I have never seen very much of him since I left Cambridge; but there I

was a good deal in his company--and we have kept up our friendship ever

since, in the quiet way in which Englishmen do keep up their

friendships, meeting perhaps two or three times in the year, exchanging

letters occasionally. He was not a very intimate friend--indeed, he was

not a man who formed intimacies; but he was a congenial companion

enough. He was a frankly ambitious man. He went to the bar, where he

has done well; he married a wife with some money; and I think his

ultimate ambition has been to enter Parliament. He told me, when I last

saw him, that he had now, he thought, made enough money for this, and

that he would probably stand at the next election. I have always liked

his wife, who is a sensible, good-natured woman, with social ambitions.

They live in a good house in London, in a wealthy sort of way. I

arrived to luncheon, and sate a little while with Mrs. Darell in the

drawing-room. I became aware, while I sate with her, that there was a

sense of anxiety in the air somehow, though she spoke cheerfully enough

of her husband, saying that he had overworked himself, and had to lie

up for a little. When he came into the room I understood. It was not

that he was physically much altered--he is a strongly-built fellow,

with a sanguine complexion and thick curly hair, now somewhat grizzled;

but I knew at the first sight of him that matters were serious. He was

quiet and even cheerful in manner, but he had a look on his face that I

had never seen before, the look of a man whose view of life has been

suddenly altered, and who is preparing himself for the last long

journey. I knew instinctively that he believed himself a doomed man. He

said very little about himself, and I did not ask him much; he talked

about my books, and a good deal about old friends; but all with a

sense, I thought, of detachment, as though he were viewing everything

over a sort of intangible fence. After luncheon, we adjourned to his

study and smoked. He then said a few words about his illness, and added

that it had altered his plans. "I am told," he said, "that I must take

a good long holiday--rather a difficult job for a man who cares a great

deal about his work and very little about anything else;" he added a

few medical details, from which I gathered the nature of his illness.

Then he went on to talk of casual matters; it seemed to interest him to

discuss what had been happening to our school and college friends; but

I knew, without being told, that he wished me to understand that he did

not expect to resume his place in the world--and indeed I divined, by

some dim communication of the spirit, that he thought my visit was

probably a farewell. But he talked with unabated courage and interest,

smiling where he would in old days have laughed, and speaking of our

friends with more tenderness than was his wont. Only once did he half

betray what was in his mind: "It is rather strange," he said, "to be

pushed aside like this, and to have to reconsider one's theories. I did

not expect to have to pull up--the path lay plain before me--and now it

seems to me as if there were a good many things I had lost sight of.

Well, one must take things as they come, and I don't think that if I

had it all to do again I should do otherwise." He changed the subject

rather hurriedly, and began to talk about my work. "You are quite a

great man now," he said with a smile; "I hear your books talked about

wherever I go--I used to wonder if you would have had the patience to

do anything--you were hampered by having no need to earn your living;

but you have come out on the top." I told him something about my own

late experiences and my difficulty in writing. He listened with

undisguised interest. "What do you make of it?" he said. "Well," I

said; "you will think I am talking transcendentally, but I have felt

often of late as if there were two strains in our life, two kinds of

experience; at one time we have to do our work with all our might, to

get absorbed in it, to do what little we can to enrich the world; and

then at another time it is all knocked out of our hands, and we have to

sit and meditate--to realise that we are here on sufferance, that what

we can do matters very little to any one--the same sort of feeling that

I once had when old Hoskyns, in whose class I was, threw an essay, over

which I had taken a lot of trouble, into his waste-paper basket before

my eyes without even looking it over. I see now that I had got all the

good I could out of the essay by writing it, and that the credit of it

mattered very little; but then I simply thought he was a very

disagreeable and idle old fellow."

"Yes," he said, smiling, "there is something in that; but one wants the

marks as well--I have always liked to be marked for my work. I am glad

you told me that story, old man."

We went on to talk of other things, and when I rose to go, he thanked

me rather effusively for my kindness in coming to see him. He told me

that he was shortly going abroad, and that if I could find time to

write he would be grateful for a letter; "and when I am on my legs

again," he said with a smile, "we will have another meeting."

That was all that passed between us of actual speech. Yet how much more

seems to have been implied than was said. I knew, as well as if he had

told me in so many words, that he did not expect to see me again; that

he was in the valley of the shadow, and wanted help and comfort. Yet he

could not have described to me what was in his mind, and he would have

resented it, I think, if I had betrayed any consciousness of my

knowledge; and yet he knew that I knew, I am sure of that.

The interview affected me deeply and poignantly. The man's patience and

courage are very great; but he has lived, frankly and laboriously, for

perfectly definite things. He never had the least sense of what is

technically called religion; he was strong and temperate by nature,

with a fine sense of honour; loving work and the rewards of work,

despising sentiment and emotion--indeed his respect for me, of which I

was fully conscious, is the respect he feels for a sentimental man who

has made sentiment pay. It is very hard to see what part the prospect

of suffering and death is meant to play in the life of such a man. It

must be, surely, that he has something even more real than what he has

held to be realities to learn from the sudden snapping off of life and

activity. I find myself filled with an immense pity for him; and yet if

my faith were a little stronger and purer, I should congratulate rather

than commiserate him. And yet the thought of him in his bewilderment

helps me too, for I see my own life as in a mirror. I have received a

message of truth, the message that the accomplishment of our plans and

cherished designs is not the best thing that can befall us. How easy to

see that in the case of another, how hard to see it in our own case!

But it has helped me too to throw myself outside the morbid

perplexities in which I am involved; to hold out open hands to the gift

of God, even though He seems to give me a stone for bread, a stinging

serpent for wholesome provender. It has taught me to pray--not only for

myself, but for all the poor souls who are in the grip of a sorrow that

they cannot understand or bear.

March 14, 1889.

The question that haunts me, the problem I cannot disentangle, is what

is or what ought our purpose to be? What is our duty in life? Ought we

to discern a duty which lies apart from our own desires and

inclinations? The moralist says that it ought to be to help other

people; but surely that is because the people, whom by some instinct we

deem the highest, have had the irresistible desire to help others? How

many people has one ever known who have taken up philanthropy merely

from a sense of rectitude? The people who have done most to help the

world along have been the people who have had an overwhelming natural

tenderness, an overflowing love for helpless, weak, and unhappy people.

That is a thing which cannot be simulated. One knows quite well, to put

the matter simply, the extent of one's own limitations. There are

courses of action which seem natural and easy; others which seem hard,

but just possible; others again which are frankly impossible. However

noble a life, for instance, I thought the life of a missionary or of a

doctor to be, I could not under any circumstances adopt the role of

either. There are certain things which I might force myself to do which

I do not do, and which I practically know I shall not do. And the

number of people is very small who, when circumstances suggest one

course, resolutely carry out another. The artistic life is a very hard

one to analyse, because at the outset it seems so frankly selfish a

life. One does what one most desires to do, one develops one's own

nature, its faculties and powers. If one is successful, the most one

can claim is that one has perhaps added a little to the sum of

happiness, of innocent enjoyment, that one has perhaps increased or fed

in a few people the perception of beauty. Of course the difficulty is

increased by the conventional belief that any career is justified by

success in that career. And as long as a man attains a certain measure

of renown we do not question very much the nature of his aims.

Then, again, if we put that all aside, and look upon life as a thing

that is given us to teach us something, it is easy to think that it

does not matter very much what we do; we take the line of least

resistance, and think that we shall learn our lesson somehow.

It is difficult to believe that our one object ought to be to thwart

all our own desires and impulses, to abstain from doing what we desire

to do, and to force ourselves continually to do what we have no impulse

to do. That is a philosophical and stoical business, and would end at

best in a patient and courteous dreariness of spirit.

Neither does it seem a right solution to say: "I will parcel out my

energies--so much will I give to myself, so much to others." It ought

to be a larger, more generous business than that; yet the people who

give themselves most freely away too often end by having very little to

give; instead of having a store of ripe and wise reflection, they have

generally little more than an official smile, a kindly tolerance, a

voluble stream of commonplaces.

And then, too, it is hard to see, to speak candidly, what God is doing

in the matter. One sees useful careers cut ruthlessly short, generous

qualities nullified by bad health or minute faults, promise

unfulfilled, men and women bound in narrow, petty, uncongenial spheres,

the whole matter in a sad disorder. One sees one man's influence spoilt

by over-confidence, by too strong a sense of his own significance, and

another man made ineffective by diffidence and self-distrust. The best

things of life, the most gracious opportunities, such as love and

marriage, cannot be entered upon from a sense of duty, but only from an

overpowering and instinctive impulse.

Is it not possible to arrive at some tranquil harmony of life, some

self-evolution, which should at the same time be ardent and generous?

In my own sad unrest of spirit, I seem to be alike incapable of working

for the sake of others and working to please myself. Perhaps that is

but the symptom of a moral disease, a malady of the soul. Yet if that

is so, and if one once feels that disease and, suffering is not a part

of the great and gracious purpose of God--if it is but a failure in His

design--the struggle is hopeless. One sees all around one men and women

troubled by no misgivings, with no certain aim, just doing whatever the

tide of life impels them to do. My neighbour here is a man who for

years has gone up to town every day to his office. He is perfectly

contented, absolutely happy. He has made more money than he will ever

need or spend, and he will leave his children a considerable fortune.

He is kind, respectable, upright; he is considered a thoroughly

enviable man, and indeed, if prosperity and contentment are the sign

and seal of God's approbation, such a man is the highest work of God,

and has every reason to be an optimist. He would think my questionings

morbid and my desires moonshine. He is not necessarily right any more

than I; but his theory of life works out a good deal better for him

than mine for me.

Well, we drift, we drift! Sometimes the sun shines bright on the wave,

and the wheeling birds dip and hover, and our heart is full of song.

But sometimes we plunge on rising billows, with the wind wailing, and

the rain pricking the surface with needle-points; we are weary and

uncomforted; and we do not know why we suffer, or why we are glad.

Sometimes I have a far-off hope that I shall know, that I shall

understand and be satisfied; but sometimes, alas, I fear that my soul

will flare out upon the darkness, and know no more either of weal or

woe.

