In those long lists which the divine Rabelais delighted to string together, wherewith also he has inspired many diverse men, Charles Kingsley, Besant, and that remarkable historian York Powell to boot, there is one omitted which I sometimes think Rabelais meant to write and never did; and that is, the list of books which might well be produced for the advancement and entertainment of mankind.

He did indeed produce a most glorious library of books, collected, if you remember, for the education of the giant, every title in which is a delight; and much better fun, I think, when you do not know the allusions than when you do. Much better, that is, when you think it was entirely made up out of Rabelais' head than when you get to know that most of it was a parody on existing tomes. But he never gave us a list of books which might exist and do not, and such a list is always running in my head. From time to time I have jotted down a few names for such books, and the regiment of them is now formidable. My only hesitation in publishing it (or rather a fragment of it) is lest some reader should steal my thunder and himself begin writing one of these books. But I am charitable, and I also have sufficient knowledge of time and space and human conditions to be certain that I cannot in what is left of my life write them all myself, so I may as well throw out the suggestions.

(1.) British Honours. Being a guide to Literary Gents and Lion Hunters, showing what Official Honours now exist in all States subject to the British Crown, with their Distinctions, Emoluments (if any), Order of Precedence and Method of Address in writing and in speech. As also an Appendix showing the consequences mediate and immediate following on the possession of each of such Honours by any man or woman, and the consequent privileges of rank or custom attaching to their relatives, children and dependents. The whole illustrated by a copious Index with a coloured Frontispiece showing an Earl in his Robes, and sundry diagrams.

Now, this would be a most useful book, and I do not think I will go on with my list because it is in itself a subject not for one poor essay but for a very pamphlet of examination and discussion.

There never was since the beginning of the world a system of honours more complicated than ours! It is a veritable Chinese puzzle and, like all complexities, it is running riot in its last stage. It is now so thick that you cannot push your way through it. It is an old and true saying that England is an aristocratic State, or, at any rate, was an aristocratic State, i.e., that the historical nature of modern England from the early seventeenth century is that of a polity in which the citizens desire to be governed by a small class and in which such a class exists, or rather has existed, suitable to the demand calling it forth; and therein is seen the origin at least of the game of "Honours." That is why you have, standing out boldly in the arrangement of our society, the real objects (not phantasms) called a Knight, a Baronet, a Baron, an Earl, a Viscount, a Duke, and their various ladies; and that is why each grade has its own little bunch of appurtenances.

Note how exactly these appurtenances distinguish one step from the next. Your Knighthood and your Baronetcy are not to be confused; for the first is confined to the passage of this poor mortal life, but the second goes on from father to son, and is, as nearly as anything can be in this sad world, imperishable so long as a male heir is to be discovered. Your Baron is not like your Earl, for your Baron's daughters are only Honourables, whereas your Earl's daughters are Ladies. Your Duke is distinguishable by the title common to his successive consorts, not Ladies, but Duchesses. There is not a rung on this heavenward ladder which is not marked with its own stamp, and that is as it should be.

But to this simple hierarchy (resembling, I always think, the Orders of Angels, and like them nine in number—if you include Marquises, Princes and Kings) the appetite of the race has added a vast collection—much the most of it modern. You have the ecclesiastical people, each with his little tag, one being Rev., the other Very Rev., the other Right Rev. You have the distinction between the Vicar and the Rector, a branch of knowledge confined to specialists. You have the Curate, the Rural Dean; on which last the poem runs:

The poet has here taken poetic licence, for it is exceedingly improbable that the son of a Rural Dean would be called Lord Archibald.

But you never can tell! Titles jump sometimes over immense gulfs and land like some wild sea-bird upon the head of a most unexpected person, thereby conferring upon him a mysterious glamour from fairy worlds.

The poet of Lord Archibald has also, apart from poetic licence, been so bold as to point a moral. He shows how an ingrained habit will overcome a good resolution, and therein confirms the very wise remarks of Aquinas, to whose compendium I refer you, for this digression is getting too long.

Still, as I was saying, side by side with the regular Nine Orders, there are the extras; for instance, military and ecclesiastical titles; and talking of military and ecclesiastical titles, these have bred a large swarm of bastard titles, about which I think something ought to be done. For it adds enormously to the worry of the Honours system to have, on top of the multitude of official honours, such unofficial stuff as "General This" and "The Rev. That," the first of whom turns out to be no soldier at all but a sort of Nonconformist parson, and the second no one in any orders, but merely a man who has put on a collar that fastens at the back and who talks at large upon divine affairs.

