At large by A.C. Benson — Read

I had two literary men staying with me a week ago, both of them accomplished writers, and interested in their art, not professionally and technically only, but ardently and enthusiastically. I here label them respectively Musgrave and Herries. Musgrave is a veteran writer, a man of fifty, who makes a considerable income by writing, and has succeeded in many departments -- biography, criticism, poetry, essay-writing; he lacks, however, the creative and imaginative gift; his observation is acute, and his humour considerable; but he cannot infer and deduce; he cannot carry a situation further than he can see it.

Herries on the other hand is a much younger man, with an interest in human beings that is emotional rather than spectacular; while Musgrave is interested mainly in the present, Herries lives in the past or the future. Musgrave sees what people do and how they behave, while Herries is for ever thinking how they must have behaved to produce their present conditions, or how they would be likely to act under different conditions. Musgrave's one object is to discover what he calls the truth; Herries thrives and battens upon illusions. Musgrave is fond of the details of life, loves food and drink, conviviality and social engagements, new people and unfamiliar places -- Herries is quite indifferent to the garniture of life, lives in great personal discomfort, dislikes mixed assemblies and chatter, and has a fastidious dislike of the present, whatever it is, from a sense that possibilities are so much richer than performances.