March 20, 1889.

I am reading a great deal now; but I find that I turn naturally to

books of a sad intimite--books in which are revealed the sorrowful

cares and troubles of sensitive people. Partly, I suppose, it is to get

the sense of comfort which comes from feeling that others have suffered

too; but partly to find, if I can, some medicine for my soul, in

learning how others struggled out of the mire. Thus I have been reading

Froude's Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters over again, and they have

moved me strangely and deeply. Perhaps it is mostly that I have felt,

in these dark months, drawn to the society of two brave people--she was

brave in her silences, he in the way in which he stuck doggedly to his

work--who each suffered so horribly, so imaginatively, so inexplicably,

and, alas, it would seem, so unnecessarily! Of course Carlyle indulged

his moods, while Mrs. Carlyle fought against hers; moreover, he had the

instinct for translating thoughts, instantaneously and volubly, into

vehement picturesque speech. How he could bite in a picture, an ugly,

ill-tempered one enough very often, as when he called Coleridge a

"weltering" man! Many of his sketches are mere Gillray caricatures of

people, seen through bile unutterable, exasperated by nervous

irritability. And Mrs. Carlyle had a mordant wit enough. But still both

of them had au fond a deep need of love, and a power of lavishing love.

It comes out in the old man's whimsical notes and prefaces; and indeed

it is true to say that if a person once actually penetrated into

Carlyle's inner circle, he found himself loved hungrily and devotedly,

and never forgotten or cast out. And as to Mrs. Carlyle, I suppose it

was impossible to be near her and not to love her! This comes out in

glimpses in her sad pathological letters. There is a scene she

describes, how she returned home after some long and serious bout of

illness, when her cook and housemaid rushed into the street, kissed

her, and wept on her neck; while two of her men friends, Mr. Cooke and

Lord Houghton, who called in the course of the evening, to her surprise

and obvious pleasure, did the very same. The result on myself, after

reading the books, is to feel myself one of the circle, to want to do

something for them, to wring the necks of the cocks who disturbed

Carlyle's sleep; and sometimes, alas, to rap the old man's fingers for

his blind inconsiderateness and selfishness. I came the other day upon

a passage in a former book of my own, where I said something sneering

and derisive about the pair, and I felt deep shame and contrition for

having written it--and, more than that, I felt a sort of disgust for

the fact that I have spent so much time in writing fiction. Books like

the Life of Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters take the wind out of

one's imaginative faculties altogether, because one is confronted with

the real stuff of life in them. Life, that hard, stubborn,

inconclusive, inconsistent, terrible thing! It is, of course, that very

hardness and inconclusiveness that makes one turn to fiction. In

fiction, one can round off the corners, repair mistakes, comfort,

idealise, smooth things down, make error and weakness bear good fruit,

choose, develop as one pleases. Not so with life, where things go from

bad to worse, misunderstandings grow and multiply, suffering does not

purge, sorrow does not uplift. That is the worst of fiction, that it

deludes one into thinking that one can deal gently with life, finish

off the picture, arrange things on one's own little principles; and

then, as in my own case, life brings one up against some monstrous,

grievous, intolerable fact, that one can neither look round or over,

and the scales fall from one's eyes. With what courage, tranquillity or

joy is one to meet a thoroughly disagreeable situation? The more one

leans on the hope that it may amend, the weaker one grows; the thing to

realise is that it is bad, that it is inevitable, that it has arrived,

and to let the terror and misery do their worst, soak into the soul and

not run off it. Only then can one hope to be different; only so can one

climb the weary ladder of patience and faith.

March 28, 1889.

Low-hung ragged grey skies, heaven smeared with watery vapours

fleeting, broken and mournful, from the west--these above me, as I

stand by the old lichened gate of the high wind-swept field at the top

of the wold. In front a stretch of rough common, the dark-brown

heather, the young gorse, bluish-green, the rusty red of soaked

bracken, the pale ochre-coloured grass, all blent into a rich tint that

pleases the eye with its wild freshness. To the left, the wide flat

level of the plain, with low hills rising on its verge; to the right, a

pale pool of water at the bottom of a secret valley, reflecting the

leafless bushes that fringe it, catches the sunset gleam that rises in

the west; and then range after range of wolds, with pale-green

pastures, dark copses, fawn-coloured ploughland, here and there an

emerald patch of young wheat. The air is fresh, soft and fragrant,

laden with rain; the earth smells sweet; and the wild woodland scent

comes blowing to me out of the heart of the spinney. In front of me

glimmer the rough wheel-tracks of a grassy road that leads out on to

the heath, and two obscure figures move slowly nearer among the tufted

gorse. They seem to me, those two figures, charged with a grave

significance, as though they came to bear me tidings, messengers bidden

to seek and find me, like the men who visited Abraham at the close of

the day.

As I linger, the day grows darker, the colour fading from leaf and

blade; bright points of light flash out among the dark ridges from

secluded farms, where the evening lamp is lit.

Sometimes on days like this, when the moisture hangs upon the hedges,

when the streams talk hoarsely to themselves in grassy channels, when

the road is full of pools, one is weary, unstrung and dissatisfied,

faint of purpose, tired of labour, desiring neither activity nor rest;

the soul sits brooding, like the black crows that I see in the leafless

wood beneath me, perched silent and draggled on the tree-tops, just

waiting for the sun and the dry keen airs to return; but to-day it is

not so; I am full of a quiet hope, an acquiescent tranquillity. My

heart talks gently to itself, as to an unseen friend, telling its

designs, its wishes, its activities. I think of those I hold dear, all

the world over; I am glad that they are alive, and believe that they

think of me. All the air seems full of messages, thoughts and

confidences and welcomes passing to and fro, binding souls to each

other, and all to God. There seems to be nothing that one needs to do

to-day except to live one's daily life; to be kind and joyful. To-day

the road of pilgrimage lies very straight and clear between its fences,

in an open ground, with neither valley nor hill, no by-path, no

turning. One can even see the gables and chimneys of some grave house

of welcome, "a roof for when the dark hours begin," full of pious

company and smiling maidens. And not, it seems, a false security; one

is not elated, confident, strong; one knows one's weakness; but I think

that the Lord of the land has lately passed by with a smile, and given

command that the pilgrims shall have a space of quiet. These birds,

these branching trees, have not yet lost the joy of His passing. There,

along the grassy tracks, His patient footsteps went, how short a time

ago! One does not hope that all the journey will be easy and

untroubled; there will be fresh burdens to be borne, dim valleys full

of sighs to creep through, dark waters to wade across; these feet will

stumble and bleed; these knees will be weary before the end; but to-day

there is no doubt about the pilgrimage, no question of the far-off

goal. The world is sad, perhaps, but sweet; sad as the homeless clouds

that drift endlessly across the sky from marge to marge; sweet as the

note of the hidden bird, that rises from moment to moment from the

copse beside me, again and yet again, telling of a little heart that is

content to wait, and not ill-pleased to be alone with its own soft

thoughts.

April 4, 1889.

Down in the valley which runs below the house is a mill. I passed it

to-day at dusk, and I thought I had never seen so characteristically

English a scene. The wheel was silent, and the big boarded walls,

dusted with flour, loomed up solemnly in the evening light. The full

leat dashed merrily through the sluice, making holiday, like a child

released from school. Behind was the stack-yard, for it is a farm as

well as a mill; and in the byre I heard the grunting of comfortable

pigs, and the soft pulling of the hay from the big racks by the

bullocks. The fowls were going to roost, fluttering up every now and

then into the big elder-bushes; while high above, in the apple-trees, I

saw great turkeys settled precariously for the night. The orchard was

silent, except for the murmur of the stream that bounds it. In the

mill-house itself lights gleamed in the windows, and I saw a pleasant

family-party gathered at their evening meal. The whole scene with its

background of sloping meadows and budding woods so tranquil and

contented--a scene which William Morris would have loved--for there is

a pleasant grace of antiquity about the old house, a sense of homely

and solid life, and of all the family associations that have gone to

the making of it, generation after generation leaving its mark in the

little alterations and additions that have met a need, or even

satisfied a pleasant fancy.

The miller is an elderly man now, fond of work, prosperous,

good-humoured. His son lives with him, and the house is full of

grandchildren. I do not say that it puzzles me to divine what is the

miller's view of life, because I think I know it. It is to make money

honestly, to bring up his grandchildren virtuously and comfortably, to

enjoy his daily work and his evening leisure. He is never idle, never

preoccupied. He enjoys getting the mill started, seeing the flour

stream into the sacks, he enjoys going to market, he enjoys going

prosperously to church on Sundays, he enjoys his paper and his pipe. He

has no exalted ideas, and he could not put a single emotion into words,

but he is thoroughly honest, upright, manly, kind, sensible. A perfect

life in many ways; and yet it is inconceivable to me that a man should

live thus, without an aim, without a hope, without an object. He would

think my own life even more inconceivable--that a man could

deliberately sit down day after day to construct a story about

imaginary people; and such respect as he feels for me, is mainly due to

the fact that my writings bring me in a larger income than he could

ever make from his mill. But of course he is a man who is normally

healthy, and such men as he are the props of rural life. He is a good

master, he sees that his men do their work, and are well housed. He is

not generous exactly, but he is neighbourly. The question is whether

such as he is the proper type of humanity. He represents the simple

virtues at their high-water mark. He is entirely contented, and his

desires are perfectly proportioned to their surroundings. He seems

indeed to be exactly what the human creature ought to be. And yet his

very virtues, his sense of justice and honesty, his sensible

kindliness, are the outcome of civilisation, and bear the stamp, in

reality, of the dreams of saints and sages and idealists--the men who

felt that things could be better, and who were made miserable by the

imperfections of the world. I cannot help wondering, in a whimsical

moment, what would have been the miller's thoughts of Christ, if he had

been confronted with Him in the flesh. He would have thought of Him

rather contemptuously, I think, as a bewildering, unpractical,

emotional man. The miller would not have felt the appeal of

unselfishness and unworldliness, because his ideal of life is tranquil

prosperity. He would have merely wondered why people could not hold

their tongues and mind their business: and yet he is a model citizen,

and would be deeply annoyed if he were told he were not a sincere

Christian. He accepts doctrinal statements as he would accept

mathematical formulae, and he takes exactly as much of the Christian

doctrine as suits him. Now when I compare myself with the miller, I

feel that, as far as human usefulness goes, I am far lower in the

scale. I am, when all is said and done, a drone in the hive, eating the

honey I did not make. I do not take my share in the necessary labour of

the world, I do not regulate a little community of labourers with

uprightness and kindness, as he does. But still I suppose that my more

sensitive organisation has a meaning in the scale of things. I cannot

have been made and developed as I am, outside of the purpose of God.

