ASHFIELD,
SETTLE,
Sept. 4, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,--I have been reading FitzGerald's pretty essay Euphranor.
It is Platonic both in form and treatment, but I never feel that it is
wholly successful. Most of the people who express admiration for it
know nothing of the essay except a delicious passage at the end, like a
draught of fragrant wine, about the gowned figures evaporating into the
twilight, and the nightingale heard among the flowering chestnuts of
Jesus. But the talk itself is discursive and somewhat pompous. However,
it is not of that that I wish to speak, it is rather of the passage
from Digby's Godefridus which is read aloud by the narrator, which sets
out to analyse the joyful and generous temperament of Youth. "They [the
young] are easily put to Shame" (so runs the script), "for they have no
resources to set aside the precepts which they have learned; and they
have lofty souls, for they have never been disgraced or brought low,
and they are unacquainted with Necessity; they prefer Honour to
Advantage, Virtue to Expediency; for they live by Affection rather than
by Reason, and Reason is concerned with Expediency, but Affection with
Honour."
All very beautiful and noble, no doubt; but is it real? was I, were
you, creatures of this make? Could these fine things have been
truthfully said of us? Perhaps you may think it of yourself, but I can
only regretfully say that I do not recognise it.
My boyhood and youth were, it seems to me, very faulty things. My age
is faulty still, more's the pity. But without any vain conceit, and
with all the humility which is given by a knowledge of weakness, I can
honestly say that in particular points I have improved a little. I am
not generous or noble-hearted now; but I have not lost these qualities,
for I never had them. As a boy and a young man I distinctly preferred
Advantage to Honour; I was the prey of Expediency, and seldom gave
Virtue a thought. But since I have known more of men, I have come to
know that these fine powers, Honour and Virtue, do bloom in some men's
souls, and in the hearts of many women. I have perceived their
fragrance; I have seen Honour raise its glowing face like a rose, and
Virtue droop its head like a pure snowdrop; and I hope that some day,
as in an early day of spring, I may find some such tender green thing
budding in the ugly soil of my own poor spirit.
Life would be a feeble business if it were otherwise; but the one ray
of hope is not that one steadily declines in brightness from those
early days, but that one may learn by admiration the beauty of the
great qualities one never had by instinct.
I see myself as a boy, greedy, mean-spirited, selfish, dull. I see
myself as a young man, vain, irritable, self-absorbed, unbalanced. I
have not eradicated these weeds; but I have learnt to believe in beauty
and honour, even in Truth. . . .--Ever yours,