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generosity which drives you away, feeling that you would rather die than have another gift forced upon you. What makes the difference? It is not that one man is really generous and the other only pretending to be so; or that the generosity is complete in one and partial in the other. Such solutions are only stupid cuttings of the knot. The difference is between the self of the one and the self of the other. The one is a beautiful nature, and, if he were a criminal, there would be a certain grace even about his crimes. He would give a charm to burglary and make pocket-picking poetical. The other only has a beautiful quality which, like a plant growing in an unfavourable, situation, is stunted and distorted by the poverty of the soil and the want of vitalization in the air.

When necessity compels us to undertake work which we dislike, there is a loss of power; and it is well to economize force, not by endeavouring to overcome the dislike, which may be a reasonable and wise one, but by resolving to keep it in the back-ground of the mind.

The age of

Forms as well as styles of art pass away. epics and cathedrals is gone, and as life becomes more complex its restoration becomes less possible. The characteristics of great works of art are diffused among a number of smaller ones; for in art, as in everything else, there is a division of labour. The question whether this

is an advantage or the reverse is not so easy to answer as some people suppose. I could compose a very long brief for an advocate on either side, and I could not bet with any degree of certainty on the verdict of the jury. For this, as for every other loss, there is some compensation. As Tennyson says, "the individual withers," but "the world is more and more;" which, put into other words, means that though we have no giants in these days, the average stature is higher than it was. I suppose this is true, though George Dawson didn't seem to believe it.

(Many of these extracts from Pelican's conversations belong to a period much later than that referred to in the beginning of this chapter, but are gathered together here for the sake of unity and convenience. He speaks here of a lecture by Mr. Dawson on the subject of "Old Books," some account of which will be found on another

page of this volume. The passage alluded to is evidently the following:-"I go to old books to get wisdom; I go to new ones to get knowledge. Many a knowing man is very foolish; many an ignorant man is very wise. We know more than people knew in the old days, but I doubt very much if we are wiser than they were. There may be more wise men in the world now, because there are more men of all kinds ;—and the proportion of fools is rather fixed.")

Our bitterest quarrels are with those whose natures

are very similar to our own; and I think the reason of this must be that the fact of their having so much in common with us leads us to expect a perfect agreement with ourselves, and we are disappointed if we do not get it. Their primary axioms are the same as ours; and therefore we feel as if we had just cause for indignation at their differing and antagonistic conclusions. We can afford to be most tolerant to those who move on an entirely different plane from that which we occupy, for we know that with them we can never come into real collision.

Commonplace moralists say a great deal about the difficulty of keeping resolutions, but it seems to me that the really difficult thing is to make them. When a resolution is once really made, the keeping of it is a comparatively easy thing. The reason why this sounds paradoxical is that we often give the name of resolution to a mental process which falls short of an entire committal of our whole nature to a certain course of action. When a resolution is made we must burn our boats: we must not even leave a raft by which to escape from the task we have set before us. This is the thing which is difficult to do: but when it has been done, who does not see that it is easier to go on than to turn back?

A man's noblest utterance, provided it be sincere, is always an index of the height his nature has attained.

1

Our speech is our life made audible; and we must have lived up to our highest expression, though, perhaps, only

for a moment.

There is a wonderful amount of truth in that verse of Adelaide Anne Procter's:

:

"Dwells within the soul of every artist

More than all his effort can express ;
And he knows his best remains unuttered,

Sighing at what we call his success ;"

and what she says is true, in its measure, not only of the artistic class, but of every one who thinks and feels. We all have thoughts and feelings which are poetry in solution; and it is only because we are unable to precipitate or crystallize them that we are not all poets at times. Í suppose there are at this moment thousands of unwritten poems drifting through the universe of mind waiting for some poet to give them substance and shape. They are like souls wandering, homeless and despairing, in search of fitting bodies to inhabit. Sometimes we feel that they are near us, we can almost grasp them; but we cannot give them what they seek, and so they flit away, and we see them no more.

(The definition which follows was given after one of the meetings of the Literary Society, at which an essay on Liberalism had been read by an ardent radical and political dissenter, who had of course identified Liberal

H

ism with police legislation, secular education, non-intervention, vote by ballot, and all the other dogmas of the party to which he belonged. Pelican had not joined in the animated discussion which followed, and I had attributed his silence to indifference; for he had often remarked that political debates never produced anything but third-rate leading articles, and that if he must have his mind burdened with such dreary compositions he would rather read first-rate specimens at home. The subject of the evening had however been occupying his thoughts to a much greater extent than I had supposed; and as soon as we had gained the solitude of my room, and settled ourselves comfortably before the fire, he gave me the benefit of his reflections.)

Robinson's paper was clever, as every one expected it to be, but it was preternaturally dull,—and the dulness was really malicious, for there are scores of interesting things that might have been said about Liberalism. For instance, he might easily have shown that Liberalism and Conservatism are generally matters of race, and that as such they affect a man's entire mental constitution. Whigs and Tories, like poets, are born, not made; and if a man be liberal or conservative on one point only, it is almost certain to be simply accidental. Or he might have given us an account of the popular definitions of Liberalism, and an estimate of their value; but he had no inclination for that kind of thing. It is so much easier to talk than it is to know exactly what you are

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