And yet my work in the world is not that of the passionate idealist,

that kindles men with the hope of bettering and amending the world.

What is it that my work does? It fills a vacant hour for leisurely

people, it gives agreeable distraction, it furnishes some pleasant

dreams. The most that I can say is that I have a wife whom I desire to

make happy, and children whom I desire to bring up innocently, purely,

vigorously.

Must one's hopes and beliefs be thus tentative and provisional? Must

one walk through life, never fathoming the secret? I have myself

abundance of material comfort, health, leisure. I know that for one

like myself, there are hundreds less fortunate. Yet happiness in this

world depends very little upon circumstances; it depends far more upon

a certain mixture of selfishness, tranquillity, temperance, bodily

vigour, and unimaginativeness. To be happy, one must be good-humouredly

indifferent to the sufferings of others, and indisposed to forecast the

possibilities of disaster. The sadness which must shadow the path of

such as myself, is the sadness which comes of the power to see clearly

the imperfections of the world, coupled with the inability to see

through it, to discern the purpose of it all. One comforts oneself by

the dim hope that the desire will be satisfied and the dream fulfilled;

but has one any certainty of that? The temptation is to acquiesce in a

sort of gentle cynicism, to take what one can get, to avoid as far as

possible all deep attachments, all profound hopes, to steel oneself in

indifference. That is what such men as my miller do instinctively;

meanwhile one tries to believe that the melancholy that comes to such

as Hamlet, the sadness of finding the world unintelligible, and

painful, and full of shadows, is a noble melancholy, a superior sort of

madness. Yet one is not content to bear, to suffer, to wait; one

clutches desperately at light and warmth and joy, and alas, in joy and

sorrow alike, one is ever and insupportably alone.

April 9, 1889.

I have been reading Rousseau lately, and find him a very

incomprehensible figure. The Confessions, it must be said, is a dingy

and sordid book. I cannot quite penetrate the motive which induced him

to write them. It cannot have been pure vanity, because he does not

spare himself; he might have made himself out a far more romantic and

attractive character, if he had suppressed the shadows and heightened

the lights. I am inclined to think that it was partly vanity and partly

honesty. Vanity was the motive force, and honesty the accompanying

mood. I do not suppose there is any document so transparently true in

existence, and we ought to be thankful for that. It is customary to say

that Rousseau had the soul of a lackey, by which I suppose is meant

that he had a gross and vulgar nature, a thievish taste for low

pleasures, and an ill-bred absence of consideration for others. He had

all these qualities certainly, but he had a great deal more. He was

upright and disinterested. He had a noble disregard of material

advantages; he had an enthusiasm for virtue, a passionate love of

humanity, a deep faith in God. He was not an intellectual man nor a

philosopher; and yet what a ridiculous criticism is that which is

generally made upon him, that his reasoning is bad, his knowledge

scanty, and that people had better read Hobbes! The very reason which

made Rousseau so tremendous an influence was that his point of view was

poetical rather than philosophical; he was not too far removed from the

souls to which he prophesied. What they needed was inspiration,

emotion, and sentimental dogma; these he could give, and so he saved

Europe from the philosophers and the cynics. Of course it is a

deplorable life, tormented by strong animal passion, ill-health,

insanity; but one tends to forget the prevalent coarseness of social

tone at that date, not because Rousseau made any secret of it, but

because none of his contemporaries dared to be so frank. If Rousseau

had struck out a dozen episodes from the Confessions the result would

have been a highly poetical, reflective, charming book. I can easily

conceive that it might have a very bad effect upon an ingenuous mind,

because it might be argued from what he says that moral lapses do not

very much matter, and that emotional experience is worth the price of

some animalism. Still more perniciously it might induce one to believe

that a man may have a deep sense of religion side by side with an

unbridled sensuality, and that one whose life is morally infamous may

yet be able to quicken the moral temperature of great nations.

Some of the critics of Rousseau speak as though a man whose moral code

was so loose, and whose practice was so libidinous, ought almost to

have held his tongue on matters of high moral import. But this is a

very false line of argument. A man may see a truth clearly, even if he

cannot practise it; and an affirmation of a passionate belief in virtue

is emphasised and accentuated when it comes from the lips of one who

might be tempted rather to excuse his faults by preaching the

irresistible character of evil.

To any one who reads wisely, and not in a censorious and Pharisaical

spirit, this sordid record, which is yet interspersed with things so

fragrant and beautiful, may have a sobering and uplifting effect. One

sees a man hampered by ill-health, by a temperament childishly greedy

of momentary pleasure, by irritability, suspicion, vanity and

luxuriousness, again and again expressing a deep belief in unselfish

emotion, a passionate desire to help struggling humanity onward, a

child-like confidence in the goodness and tenderness of the Father of

all. Disgust and admiration struggle strangely together. One cannot

sympathise and yet one dare not condemn. One feels a horrible suspicion

that there are dark and slimy corners, vile secrets, ugly memories, in

the minds of hundreds of seemingly respectable people; the book brings

one face to face with the mystery of evil; and yet through the gloom

there steals a silvery radiance, a far-off hope, an infinite compassion

for all weakness and imperfection. One can hardly love Rousseau, though

one does not wonder that there were many found to do so; and instead of

judging him, one cries out with horror at the slime of the pit where he

lay bound.

April 14, 1889.

A delusion of which we must beware is the delusion that we can have a

precise and accurate knowledge of spiritual things. This is a delusion

into which the exponents of settled religions are apt to fall. The

Roman Catholic, with his belief in the infallible Church, as the

interpreter of God's spirit, which is nothing more than a belief in the

inspiration of the majority, or even a belief in the inspiration of a

bureaucracy, is the prey of this delusion. The Protestant, too, with

his legal creed, built up of texts and precedents, in which the

argumentative dicta of Apostles and Evangelists are as weighty and

important as the words of the Saviour Himself, falls under this

delusion. I read the other day a passage from a printed sermon of an

orthodox type, an acrid outcry against Liberalism in religion, which

may illustrate what I mean.

"To St. Paul and St. John," said the preacher, "the natural or carnal

man is hopelessly remote from God; the same Lord who came to make

possible for man this intimate communion with God is careful to make it

clear that this communion is only possible to redeemed, regenerate man;

prior to new birth into the Kingdom of God, far from being a son of

God, man is, according to the Lord Himself, a child of the devil,

however potentially capable of being translated from death into life."

Such teaching is so horrible and abominable that it is hard to find

words to express one's sense of its shamefulness. To attribute it to

the Christ, who came to seek and save what is lost, is an act of

traitorous wickedness. If Christ had made it His business to thunder

into the ears of the outcasts, whom He preferred to the Scribes and

Pharisees, this appalling message, where would His teaching be? What

message of hope would it hold for the soul? Such a view of Christianity

as this insults alike the soul and the mind and the heart; it

deliberately insults God; the message of Christ to the vilest human

spirit is that it is indeed, in spite of all its corruption, its falls,

its shame, in very truth God's own child; it calls upon the sinner to

recognise it, it takes for granted that he feels it. The people whom

Christ denounced with indignation so fiery, so blasting, that it even

seems inconsistent with His perfect gentleness, were the people who

thus professed to know and interpret the mind of God, who bade the

sinner believe that He was a merciless judge, extreme to mark what is

done amiss, when the one secret was that He was the tenderest and most

loving of Fathers. But according to this preacher's terrible doctrine

God pours into the world a stream of millions of human beings, all

children of the devil, with instincts of a corrupt kind, hampered by

dreadful inheritances, doomed, from their helpless and reluctant birth,

to be sinful here and lost hereafter, and then prescribes to them a

hard and difficult path, beset by clamorous guides, pointing in a

hundred different directions, bidding them find the intricate way to

His Heart, or perish. The truth is the precise opposite. The divine

voice says to every man: "Hampered and sore hindered as you are, you

are yet My dearly beloved son and child; only turn to Me, only open

your heart to Me, only struggle, however faintly, to be what you can

desire to be, and I will guide and lead you to Myself; all that is

needed is that your heart should be on My side in the battle. Even your

sins matter little, provided that you can say sincerely, 'If it were

mine to choose and ordain, I would never willingly do evil again.' I

know, better even than you yourself know, your difficulties, your

temptations, your weaknesses; the sorrow they bring upon you is no

dreary and vindictive punishment, it is the loving correction of My

hand, and will bring you into peace yet, if only you will trust Me, and

not despair."

The world is full of dreadful things, pains and sorrow and miseries,

but the worst of all are the dreary wretchednesses of our own devising.

The old detestable doctrine of Hell, the idea that the stubborn and

perverse spirit can defy God, and make its black choice, is simply an

attempt to glorify the strength of the human spirit and to belittle the

Love of God. It denies the truth that God, if He chose, could show the

darkest soul the beauty of holiness in so constraining a way that the

frail nature must yield to the appeal. To deny this, is to deny the

omnipotence of the Creator. No man would deliberately reject peace and

joy, if he could see how to find them, in favour of feverish evil and

ceaseless suffering. If we believe that God is perfect love, it is

inconceivable that He should make a creature capable of defying His

utmost tenderness, unless He had said to Himself, "I will make a poor

wretch who shall defy Me, and he shall suffer endlessly and mercilessly

in consequence." The truth is that God's Omnipotence is limited by His

Omnipotence; He could not, for instance, abolish Himself, nor create a

power that should be greater than He. But if He indeed can give to evil

such vitality that it can defy Him for ever, then He is creating a

power that is stronger than Himself.

