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In My Confidences there are traces of this quality. Clearly enough the author of London Lyrics, the editor of Lyra Elegantiarum, of Patchwork, and the whimsical but sincere compiler of My Confidences was more than a mere connoisseur, however much connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so dominant a part. Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness.
The littérateurs of his era looked up to him as the arbiter elegantiarum, especially in the domain of Japanese versification. Even more renown attached to Fujiwara no Toshinari, whose nom de plume was Shunzei, and who earned the title of the "Matchless Master." His son, Sadaiye, was well-nigh equally famous under the name of Teika.
But the morning bath and careful kneading of the body by trained slaves hastened gradually the course of his slothful blood, roused him, quickened him, restored his strength, so that he issued from the elæothesium, that is, the last division of the bath, as if he had risen from the dead, with eyes gleaming from wit and gladness, rejuvenated, filled with life, exquisite, so unapproachable that Otho himself could not compare with him, and was really that which he had been called, arbiter elegantiarum.
As a Viceroy in Ireland in particular he showed qualities rare in his generation. To Johnson he was known as the nobleman who had a wide social influence as an acknowledged arbiter elegantiarum, and who reckoned among his claims some of that literary polish in which the earlier generation of nobles had certainly been superior to their successors.
"Ah!" renewed the arbiter elegantiarum, who had not heard Mauleverer's observation, which was uttered in a very low voice, "ah! they seem real dashers!" "Dashers!" repeated Mauleverer; "true, haberdashers!"
Such was the appearance of Mr Apollo Johnson, whom the ladies considered as the ne plus ultra of fashion, and the arbiter elegantiarum. His bow-tick, or fiddle-stick, was his wand, whose magic rap on the fiddle produced immediate obedience to his mandates. "Ladies and gentle, take your seats." All started up. "Miss Eurydice, you open de ball."
The man did not forsake his companions to join the row of unfortunates. As they reached the head of the social rank, where sat Mrs. McDermott, the wife of the section boss and arbiter elegantiarum for all Ellisville, the gentleman bowed and spoke some few words, though obviously to a total stranger a very stiff and suspicious stranger, who was too startled to reply.
In a short time, this gay voluptuary became so much a favourite at court, that nothing was agreeable but what was approved by Petronius and the authority which he acquired, by being umpire in whatever related to the economy of gay dissipation, procured him the title of Arbiter elegantiarum.
Tens of Arbiters Elegantiarum could not transform those Trimalchilons into decent people. By Persephone! I have had enough!" And he noted with astonishment that something separated him from those people already. He had known them well earlier, and had known what to think of them; still they seemed to him now as farther away and more deserving of contempt than usual.
Leicester, it should be borne in mind, was one of the most popular men in the college a sort of arbiter elegantiarum in the best set. Hurst knew very little of him, but was no doubt highly flattered by his proposal.
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