Just as the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation, so neither do
one’s own ideas, nor the good things one hears other people say; they
fasten on us when we least want or expect them. It is enough if the
kingdom of heaven be observed when it does come.
I do not read much; I look, listen, think and write. My most intimate
friends are men of more insight, quicker wit, more playful fancy and, in
all ways, abler men than I am, but you will find ten of them for one of
me. I note what they say, think it over, adapt it and give it permanent
form. They throw good things off as sparks; I collect them and turn them
into warmth. But I could not do this if I did not sometimes throw out a
spark or two myself.
Not only would Agamemnon be nothing without the _vates sacer_ but there
are always at least ten good heroes to one good chronicler, just as there
are ten good authors to one good publisher. Bravery, wit and poetry
abound in every village. Look at Mrs. Boss [the original of Mrs. Jupp in
_The Way of All Flesh_] and at Joanna Mills [_Life and Letters of Dr.
Butler_, I, 93]. There is not a village of 500 inhabitants in England
but has its Mrs. Quickly and its Tom Jones. These good people never
understand themselves, they go over their own heads, they speak in
unknown tongues to those around them and the interpreter is the rarer and
more important person. The _vates sacer_ is the middleman of mind.
So rare is he and such spendthrifts are we of good things that people not
only will not note what might well be noted but they will not even keep
what others have noted, if they are to be at the pains of pigeon-holing
it. It is less trouble to throw a brilliant letter into the fire than to
put it into such form that it can be safely kept, quickly found and
easily read. To this end a letter should be gummed, with the help of the
edgings of stamps if necessary, to a strip, say an inch and a quarter
wide, of stout hand-made paper. Two or three paper fasteners passed
through these strips will bind fifty or sixty letters together, which,
arranged in chronological order, can be quickly found and comfortably
read. But how few will be at the small weekly trouble of clearing up
their correspondence and leaving it in manageable shape! If we keep our
letters at all we throw them higgledy-piggledy into a box and have done
with them; let some one else arrange them when the owner is dead. The
some one else comes and finds the fire an easy method of escaping the
onus thrown upon him. So on go letters from Tilbrook, Merian, Marmaduke
Lawson {364}—just as we throw our money away if the holding on to it
involves even very moderate exertion.
On the other hand, if this instinct towards prodigality were not so
great, beauty and wit would be smothered under their own selves. It is
through the waste of wit that wit endures, like money, its main
preciousness lies in its rarity—the more plentiful it is the cheaper does
it become.