While the mystery of evil is unexplained, we must all be content to

know that we do not know; for the thing is insoluble by human thought.

If God be all-pervading, all-in-all, it is impossible to conceive

anything coming into being alien to Himself, within Himself. If He

created spirits able to choose evil, He must have created the evil for

them to choose, for a man could not choose what did not exist; if man

can defy God, God must have given him the thought of defiance, for no

thought can enter the mind of man not permitted by God.

With this mystery unsolved, we cannot pretend to any knowledge of

spiritual things; all that we can do is to recognise that the principle

of Love is stronger than the principle of evil, and cling so far as we

can cling to the former. But to set ourselves up to guide and direct

other men, as the preacher did whose words I have quoted, is to set

oneself in the place of God, and is a detestable tyranny. Only by our

innate sense of Justice and Love can we apprehend God at all; and thus

we are safe in this, that whenever we find any doctrine preached by any

human being which insults our sense of justice and love, we may gladly

reject it, saying that at least we will not believe that God gives us

the power, on the one hand, to recognise our highest and truest

instincts, and on the other directs us to outrage them. Such teaching

as this we can infallibly recognise as a human perversion and not as a

divine message; and we may thankfully and gratefully believe that the

obstacles and difficulties, the temptations and troubles, which seem to

be strewn so thickly in our path, are to develop rather than to thwart

our strivings after good, and assuredly designed to minister to our

ultimate happiness, rather than to our ultimate despair.

April 25, 1889.

I found to-day on a shelf a Manual of Preparation for Holy Communion,

which was given me when I was confirmed. I stood a long time reading

it, and little ghosts seemed to rustle in its pages. How well I

remember using it, diligently and carefully, trying to force myself

into the attitude of mind that it inculcated, and humbly and sincerely

believing myself wicked, reprobate, stony-hearted, because I could not

do it successfully. Shall I make a curious confession? From quite early

days, the time of first waking in the morning has been apt to be for me

a time of mental agitation; any unpleasant and humiliating incident,

any disagreeable prospect, have always tended to dart into my brain,

which, unstrung and weakened by sleep, has often been disposed to view

things with a certain poignancy of distress at that hour--a distress

which I always knew would vanish the moment I felt my feet on the

carpet. I used to take advantage of this to use my Manual at that hour,

because by that I secured a deeper intensity of repentance, and I have

often succeeded in inducing a kind of tearful condition by those means,

which I knew perfectly well to be artificial, but which yet seemed to

comply with the rules of the process.

The kind of repentance indicated in the book as appropriate was a deep

abasement, a horror and hatred of one's sinful propensities; and the

language used seems to me now not only hollow and meaningless, but to

insult the dignity of the soul, and to be indeed a profound confession

of a want of confidence in the methods and purposes of God. Surely the

right attitude is rather a manly, frank, and hopeful co-operation with

God, than a degraded kind of humiliation. One was invited to

contemplate God's detestation of sin, His awful and stainless holiness.

How unreal, how utterly false! It is no more reasonable than to

inculcate in human beings a sense of His hatred of weakness, of

imperfection, of disease, of suffering. One might as well say that

God's courage and beauty were so perfect that He had an impatient

loathing for anything timid or ugly. If one said that being perfect He

had an infinite pity for imperfection, that would be nearer the

truth--but, even so, how far away! To believe in His perfect love and

benevolence, one must also believe that all shortcomings, all

temptations, all sufferings, somehow emanate from Him; that they are

educative, and have an intense and beautiful significance--that is what

one struggles, how hardly, to believe! Those childish sins, they were

but the expression of the nature one received from His hand, that

wilful, pleasure-loving, timid, fitful nature, which yet always desired

the better part, if only it could compass it, choose it, love it. To

hate one's nature and temperament and disposition, how impossible,

unless one also hated the God who had bestowed them! And then, too, how

inextricably intertwined! The very part of one's soul that made one

peace-loving, affectionate, trustful was the very thing that led one

into temptation. The very humility and diffidence that made one hate to

seem or to be superior to others was the occasion of falling. The

religion recommended was a religion of scrupulous saints and

self-torturing ascetics; and the result of it was to make one, as

experience widened and deepened, mournfully indifferent to an ideal

which seemed so utterly out of one's reach. It is very difficult to

make the right compromise. On the one hand, there is the sense of moral

responsibility and effort, which one desires to cultivate; on the other

hand, truth compels us to recognise our limitations, and to confess

boldly the fact that moral improvement is a very difficult thing. The

question is whether, in dealing with other people, we will declare what

we believe to be the truth, or whether we will tamper with the truth

for a good motive. Ought we to pretend that we think a person morally

responsible and morally culpable, when we believe that he is neither,

for the sake of trying to improve him?

My own practice now is to waste as little time as possible in

ineffectual regrets, but to keep alive as far as I can in my heart a

hope, a desire, that God will help to bring me nearer to the ideal that

I can perceive and cannot reach. To-day, turning over the pages of the

old Manual, with its fantastic strained phrases staring at me from the

page, I cannot help wishing that some wise and tender person had been

able to explain to me the conditions as I now see them. Probably the

thing was incommunicable; one must learn for oneself both one's

bitterness and one's joy.

May 2, 1889.

It sometimes happens to me--I suppose it happens to every one--to hear

some well-meaning person play or sing at a party. Last night, at the

Simpsons', a worthy young man, who was staying there, sang some

Schubert songs in a perfectly correct, weak, inexpressive voice,

accompanying himself in a wooden and inanimate fashion--the whole thing

might have been turned out by a machine. I was, I suppose, in a fretful

mood. "Good God!" I thought to myself, "what is the meaning of this

woeful performance?--a party of absurd dressed-up people, who have

eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a circle in this hot room

listening gravely to this lugubrious performance! And this is the best

that Schubert can do! This is the real Schubert! Here have I been all

my life pouring pints of subjective emotion into this dreary writer of

songs, believing that I was stirred and moved, when it was my own hopes

and aspirations all along, which I was stuffing into this conventional

vehicle, just as an ecclesiastical person puts his emotion into the

grotesque repetitions of a liturgy." I thought to myself that I had

made a discovery, and that all was vanity. Well, we thanked the singer

gravely enough, and went on, smiling and grimacing, to talk local

gossip. A few minutes later, a young girl, very shy and painfully

ingenuous, was hauled protesting to the piano. I could see her hands

tremble as she arranged her music, and the first chords she struck were

halting and timid. Then she began to sing--it was some simple

old-fashioned song--what had happened? the world was somehow different;

she had one of those low thrilling voices, charged with utterly

inexplicable emotion, haunted with old mysterious echoes out of some

region of dreams, so near and yet so far away. I do not think that the

girl had any great intensity of mind, or even of soul, neither was she

a great performer; but there was some strange and beautiful quality

about the voice, that now rose clear and sustained, while the

accompaniment charged and tinged the pure notes with glad or mournful

visions, like wine poured into water; now the voice fell and lingered,

like a clear stream among rocks, pathetic, appealing, stirring a deep

hunger of the spirit, and at the same time hinting at a hope, at a

secret almost within one's grasp. How can one find words to express a

thing so magical, so inexpressible? But it left me feeling as though to

sing thus was the one thing worth doing in the world, because it seemed

to interpret, to reveal, to sustain, to console--it was as though one

opened a door in a noisy, dusty street, and saw through it a deep and

silent glen, with woodlands stooping to a glimmering stream, with a

blue stretch of plain beyond, and an expanse of sunny seas on the rim

of the sky.

I have had similar experiences before. I have looked in a gallery at

picture after picture--bright, soulless, accomplished things--and asked

myself how it was possible for men and women to spend their time so

elaborately to no purpose; and then one catches sight of some little

sketch--a pool in the silence of high summer, the hot sun blazing on

tall trees full of leaf, and rich water-plants, with a single figure in

a moored boat, musing dreamily; and at once one is transported into a

region of thrilled wonder. What is it all about? What is this sudden

glimpse into a life so rich and strange? In what quiet country is it

all enacted, what land of sweet visions? What do the tall trees and the

sleeping pool hide from me, and in what romantic region of joy and

sadness does the dreamer muse for ever, in the long afternoon, so full

of warmth and fragrance and murmurous sound? That is the joy of art, of

the symbol--that it remains and rests within itself, in a world that

seems, for a moment, more real and true than the clamorous and

obtrusive world we move in.

It is so all along the line--the hard and soulless art of technique and

rule, of tradition and precept, however accomplished, however perfect

it is, is worth nothing; it is only another dreary form of labour,

unless through some faculty of the spirit, some vital intensity, or

even some inexplicable felicity, not comprehended, not designed, not

intended by the artist, it has this remote and suggestive quality. And

thus suddenly, in the midst of this weary beating of instruments, this

dull laying of colour by colour, of word by word, there breaks in the

awful and holy presence; and then one feels, as I have said, that this

thrill, this message, this oracle, is the one thing in the world worth

striving after, and that indeed one may forgive all the dull efforts of

those who cannot attain it, because perhaps they too have felt the

call, and have thrown themselves into the eternal quest.

And it is true too of life; one is brought near to many people, and one

asks oneself in a chilly discomfort what is the use of it all, living

thus in hard and futile habits, on dull and conventional lines; and

then again one is suddenly confronted by some personality, rich in hope

and greatness, touching the simplest acts of life with an unearthly

light, making them gracious and beautiful, and revealing them as the

symbols of some pure and high mystery. Sometimes this is revealed by a

word, sometimes by a glance; perfectly virtuous, capable, successful

people may miss it; humble, simple, quiet people may have it. One

cannot analyse it or describe it; but one has instantaneously a sense

that life is a thing of large issues and great hopes; that every action

and thought, however simple or commonplace, may be touched with this

large quality of interest, of significance. It is a great happiness to

meet such a person, because one goes in the strength of that heavenly

meat many days and nights, knowing that life is worth living to the

uttermost, and that it can all be beautiful and lofty and gracious; but

the way to miss it, to lose that fine sense, is to have some dull and

definite design of one's own, which makes one treat all the hours in

which one cannot pursue it, but as the dirt and debris of a quarry. One

must not, I see, wait for the golden moments of life, because there are

no moments that are not golden, if one can but pierce into their

essence. Yet how is one to realise this, to put it into practice? I

have of late, in my vacuous mood, fallen into the dark error of

thinking of the weary hours as of things that must be just lived

through, and endured, and beguiled, if possible, until the fire again

fall. But life is a larger and a nobler business than that; and one

learns the lesson sooner, if one takes the suffering home to one's

soul, not as a tedious interlude, but as the very melody and march of

life itself, even though it crash into discords, or falter in a sombre

monotony.

