, and each was able honestly to express all he thought, for it is impossible for men to work together for a common object without discovering that they do not deserve to get it. Needless to point out how this sagacious provision strengthened them in their campaign, for not having to keep up the tension of mutual  admiration⁴⁷, and being able to relax and breathe (and express themselves) freely at their monthly symposia⁴⁸, as well as to slang one another in the street, they were able to write one another up with a clear conscience. It is well to found on human nature. Every other basis proves shifting sand. The success of the Mutual Depreciation Society justified⁴⁹ their belief in human nature.
 
Not only did they depreciate⁵⁰ one another, but they made reparation to the non-members they were always trying to write down during business hours, by eulogizing them in the most generous manner in those blessed hours of leisure when knife answers fork and soul speaks to soul. At such times even popular authors were allowed to have a little merit.
 
It was at one of these periods of soul-expansion, when the most petty-souled feels inclined to loosen the last two buttons of his waistcoat, that the idea of the English Shakespeare was first mooted⁵¹. But we are anticipating, which is imprudent, as anticipations⁵² are seldom realized.
 
One of the worst features of prosperity is that it is cloying⁵³, and when the first gloss⁵⁴ of novelty and adventure had worn off, the free lances of the Mutual Depreciation Society began to bore one another. You can get tired even of hearing your own dispraises; and the members were compelled to spice their mutual adverse⁵⁵ criticism in the highest manner, so as to compensate⁵⁶ for its staleness. The jaded⁵⁷ appetite must needs be pampered⁵⁸ if it is to experience anything of that relish⁵⁹ which a natural healthy hunger for adverse criticism can command so easily.
 
This was the sort of thing that went on at the dinners:
 
"I say, Tom," said Andrew Mackay, "what in Heaven's name made you publish your waste-paper basket under the name of 'Stray Thoughts?' For utter and incomprehensible idiocy⁶⁰ they are only surpassed by Dick's last volume of poems. I shouldn't have thought such things [pg 204] could come even out of a lunatic asylum⁶¹, certainly not without a keeper. Really you fellows ought to consider me a little——"
 
"We do. We consider you as little as they make them," they interrupted simultaneously⁶².
 
"It isn't fair to throw all the work on me," he went on. "How can I go on saying that Tom Brown is the supreme⁶³ thinker of the time, the deepest intellect since Hegel, with a gift of style that rivals Berkeley's, if you go on turning out twaddle that a copy-book would boggle at? How can I keep repeating that for sure and consummate⁶⁴ art, for unfailing certainty of insight, for unerring visualization⁶⁵, for objective subjectivity⁶⁶ and for subjective⁶⁷ objectivity, for Swinburnian sweep of music and Shakespearean depth of suggestiveness, Dick Jones can give forty in a hundred (spot stroke barred) to all other contemporary poets, if you continue to spue out rhymes as false as your teeth, rhythms as musical as your voice when you read them, and words that would drive a drawing-room composer mad with envy to set them? I maintain, it is not sticking to the bargain to expose me to the danger of being found out. You ought at least to have the decency⁶⁸ to wrap up your fatuousness⁶⁹ in longer words or more abstruse⁷⁰ themes. You're both so beastly intelligible⁷¹ that a child can understand you're asses⁷²."
 
"Tut, tut, Andrew," said Taffy Owen, "it's all very well of you to talk who've only got to do the criticism. And I think it's deuced ungrateful of you after we've written you up into the position of leading English critic to want us to give you straw for your bricks! Do we ever complain when you call us cataclysmic, creative, esemplastic, or even epicene? We know it's rot, but we put up with it. When you said that Robinson's last novel had all the glow and genius of Dickens without his humor, all the ripe wisdom of Thackeray without his social knowingness, all the imaginativeness of Shakespeare without his definiteness of characterization, we all saw at once that you were incautiously allowing the donkey's ears to protrude⁷³ too obviously from beneath the lion's skin. But did anyone grumble⁷⁴? Did Robinson, though the edition was sold out the day after? Did I, though you had just called me a modern Buddhist⁷⁵ with the soul of an ancient Greek and the radiant fragrance⁷⁶ of a Cingalese tea-planter? I know these phrases take the public and I try to be patient."
 
"Owen is right," Harry Robinson put in emphatically. "When you said I was a cross between a Scandinavian skald and a Dutch painter, I bore my cross in silence."
 
"Yes, but what else can a fellow say, when you give the public such heterogeneous⁷⁷ and formless balderdash that there is nothing for it but to pretend it's a new style, an epoch-making work, the foundation of a new era in literary art? Really I think you others have out and away the best of it. It's much easier to write bad books than to eulogize their merits in an adequately plausible⁷⁸ manner. I think it's playing it too low upon a chap, the way you fellows are going on. It's taking a mean advantage of my position."
 
"And who put you into that position, I should like to know?" yelled Dick Jones, becoming poetically⁷⁹ excited. "Didn't we lift you up into it on the point of our pens?"
 
"Fortunately they were not very pointed," ejaculated the great critic, wriggling⁸¹ uncomfortably at the suggestion. "I don't deny that, of course. All I say is, you're giving me away now."
 
"You give yourself away," shrieked⁸² Owen vehemently⁸³, "with a pound of that Cingalese tea. How is it Boyle managed to crack up our plays without being driven to any of this new-fangled nonsense?"
 
"Plays!" said Patrick, looking up moodily⁸⁴. "Anything  is good enough for plays. You see I can always fall back on the acting^{85............}