You may note, by the way, in connection with Bastard Honours, that one honour and one alone has really got degraded, burst its banks, and flooded the country, and that is the term "Esquire." "Esquire" meant a Shield Bearer, the man who carried the shield for the knight and served. He was less than a knight; but as he did most honourably carry the shield he might be confused with the armed gentry, so if you were not a knight, at any rate you were an "Esq." And not so very long ago the distinction was real. There remain still living, I believe (but I speak under correction), those who can remember writing their envelopes to a solicitor with the word "Mr." in front, and to a barrister (who might be the solicitor's brother) with the letters "Esq." after the name. But even in our time the thing has broken loose, and is now all over the country. The Government Departments always put Esq. to save trouble, except when they are writing to convicts. They usually do it to women as well, which is saving trouble too much; but even Esq. in this, its last decrepitude, bears strongly the mark of an aristocratic state. For, note you, the unfortunate citizen (unfortunate only in the burden of his duty herein imposed, but fortunate, perhaps, in possessing so much variety in his social life) must try and remember the initial of every male he may write to. It is one of the things that foreigners, if they knew anything about England, would be most astonished at. The other day I wrote thirty-six letters with my own hand, every one of them to people of my own sex, and I suppose I wasted a good quarter of an hour looking up the initial to go before their ridiculous names. People hate to get a letter "Dash So-and-so, Esq." But I would here disclose a great and useful secret, second only to that which Prometheus stole from the gods, and this contribution of mine should merit me a civic crown. If you do not know the initial of the fellow you are writing to there is a sort of twiddle which looks like a "T," or an "F," or a "U," or might even be an imperfect "W," or a "J" overdone. I think, indeed, it is capable of interpretation as almost any letter in the alphabet; and if you will practise this twiddle you outflank their tiresome, baptismal names—for I suppose that even to-day most of them have been baptised.

Then there are the vast armies of honorific Orders, from the Garter downwards, with the famous newly-recruited myriads of O.B.E.'s, and there is J.P., and there is Rt. Hon., and there is M.P., and there is K.C., and (a thing to daunt the stoutest heart) there is a mass of letters giving pride to those who have no others, letters not conferred by any social authority, and yet the omission of which will make you an enemy for life. For instance, your correspondent may be F.R.G.S., or F.R.I.A. (I think it is), or F.R.C.S., or F.R.Z.S., or F.R.B.S., and even the whole lot of them combined, and not a day passes but a new one is sprung upon me.

Lastly, there are the transmarine titles; not those, indeed, of the Continent (for no one bothers about them here, nor could with so much of one's own to remember), but those that do come more or less into our lives from the general bond of one Crown.

There are the Honourables, who are Honourables because they have been professional politicians in the Colonies. And that has often made me think of what might happen to the younger son of an earl who should emigrate, become a professional politician in some colony and then get into the Privy Council. Would he be "the Rt. Honourable The Honourable The Honourable," or what? And if, on the top of that, he became an Archdeacon, would you have to write on his envelope, "The Rt. Honourable The Honourable The Honourable The Venerable," or what? There are Rajahs and Maharajahs, and Akons and Khans, and there is the Oyo of Oya and a hundred others. Now, though we are not bound in strict duty to know them all, though nothing dreadful would happen to us (as it happens to those who wickedly neglect their duty to the rich, who mix up marquises with viscounts, or forget all about the Companionship of St. Patrick and the Bath), yet are we under some obligation to acquire a general elementary knowledge of these transmarine glories. But I say again that when it comes to the Continent of Europe, we put down our foot and will not be bothered. "His Holiness" attached to the Pope, "His Majesty" attached to a king, is as far as we care to go.

I often wonder what will happen to this huge house of cards. Will it collapse suddenly as Diocletian's did, or will it live on, a sort of ghastly life? Will its boundaries break down and will its stuff remain? Will some few of the dignitaries take on a vigorous life of centuries while others are forgotten, as "Dux," the Roman word for a General, has lived on and on and on for more than two thousand years, always with dignity attached to it, while "Illustrious" and "Most Dignified" and "Your Benignity" died and were forgotten? Will our posterity, say two hundred years hence, while calling pretty well everybody "Colonel" (as we now call pretty well everybody "Esq.") let "Lord" become a separate rank without distinctions? Will knights surreptitiously claim hereditary rights and establish them? What will happen? We do not know.

Meanwhile, for the benefit of that posterity, those who some centuries hence will read these immortal lines (in the surviving specimens of English prose for the schools of that date), I do put on record and solemnly confirm this: that to-day there are exactly two distinctions which all Englishmen whatsoever really would like to have, and only two. Though nearly all men would like an honour, yet there are two honours which all men desire. One is the double letter K.G., and the other is the double letter V.C. But they may go on wanting, for very few of them will get it. What we desire in this life and what we obtain are very different things.