The point is that when one seems to be playing a part to one's own

satisfaction, when one appears to oneself to be brilliant, suggestive,

inspiriting, and genial, one is not necessarily ministering to other

people; while, on the other hand, when one is dull, troubled, and

anxious, out of heart and discontented, one may have the chance of

making others happier. Here is a whimsical instance; in one of my

dreariest days--I was in London on business--I sate next to an old

friend, generally a very lively, brisk, and cheerful man, who appeared

to me strangely silent and depressed. I led him on to talk freely, and

he told me a long tale of anxieties and cares; his health was

unsatisfactory, his plans promised ill. In trying to paint a brighter

picture, to reassure and encourage him, I not only forgot my own

troubles, but put some hope into him. We had met, two tired and

dispirited men, we went away cheered and encouraged, aware that we were

not each of us the only sufferer in the world and that there were

possibilities still ahead of us all, nay, in our grip, if we only were

not blind and forgetful.

May 8, 1889.

I saw the other day a great artist working on a picture in its initial

stages. There were a few lines of a design roughly traced, and there

was a little picture beside him, where the scheme was roughly worked

out; but the design itself was covered with strange wild smears of

flaring, furious colour, flung crudely upon the canvas. "I find it

impossible to believe," I said,--"forgive me for speaking thus--that

these ragged stains and splashes of colour can ever be subdued and

harmonised and co-ordinated." The great man smiled. "What would you

have said, I wonder," he replied, "if you had seen, as I did once, a

picture of Rossetti's in an early stage, with the face and arms of one

of his strange and mysterious figures roughly painted in in the

brightest ultramarine? Many of these fantastic scraps of colour will

disappear altogether from the eye, just lending tone to something which

is to be superimposed upon them."

I have since reflected that this makes a beautiful parable of our

lives. Some element comes into our experience, some suffering, some

anxiety, and we tend to say impatiently: "Well, whatever happens, this

at least can never appear just or merciful." But God, like a wise and

perfect artist, foresees the end in the beginning. We, who live in time

and space, can merely see the rough, crude tints flung fiercely down,

till the thing seems nothing but a frantic patchwork of angry hues; but

God sees the blending and the softening; how the soft tints of face and

hand, of river and tree, will steal over the coarse background, and

gain their strength and glory from the hidden stains. Perhaps we have

sometimes the comfort of seeing how some old and ugly experience melted

into and strengthened some soft, bright quality of heart or mind.

Staring mournfully as we do upon the tiny circumscribed space of life,

we cannot conceive how the design will work itself out; but the day

will come when we shall see it too; and perhaps the best moments of

life are those when we have a secret inkling of the process that is

going so slowly and surely forward, as the harsh lines and hues become

the gracious lineaments of some sweet face, and from the glaring patch

of hot colour is revealed the remote and shining expanse of a sunlit

sea.

May 14, 1889.

There used to be a favourite subject for scholastic disputation:

WHETHER HERCULES IS IN THE MARBLE. The image is that of the sculptor,

who sees the statue lie, so to speak, imbedded in the marble block, and

whose duty is so to carve it, neither cutting too deep or too shallow,

so that the perfect form is revealed. The idea of the disputation is

the root-idea of idealistic philosophy. That each man is, as it were, a

block of marble in which the ideal man is buried. The purpose of the

educator ought to be to cut the form out, perikoptein, as Plato has it.

What a lofty and beautiful thought! To feel about oneself that the

perfect form is there, and that the experience of life is the process

of cutting it out--a process full of pain, perhaps, as the great

splinters and flakes fly and drop--a rough, brutal business it seems at

first, the hewing off great masses of stone, so firmly compacted, fused

and concreted together. At first it seems unintelligible enough; but

the dints become minuter and minuter, here a grain and there an atom,

till the smooth and shapely limbs begin to take shape. At first it

seems a mere bewildered loss, a sharp pang as one parts with what seems

one's very self. How long before the barest structure becomes visible!

but when one once gets a dim inkling of what is going on, as the

stubborn temper yields, as the face takes on its noble frankness, and

the shapely limbs emerge in all the glory of free line and curve, how

gratefully and vehemently one co-operates, how little a thing the

endurance of mere pain becomes by the side of the consciousness that

one is growing into the likeness of the divine.

May 23, 1889.

when Goethe was writing Werther he wrote to his friend Kestner, "I am

working out my own situation in art, for the consolation of gods and

men." That is a fine thing to have said, proceeding from so sublime an

egoism, so transcendent a pride, that it has hardly a disfiguring touch

of vanity about it. He did not add that he was also working in the

situation of his friend Kestner, and Kestner's wife, Charlotte; though

when they objected to having been thus used as material, Goethe

apologised profusely, and in the same breath told them, somewhat

royally, that they ought to be proud to have been thus honoured. But

that is the reason why one admires Goethe so much and worships him so

little. One admires him for the way in which he strode ahead, turning

corner after corner in the untravelled road of art, with such insight,

such certainty, interpreting and giving form to the thought of the

world; but one does not worship him, because he had no tenderness or

care for humanity. He knew whither he was bound, but he did not trouble

himself about his companions. The great leaders of the world are those

who have said to others, "Come with me--let us find light and peace

together!"--but Goethe said, "Follow me if you can!" Some one, writing

of that age, said that it was a time when men had immense and

far-reaching desires, but feeble wills. They lost themselves in the

melancholy of Hamlet, and luxuriated in their own sorrows. That was not

the case with Goethe himself; there never was an artist who was less

irresolute.

One of the reasons, I think, why we are weak in art, at the present

time, is because we refer everything to conventional ethical standards.

We are always arraigning people at the bar of morality, and what we

judge them mainly by is their strength or weakness of will. Blake

thought differently. He always maintained that men would be judged for

their intellectual and artistic perception, by their good or bad taste.

But surely it is all a deep-seated mistake; one might as well judge

people for being tall or short, ugly or beautiful. The only thing for

which I think most people would consent to be judged, which is after

all what matters, is whether they have yielded consciously to mean,

prudent, timid, conventional motives in life. It is not a question of

success or failure; it is rather whether one has acted largely, freely,

generously, or whether one has acted politely, timidly, prudently.

In the Gospel, the two things for which it seems to be indicated that

men will be judged are, whether they have been kind, and whether they

have improved upon what has been given them. And therefore the judgment

seems to depend rather upon what men desire than upon what they effect,

upon attitude rather than upon performance. But it is all a great

mystery, because no amount of desiring seems to give us what we desire.

The two plain duties are to commit ourselves to the Power that made us,

and to desire to become what He would have us become; and one must also

abstain from any attempt to judge other people--that is the

unpardonable sin.

In art, then, a man does his best if, like Goethe, he works his own

situation into art for the consolation of gods and men. His own

situation is the only thing he can come near to perceiving; and if he

draws it faithfully and beautifully, he consoles and he encourages.

That is the best and noblest thing he can do, if he can express or

depict anything which may make other men feel that they are not alone,

that others are treading the same path, in sunshine or cloud; anything

which may help others to persevere, to desire, to perceive. The worst

sorrows in life are not its losses and misfortunes, but its fears. And

when Goethe said that it was for the consolation of gods as well as of

men, he said a sublime thing, for if we believe that God made and loved

us, may we not sympathise with Him for our blindness and hopelessness,

for all the sad sense of injustice and perplexity that we feel as we

stumble on our way; all the accusing cries, all the despairing groans?

Do not such things wound the heart of God? And if a man can be brave

and patient, and trust Him utterly, and bid others trust Him, is He not

thereby consoled?

In these dark months, in which I have suffered much, there rises at

times in my heart a strong intuition that it is not for nothing that I

suffer. I cannot divine whom it is to benefit, or how it is to benefit

any one. One thing indeed saddens me, and that is to reflect that I

have often allowed the record of old sadnesses to heighten my own sense

of luxurious tranquillity and security. Not so will I err again. I will

rather believe that a mighty price is being paid for a mightier joy,

that we are not astray in the wilderness out of the way, but that we

are rather a great and loving company, guided onward to some far-off

city of God, with infinite tenderness, and a love so great that we

cannot even comprehend its depth and its intensity.

I sit, as I write, in my quiet room, the fragrant evening air floating

in, surrounded by all the beloved familiar things that have made my

life sweet, easy, and delightful--books and pictures, that have brought

me so many messages of beauty. I hear the voice of Maud overhead--she

is telling the children a story, and I hear their voices break out

every now and then into eager questions. Yet in the midst of all this

peace and sweetness, I walk in loneliness and gloom, hardly daring, so

faithless and despairing I am, to let my heart go out to the love and

goodness round me, for fear of losing it all, for fear that those souls

I love may be withdrawn from me or I from them. In this I know that I

am sadly and darkly wrong--the prudent coldness, the fear of sorrow

pulls me back; irresolute, cowardly, base! Yet even so I must trust the

Hand that moulded me, and the Will that bade me be, just so and not

otherwise.

June 4, 1889.

It is a melancholy reflection how very little the highest and most

elaborate culture effects in the direction of producing creative and

original writing. Very few indeed of our great writers have been

technically cultivated men. How little we look to the Universities,

where a lifetime devoted to the study of the nuances of classical

expression is considered well spent, for any literature which either

raises the intellectual temperature or enriches the blood of the world!

The fact is that the highly-cultivated man tends to find himself

mentally hampered by his cultivation, to wade in a sea of glue, as

Tennyson said. It is partly that highly-cultivated minds grow to be

subservient to authority, and to contemn experiment as rash and

obstreperous. Partly also the least movement of the mind dislodges such

a pile of precedents and phrases and aphorisms, stored and amassed by

diligent reading, that the mind is encumbered by the thought that most

things worth saying have been so beautifully said that repetition is

out of the question. Partly, too, a false and fastidious refinement

lays hold of the mind; and an intellect trained in the fine perception

of ancient expression is unable to pass through the earlier stages

through which a writer must pass, when the stream flows broken and

turbid, when it appears impossible to capture and define the idea which

seems so intangible and indefinable.

What an original writer requires is to be able to see a subject for

himself, and then to express it for himself. The only cultivation he

needs is just enough to realise that there are differences of subject

and differences of expression, just enough to discern the general lines

upon which subjects can be evolved, and to perceive that lucidity,

grace, and force of expression are attainable. The overcultivated man,

after reading a masterpiece, is crushed and flattened under his

admiration; but the effect of a masterpiece upon an original spirit, is

to make him desire to say something else that rises in his soul, and to

say it in his own words; all he needs in the way of training is just

enough for him to master technique. The highly-cultivated man is as one

dazzled by gazing upon the sun; he has no eyes for anything else; a

bright disc, imprinted upon his eyes, floats between him and every

other object.

The best illustration of this is the case of the great trio,

Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. All three started as poets.

Coleridge was distracted from poetry into metaphysics, mainly, I

believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the torturing contemplation of

his own moral impotence. He turned to philosophy to see if he could

find some clue to the bewildering riddle of life, and he lost his way

among philosophical speculations. Southey, on the other hand, a man of

Spartan virtue, became a highly-cultivated writer; he sate in his

spacious library of well-selected books, arranged with a finical

preciseness, apportioning his day between various literary pursuits. He

made an income; he wrote excellent ephemeral volumes; he gained a

somewhat dreary reputation. But Wordsworth, with his tiny bookshelf of

odd tattered volumes, with pages of manuscript interleaved to supply

missing passages, alone kept his heart and imagination active, by

deliberate leisure, elaborate sauntering, unashamed idleness.

The reason why very few uneducated persons have been writers of note,

is because they have been unable to take up the problem at the right

point. A writer cannot start absolutely afresh; he must have the

progress of thought behind him, and he must join the procession in due

order. Therefore the best outfit for a writer is to have just enough

cultivation to enable him to apprehend the drift and development of

thought, to discern the social and emotional problems that are in the

air, so that he can interpret--that is the secret--the thoughts that

are astir, but which have not yet been brought to the birth. He must

know enough and not too much; he must not dim his perception by

acquainting himself in detail with what has been said or thought; he

must not take off the freshness of his mind by too much intellectual

gymnastic. It is a race across country for which he is preparing, and

he will learn better what the practical difficulties are by daring

excursions of his own, than by acquiring a formal suppleness in

prescribed exercises.

The originality and the output of the writer are conditioned by his

intellectual and vital energy. Most men require all their energy for

the ordinary pursuits of life; all creative work is the result of a

certain superabundance of mental force. If this force is used up in

social duties, in professional business, even in the pursuit of a high

degree of mental cultivation, originality must suffer; and therefore a

man whose aim is to write, ought resolutely to limit his activities.

What would be idleness in another is for him a storing of forces; what

in an ordinary man would be malingering and procrastination, is for the

writer the repose necessary to allow his energies to concentrate

themselves upon his chosen work.

June 8, 1889.

I have been looking at a catalogue, this morning, of the publications

of a firm that is always bringing out new editions of old writers. I

suppose they find a certain sale for these books, or they would not

issue them; and yet I cannot conceive who buys them in their thousands,

and still less who reads them. Teachers, perhaps, of literature; or

people who are inspired by local lectures to go in search of culture?

It is a great problem, this accumulation of literature; and it seems to

me a very irrational thing to do to republish the complete works of old

authors, who perhaps, in the midst of a large mass of essentially

second-rate work, added half-a-dozen lyrics to the literature of the

world. But surely it is time that we began to select? Whatever else

there is time for in this world, there certainly is not time to read

old half-forgotten second-rate work. Of course people who are making a

special study of an age, a period, a school of writers, have to plough

through a good deal that is not intrinsically worth reading; but, as a

rule, when a man has done this, instead of saying boldly that the

greater part of an author's writings may be wisely neglected and left

alone, he loses himself in the critical discrimination and the

chronological arrangement of inferior compositions; perhaps he rescues

a few lines of merit out of a mass of writing; but there is hardly time

now to read long ponderous poems for the sake of a few fine flashes of

emotion and expression. What, as a rule, distinguishes the work of the

amateur from the work of the great writer is that an amateur will

retain a poem for the sake of a few good lines, whereas a great writer

will relentlessly sacrifice a few fine phrases, if the whole structure

and texture of the poem is loose and unsatisfactory. The only chance of

writing something that will live is to be sure that the whole

thing--book, essay, poem--is perfectly proportioned, firm, hammered,

definite. The sign and seal of a great writer is that he has either the

patience to improve loose work, or the courage to sacrifice it.

But most readers are so irrational, so submissive, so deferential, that

they will swallow an author whole. They think dimly that they can

arrive at a certain kind of culture by knowledge; but knowledge has

nothing to do with it. The point is to have perception, emotion,

discrimination. This is where education fails so grievously, that

teachers of this independent and perceptive process are so rare, and

that teaching too often falls into the hands of conscientious people,

with good memories, who think that it benefits the mind to load it with

facts and dates, and forget, or do not know, that what is needed is a

sort of ardent inner fire, that consumes the debris and fuses the ore.

In that dry, ugly, depressing book, Harry and Lucy, which I used to

read in my youth, there is a terrible father, kind, virtuous,

conscientious, whose one idea seems to be to encourage the children to

amass correct information. The party is driving in a chaise together,

and Lucy begins to tell a story of a little girl, Kitty Maples by name,

whom she has met at her Aunt Pierrepoint's; it seems as if the

conversation is for once to be enlightened by a ray of human interest,

but the name is hardly out of her lips, when the father directs her

attention to a building beside the road, and adds, "Let us talk of

things rather than of people." The building turns out to be a

sugar-refinery, or some equally depressing place, and the unhappy

children are initiated into its mysteries. What could be more cheerless

and dispiriting? Lucy is represented as a high-spirited and somewhat

giddy child, who is always being made aware of her moral deficiencies.

One looks forward sadly to the time when nature has been resolutely

expelled by a knowledge of dynamics and statics, and when Lucy, with

children of her own, will be directing their attention away from

childish fancies, to the fact that the poker is a lever, and that curly

hair is a good hygrometer.

Plenty of homely and simple virtues are inculcated in Harry and Lucy;

but the attitude of mind that must inevitably result from such an

education is hard, complacent, and superior. The children are scolded

out of superficial vanities, and their place is occupied by a satanical

sort of pride--the pride of possessing correct information.

What does one want to make of one's own children? One wants them to be

generous, affectionate, simple-minded, just, temperate in the moral

region. In the intellectual region, one desires them to be alert,

eager, independent, perceptive, interested. I like them to ask a

hundred questions about what they see and hear. I want them to be

tender and compassionate to animals and insects. As for books, I want

them to follow their own taste, but I surround them only with the best;

but even so I wish them to have minds of their own, to have

preferences, and reasons for their preferences. I do not want them to

follow my taste, but to trust their own. I do not in the least care

about their amassing correct information. It is much better that they

should learn how to use books. It is very strange how theories of

education remain impervious to development. In the days when books were

scarce and expensive, when knowledge was not formulated and summarised,

men had to depend largely on their own stores. But now, what is the use

of books, if one is still to load one's memory with details? The

training of memory is a very unimportant part of education nowadays;

people with accurate memories are far too apt to trust them, and to

despise verification. Indeed, a well-filled memory is a great snare,

because it leads the possessor of it to believe, as I have said, that

knowledge is culture. A good digestion is more important to a man than

the possession of many sacks of corn; and what one ought rather to

cultivate nowadays is mental digestion.

June 14, 1889.

It is comforting to reflect how easy it is to abandon habits, and how

soon a new habit takes the place of the old. Some months ago I put

writing aside in despair, feeling that I was turning away from the most

stable thing in life; yet even now I have learned largely to acquiesce

in silence; the dreary and objectless mood visits me less and less

frequently. What have I found to fill the place of the old habit? I

have begun to read much more widely, and recognise how very

ill-educated I am. In my writing days, I used to read mainly for the

purposes of my books, or, if I turned aside to general reading at all,

it was to personal, intime, subjective books that I turned, books in

which one could see the development of character, analyse emotion,

acquire psychological experience; but now I find a growing interest in

sociological and historical ideas; a mist begins to roll away from my

mental horizon, and I realise how small was the circle in which I was

walking. I sometimes find myself hoping that this may mean the

possibility of a wider flight; but I do not, strange to say, care very

much about the prospect. Just at present, I appear to myself to have

been like a botanist walking in a great forest, looking out only for

small typical specimens of certain classes of ground-plants, without

any eyes for the luxurious vegetation, the beauty of the rich opening

glade, the fallen day of the dense underwood.

Then too I have begun to read regularly with the children; I did it

formerly, but only fitfully, and I am sorry to say grudgingly. But now

it has become a matter of intense interest to me, to see how thoughts

strike on eager and ingenuous minds. I find my trained imagination a

great help here, because it gives me the power of clothing a bare scene

with detail, and of giving vitality to an austere figure. I have made

all sorts of discoveries, to me astonishing and delightful, about my

children. I recognise some of their qualities and modes of thought; but

there are whole ranges of qualities apparent, of which I cannot even

guess the origin. One thinks of a child as deriving its nature from its

parents, and its experience from its surroundings; but there is much

beside that, original views, unexpected curiosities, and, strangest of

all, things that seem almost like dim reminiscences floated out of

other far-off lives. They seem to infer so much that they have never

heard, to perceive so much that they have never seen, to know so much

that they have never been told. Bewildering as this is in the

intellectual region, it is still more marvellous in the moral region.

They scorn, they shudder at, they approve, they love, as by some

generous instinct, qualities of which they have had no experience. "I

don't know what it is, but there is something wrong about Cromwell,"

said Maggie gravely, when we had been reading the history of the

Commonwealth. Now Cromwell is just one of those characters which, as a

rule, a child accepts as a model of rigid virtue and public spirit.

Alec, whose taste is all for soldiers and sailors just now, and who

might, one would have thought, have been dazzled by military glory,

pronounced Napoleon "rather a common man." This arose purely in the

boy's own mind, because I am very careful not to anticipate any

judgments; I think it of the highest importance that they should learn

to form their own opinions, so that we never attempt to criticise a

character until we have mastered the facts of his life.

Another thing I am doing with them, which seems to me to develop

intelligence pleasurably and rapidly, is to read them a passage or an

episode, and then to require them to relate it or write it in their own

words. I don't remember that this was ever done for me in the whole

course of my elaborate education; and the speed with which they have

acquired the art of seizing on salient points is to me simply

marvellous. I have my reward in such remarks as these which Maud

repeated to me yesterday. "Lessons," said Alec gravely, "have become

ever so much more fun since we began to do them with father." "Fun!"

said Maggie, with indignant emotion; "they are not lessons at all now!"

I certainly do not observe any reluctance on their part to set to work,

and I do see a considerable reluctance to stop; yet I don't think there

is the least strain about it. But it is true that I save them all the

stupid and irksome work that made my own acquisition of knowledge so

bitter a thing. We read French together; my own early French lessons

were positively disgusting, partly from the abominable little books on

dirty paper and in bad type that we read, and partly from the absurd

character of the books chosen. The Cid and Voltaire's Charles XII.! I

used to wonder dimly how it was ever worth any one's while to string

such ugly and meaningless sentences together. Now I read with the

children Sans Famille and Colomba; and they acquire the language with

incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they do not know; and we have

a simple system of emulation, by which the one who recollects first a

word we have previously had, receives a mark; and the one who first

reaches a total of a hundred marks gets sixpence. The adorable nature

of women! Maggie, whose verbal memory is excellent, went rapidly ahead,

and spent her sixpence on a present to console Alec for the indignity

of having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters in French to their

mother, which are solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic

French, but it is amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the

children at breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles

over them.

Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of education; it certainly

seems to fulfil its purpose very wonderfully in making them alert,

inquisitive, eager, and without any shadow of priggishness. It is

established as a principle that it is stupid not to know things, and

still more stupid to try and make other people aware that you know

them; and the apologies with which Maggie translated a French menu at a

house where we stayed with the children the other day were delightful

to behold.

I am very anxious that they should not be priggish, and I do not think

they are in any danger of becoming so. I suppose I rather skim the

cream of their education, and leave the duller part to the governess, a

nice, tranquil person, who lives in the village, the daughter of a

previous vicar, and comes in in the mornings. I don't mean that their

interest and alertness does not vary, but they are obedient and

active-minded children, and they prefer their lessons with me so much

that it has not occurred to them to be bored. If they flag, I don't

press them. I tell them a story, or show them pictures. While I write

these words in my armchair, they are sitting at the table, writing an

account of something I have told them. Maggie lays down her pen with a

sigh of satisfaction. "There, that is beautiful! But I dare say it is

not as good as yours, Alec." "Don't interrupt me," says Alec sternly,

"and don't push against me when I'm busy." Maggie looks round and

concludes that I am busy too. In a minute, Alec will have done, and

then I shall read the two pieces aloud; then we shall criticise them

respectfully. The aim is to make them frankly recognise the good points

of each other's compositions as well as the weak points, and this they

are very ready to do.

In all this I do not neglect the physical side. They can ride and swim.

They go out in all weathers and get wholesomely wet, dirty, and tired.

Games are a difficulty, but I want them to be able, if necessary, to do

without games. We botanise, we look for nests, we geologise, we study

birds through glasses, we garden. It is all very unscientific, but they

observe, they perceive, they love the country. Moreover, Maud has a

passion for knowing all the village people, and takes the children with

her, so that they really know the village-folk all round; they are

certainly tremendously happy and interested in everything. Of course

they are volatile in their tastes, but I rather encourage that. I know

that in the little old moral books the idea was that nothing should be

taken up by children, unless it was done thoroughly and perseveringly;

but I had rather that they had a wide experience; the time to select

and settle down upon a pursuit is not yet, and I had rather that they

found out for themselves what they care about, than practise them in a

premature patience. The only thing I object to is their taking up

something which they have tried and dropped; then I do require a pledge

that they shall stick to it. I say to them, "I don't mind how many

things you try, and if you find you don't care about one, you may give

it up when you have given it a trial; but it is a bad thing to be

always changing, and everybody can't do everything; so don't take up

this particular thing again, unless you can give a good reason for

thinking you will keep to it."

One of the things I insist upon their doing, whether they like it or

not, is learning to play the piano. There are innumerable people, I

find, who regret not having been made to overcome the initial

difficulties of music; and the only condition I make is, that they

shall be allowed to stop when they can play a simple piece of music at

sight correctly, and when they have learnt the simple rules of harmony.

For teaching them geography, I have a simple plan; my own early

geography lessons were to my recollection singularly dismal. I used, as

far as I can remember, to learn lists of towns, rivers, capes, and

mountains. Then there were horrible lists of exports and imports, such

as hides, jute, and hardware. I did not know what any of the things

were, and no one explained them to me. What we do now is this. I read

up a book of travels, and then we travel in a country by means of

atlases, while I describe the sort of landscape we should see, the

inhabitants, their occupations, their religion, and show the children

pictures. I can only say that it seems to be a success. They learn

arithmetic with their governess, and what is aimed at is rapid and

accurate calculations. As for religious instruction, we read portions

of the Bible, striking scenes and stories, carefully selected, and the

Gospel story, with plenty of pictures. But here I own I find a

difficulty. With regard to the Old Testament, I have frankly told them

that many of the stories are legends and exaggerations, like the

legends of other nations. That is not difficult; I say that in old days

when people did not understand science, many things seemed possible

which we know now to be impossible; and that things which happened

naturally, were often thought to have happened supernaturally;

moreover, that both imagination and exaggeration crept in about famous

people. I am sure that there is a great danger in teaching intelligent

children that the Bible is all literally true. And then the difficulty

comes in, that they ask artlessly whether such a story as the miracle

of Cana, or the feeding of the five thousand, is true. I reply frankly

that we cannot be sure; that the people who wrote it down believed it

to be true, but that it came to them by hearsay; and the children seem

to have no difficulty about the matter. Then, too, I do not want them

to be too familiar, as children, with the words of Christ, because I am

sure that it is a fact that, for many people, a mechanical familiarity

with the Gospel language simply blurs and weakens the marvellous

significance and beauty of the thought. It becomes so crystallised that

they cannot penetrate it. I have treated some parts of the Gospel after

the fashion of Philochristus, telling them a story, as though seen by

some earnest spectator. I find that they take the deepest interest in

these stories, and that the figure of Christ is very real and august to

them. But I teach them no doctrine except the very simplest--the

Fatherhood of God, the Divinity of Christ, the indwelling voice of the

Spirit; and I am sure that religion is a pure, sweet, vital force in

their lives, not a harsh thing, a question of sin and punishment, but a

matter of Love, Strength, Forgiveness, Holiness. The one thing I try to

show them is that God was not, as I used to think, the property, so to

speak, of the Jews; but that He is behind and above every race and

nation, slowly leading them to the light. The two things I will not

allow them to think of are the Doctrines of the Fall and the Atonement;

the doctrine of the Fall is contrary to all true knowledge, the

doctrine of the Atonement is inconsistent with every idea of justice.

But it is a difficult matter. They will hear sermons, and Alec, at

school, may have dogmatic instruction given him; but I shall prepare

him for Confirmation here, and have him confirmed at home, and thus the

main difficulty will be avoided; neither do I conceal from them that

good people think very differently on these points. It is curious to

remember that, brought up as I was on strict Evangelical lines, I was

early inculcated into the sin of schism, with the result that I hurried

with my Puritan nurse swiftly and violently by a Roman Catholic chapel

and a Wesleyan meeting-house which we used to pass in our walks, with a

sense of horror and wickedness in the air. Indeed, I remember once

asking my mother why God did not rain down fire and brimstone on these

two places of worship, and received a very unsatisfactory answer. To

develop such a spirit was, it seems to me, a monstrous sin against

Christian charity, and my children shall be saved from that.

Meantime my own hours are increasingly filled. It takes me a long time

to prepare for the children's lessons; and I have my reward abundantly

in the delight of seeing their intelligence, their perception, their

interest grow. I am determined that the beginnings of knowledge shall

be for them a primrose path; I suppose there will have to be some

stricter mental discipline later; but they shall begin by thinking and

expecting things to be interesting and delightful, before they realise

that things can also be hard and dull.

June 20, 1889.

When I read books on education, when I listen to the talk of

educational theorists, when I see syllabuses and schedules, schemes and

curricula, a great depression settles on my mind; I feel I have no

interest in education, and a deep distrust of theoretical methods.

These things seem to aim at missing the very thing of which we are in

search, and to lose themselves in a sort of childish game, a

marshalling of processions, a lust for organisation. I care so

intensely for what it all means, I loathe so deeply the motives that

seem at work. I suppose that the ordinary man considers a species of

success, a bettering of himself, the acquisition of money and position

and respectability, to be the end of life; and such as these look upon

education primarily as a means of arriving at their object. Such was

the old education given by the sophists, which aimed at turning out a

well-balanced, effective man. But all this, it seems to me, has the

wrong end in view. The success of it depends upon the fact that every

one is not so capable of rising, that the rank and file must be in the

background, forming the material out of which the successful man makes

his combinations, and whom he contrives to despoil.

The result of it is that the well-educated man becomes hard, brisk,

complacent, contemptuous, knowing his own worth, using his equipment

for precise and definite ends.

My idea would rather be that education should aim at teaching people

how to be happy without success; because the shadow of success is

vulgarity, and vulgarity is the one thing which education ought to

extinguish. What I desire is that men should learn to see what is

beautiful, to find pleasure in homely work, to fill leisure with

innocent enjoyment. If education, as the term is generally used, were

widely and universally successful, the whole fabric of a nation would

collapse, because no one thus educated would acquiesce in the

performance of humble work. It is commonly said that education ought to

make men dissatisfied, and teach them to desire to improve their

position. It is a pestilent heresy. It ought to teach them to be

satisfied with simple conditions, and to improve themselves rather than

their position--the end of it ought to be to produce content. Suppose,

for an instant--it sounds a fantastic hypothesis--that a man born in

the country, in the labouring class, were fond of field-work, a lover

of the sights of nature in all her aspects, fond of good literature,

why should he seek to change his conditions? But education tends to

make boys and girls fond of excitement, fond of town sociabilities and

amusements, till only the dull and unambitious are content to remain in

the country. And yet the country work will have to be done until the

end of time.

It is a dark problem; but it seems to me that we are only saved from

disaster, in our well-meant efforts, by the simple fact that we cannot

make humanity what we so short-sightedly desire to make it; that the

dull, uninspired, unambitious element has an endurance and a permanence

which we cannot change if we would, and which it is well for us that we

cannot change; and that in spite of our curricula and schedules,

mankind marches quietly upon its way to its unknown goal.

June 28, 1889.

An old friend has been staying with us, a very interesting man for many

reasons, but principally for the fact that he combines two sets of

qualities that are rarely found together. He has strong artistic

instincts; he would like, I think, to have been a painter; he has a

deep love of nature, woodland places and quiet fields; he loves old and

beautiful buildings with a tenderness that makes it a real misery to

him to think of their destruction, and even their renovation; and he

has, too, the poetic passion for flowers; he is happiest in his garden.

But beside all this, he has the Puritan virtues strongly developed; he

loves work, and duty, and simplicity of life, with all his heart; he is

an almost rigid judge of conduct and character, and sometimes flashes

out in a half Pharisaical scorn against meanness, selfishness, and

weakness. He is naturally a pure Ruskinian; he would like to destroy

railways and machinery and manufactories; he would like working-men to

enjoy their work, and dance together on the village green in the

evenings; but he is not a faddist at all, and has the healthiest and

simplest power of enjoyment. His severity has mellowed with age, while

his love of beauty has, I think, increased; he does not care for

argument, and is apt to say pathetically that he knows that his

fellow-disputant is right, but that he cannot change his opinions, and

does not desire to. He is passing, it seems to me, into a very gracious

and soft twilight of life; he grows more patient, more tender, more

serene. His face, always beautiful, has taken on an added beauty of

faithful service and gracious sweetness.

We began one evening to discuss a book that has lately been published,

a book of very sad, beautiful, wise, intimate letters, written by a

woman of great perception, high intellectual gifts and passionate

affections. These letters were published, not long after her death, by

her children, to whom many of them were addressed.

He had read the book, I found, with deep emotion; but he said very

decidedly that it ought not to have been published, at all events so

soon after the writer's death. I am inclined to defer greatly to his

judgment, and still more to his taste, and I have therefore read the

book again to see if I am inclined to alter my mind. I find that my

feeling is the exact opposite of his in every way. I feel humbly and

deeply grateful to the children who have given the letters to the

world. Of course if there had been any idea in the mind of the writer

that they would be published, she would probably have been far more

reticent; but, as it was, she spoke with a perfect openness and

simplicity of all that was in her mind. It is curious to reflect that I

met the writer more than once, and thought her a cold, hard,

unsympathetic woman. She had to endure many sorrows and bereavements,

losing, by untimely death, those whom she most loved; but the

revelation of her pain and bewilderment, and the sublime and loving

resignation with which she bore it, has been to me a deep, holy, and

reviving experience. Here was one who felt grief acutely, rebelliously,

and passionately, yet whom sorrow did not sear or harden, suffering did

not make self-absorbed or morbid, or pain make callous. Her love flowed

out more richly and tenderly than ever to those who were left, even

though the loss of those whom she loved remained an unfading grief, an

open wound. She did not even shun the scenes and houses that reminded

her of her bereavements; she did not withdraw from life, she made no

parade of her sorrows. The whole thing is so wholesome, so patient, so

devoted, that it has shown me, I venture to say, a higher possibility

in human nature of bearing intolerable calamities with sweetness and

courage, than I had dared to believe. It seems to me that nothing more

wise or brave could have been done by the survivors than to make these

letters accessible to others. We English people make such a secret of

our feelings, are so stubbornly reticent about the wrong things, have

so false and stupid a sense of decorum, that I am infinitely grateful

for this glimpse of a pure, patient, and devoted heart. It seems to me

that the one thing worth knowing in this world is what other people

think and feel about the great experiences of life. The writers who

have helped the world most are those who have gone deepest into the

heart; but the dullest part of our conventionality is that when a man

disguises the secrets of his soul in a play, a novel, a lyric, he is

supposed to have helped us and ministered to our deepest needs; but if

he speaks directly, in his own voice and person, of these things, he is

at once accused of egotism and indecorum. It is not that we dislike

sentiment and feeling; we value it as much as any nation; but we think

that it must be spoken of symbolically and indirectly. We do not

consider a man egotistical, if he will only give himself a feigned

name, and write of his experiences in the third person. But if he uses

the personal pronoun, he is thought to be shameless. There are even

people who consider it more decent to say "one feels and one thinks,"

than to say "I feel and I think." The thing that I most desire, in

intercourse with other men and women, is that they should talk frankly

of themselves, their hopes and fears, their beliefs and uncertainties.

Yet how many people can do that? Part of our English shyness is shown

by the fact that people are often curiously cautious about what they

say, but entirely indiscreet in what they write. The only books which

possess a real and abiding vitality are those in which personality is

freely and frankly revealed. Of course there are one or two authors

like Shakespeare who seem to have had a power of penetrating and

getting inside any personality, but, apart from them, the books that go

on being read and re-read are the books in which one seems to clasp

hands with a human soul.

I said many of these things to my friend, and he replied that he

thought I was probably right, but that he could not change his opinion.

He would not have had these letters published until all the survivors

were dead. He did not think that the people who liked the book were

actuated by good motives, but had merely a desire to penetrate behind

the due and decent privacies of life; and he would have stopped the

publication of such letters if he could, because even if people liked

them, it was not good for them to read them. He said that he himself

felt on reading the book as if he had been listening at keyholes, or

peeping in at windows, and seeing the natural endearments of husband

and wife, mother and children.

I said that what seemed to me to make a difference was whether the

people thus espied were conscious of the espionage or not; and that it

was no more improper to have such things revealed IN A BOOK, than to

have them described in a novel or shown upon the stage. Moreover, it

seemed to me, I said, as though to reveal such things in a book was the

perfect compromise. I feel strongly that each home, each circle has a

right to its own privacy; but I am not ashamed of my natural feelings

and affections, and, by allowing them to appear in a book, I feel that

I am just speaking of them simply to those who will understand. I

desire communion with all sympathetic and like-minded persons; but

one's actual circle of friends is limited by time and space and

physical conditions. People talk of books as if every one in the world

was compelled to read them. My own idea of a book is that it provides a

medium by which one may commune confidentially with people whom one may

never see, but whom one is glad to know to be alive. One can make

friends through one's books with people with whom one agrees in spirit,

but whose bodily presence, modes of life, reticences, habits, would

erect a barrier to social intercourse. It is so much easier to love and

understand people through their books than through their conversation.

In books they put down their best, truest, most deliberate thoughts; in

talk, they are at the mercy of a thousand accidents and sensations.

There were people who objected to the publication of the Browning

love-letters. To me they were the sacred and beautiful record of an

intensely holy and passionate relation between two great souls; and I

can afford to disregard and to contemn the people who thought the book

strained, unconventional and shameless, for the sake of those whose

faith in love and beauty was richly and generously nurtured by it.

It seems to me that the whole progress of life and thought, of love and

charity, depends upon our coming to understand each other. The hostile

seclusion which some desire is really a savage and almost animal

inheritance; and the best part of civilisation has sprung from the

generous self-revelation of kindly and honourable souls.

I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, by wondering whether

the person concerned would have liked or disliked the publication of

these letters. I feel no sort of doubt that, as far as I am concerned,

she would be only too willing that I should thus have read and loved

them, and I cannot believe that the disapprobation of a few austere

people, or the curiosity of a few vulgar people, would weigh in the

balance for a moment against the joy of like-minded spirits.

The worst dissatisfaction of life is the difficulty one has in drawing

near to others, the foolish hardness, often only superficial, which

makes one hold back from and repudiate intimacies. If I had known and

loved a great and worthy spirit, and had been the recipient of his

confidences, I should hold it a solemn duty to tell the world what I

knew. I should care nothing for the carping of the cold and

unsympathetic, but I should base my decision on the approval of all

loving and generous souls. This seems to me the highest service that

art can render, and if it be said that no question of art comes in, in

the publication of such records as these letters, I would reply that

they are themselves works of the highest and most instinctive art,

because the world, its relations and affections, its loss and grief,

its pain and suffering, are here seen patiently mirrored and perfectly

expressed by a most perceptive personality. The moment that emotions

are depicted and represented, that moment they have felt the holy and

transfiguring power of art; and then they pass out of the region of

stuffy conventions and commonplace decorums into a finer and freer air.

I do not deny that there is much vulgar inquisitiveness abroad, but

that matters little; and, for myself, I am glad to think that the world

is moving in the direction of a greater frankness. I do not mean that a

man has not a right to live his life privately, in his own house and

his own circle, if he wills. But if that life is lived simply,

generously and bravely, I welcome any ripple or ray from it that breaks

in light and fragrance upon the harsher and uglier world.

July 1, 1889.

I have just read an interesting sentence. I don't know where it comes

from--I saw it in a book of extracts.

"I am more and more convinced that the cure for sentiment, as for all

weakened forms of strong things, is not to refuse to feel it, but to

feel more in it. This seems to me to make the whole difference between

a true and a false asceticism. The false goes for getting rid of what

it is afraid of; the true goes for using and making it serve, the one

empties, the other fills; the one abstracts, the other concentrates."